Students return to school

By Amanda Stewart

Published: September 2, 2008

School is back in session this morning for tens of thousands of students in Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park.

At Mayfield Intermediate School in Manassas, parents began dropping off students wearing backpacks and carrying musical instruments around 7:30 a.m.

By 7:45 a.m., a long line had formed of students waiting to get into school.

Around the back of the school, buses dropped off students by the dozens.

School administrators and safety patrols helped direct the students into the school.

“We just tell them where to go and if they’re running we tell them to slow down,” said sixth grade safety patrol Alex Gordon.

Tuesday Alex and fellow patrol Erin Harrover also took some time to wave and greet friends they hadn’t seen over the summer.

The girls, both 11, said they were “kind of” excited about the first day of school.

“The summer just went by so fast,” Erin said.

Lunch was getting under way at Vaughan Elementary School by around 11 a.m. and it was evi-dent by the single-file-lines of children throughout the halls.

Best friends Jacqueline Romero and Darrius Nunez, both 6, took seats next to each other at a lunch table inside the school’s cafeteria on their first day of first grade.
“Our teacher is so nice,” said Nunez, taking a break from eating his chicken fingers and mashed potato lunch.

Darrius, who spent a good part of his summer playing at the playground with Romero, said go-ing outside was what he was most looking forward to.

The school’s main focus on the first day was making sure everyone got in the school and to the right place, said Lillie Jessie, principal of the elementary school on York Drive in Woodbridge.

One of the ways Jessie said the school was trying to avoid confusion is by handing out wrist-bands indicating what bus each child belongs on so they can put it on their book bags. Each bus is assigned a different color and has its number written on the wristbands.

“I think our kids really enjoy being back,” Jessie said. “I would hope our kids missed us because we really missed them.”

And that went well, she said, despite the challenge created by construction on an addition and the need to use seven trailers.

“I only saw one kindergartener crying in the hallway,” said Jessie, who was wearing a red cap that has a patch with school’s mascot. “We try to make the first day as non-eventful as possible.”