Kindergarten teacher Khristie Leadford greets students arriving for the first day of school at Cloverdale Elementary School on Monday.
School began Monday amid smiles, jitters and a few tears but with no major problems for local students.
“We had a very smooth first day everywhere,” Sheffield schools Superintendent Tim Morgan said. “I’m not aware of any major problems at any of our schools. It was a very good morning.”
Tuscumbia Superintendent Joe Walters said the first day of classes went off without a hitch. “Everything seemed to go
Emma Ingram was excited as she began her first day of kindergarten at Cloverdale Elementary School in Lauderdale
County.
“It’s going to be fun,” Ingram said after meeting her teacher, Kristie Leadford.
Ingram hugged her mother and then busied herself meeting classmates as they shaped plastic building blocks into towers.
Two of her classmates, Hunter Nash and Haven Nash, had been looking forward to the start of school.
“He’s had his backpack packed with his school supplies and showing it to everybody for about two weeks,” said Hunter Nash’s mother, Aubrey Nash.
Cloverdale second-grader Summer Gray was excited to see friends she had not seen since the last school year ended.
“I’ve missed playing with my friends,” she said.
Some of Gray’s friends might have moved to other schools during the summer. Cloverdale Principal Kenny Koss said enrollment is down sharply.
“We’re down to about 100 students,” Koss said. “We had so few students in the fifth and sixth grades that we had to combine the classes.”
The Lauderdale County Board of Education voted in March to eliminate seventh through ninth grades at Cloverdale and Anderson schools because of declining enrollment.
Koss said when many of the students who would have been in junior high grades at Cloverdale transferred to other schools, younger siblings joined them.
“Losing the junior high really hit us a lick,” Koss said. “Our enrollment is about half of what it was last year.”
Koss is hopeful some of the elementary students who transferred to other schools will return to Cloverdale later this week.
Lauderdale Superintendent Bill Valentine said he expects some students who had planned to transfer from Cloverdale or Anderson school will return. He said it could be early next week before the transfers are completed and final enrollment numbers are available for each school. He expects enrollment at most schools to be similar to last year.
Enrollment is up in the Florence City School System. Florence Superintendent Janet Womack said the school system added more than 300 students this year.
Womack attributes the increase to Florence schools not cutting programs or eliminating classes because of proration.
“We chose not to participate in proration,” Womack said. “Other districts around the state have cut programs and people, but we have been able to avoid having to make cuts in our schools.”
Womack said Florence schools receive more local money than most school systems, which has reduced the impact of state budget cuts.
The Florence Board of Education met Monday morning and hired a kindergarten teacher for Forrest Hills Elementary and a third-grade teacher for Harlan Elementary to help accommodate the increased enrollment.
Dennis Conner, attendance and support coordinator for Muscle Shoals Schools, said he expects enrollment there to increase slightly.
Dennis Sherer can be reached at 256-740-5746 or dennis.sherer@TimesDaily.com .
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment