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Parents soaked in the moment, with some excitedly taking photos and others wistfully looking on, as their children dutifully lined up on the blacktop at Landels Elementary School Wednesday morning for the first day of school.
When the bell rang at 8:15 a.m., the kids marched single-file to their respective classrooms. Similar scenes played out across the Mountain View Whisman School District’s eight other elementary and two middle school campuses. Their high school counterparts started school on Monday.
As she walked to the blacktop, Zhenhua Luo told the Voice was happy for her son Andrew, a fifth-grader who transferred to Landels this fall after previously attending a private school.
“I’m very excited,” Luo said. “I hope he can adapt to the new environment.”
Students hung up their backpacks – some decorated with glitter and others with characters like Pikachu, Hello Kitty and Bowser – outside their classrooms before making their way to their seats.
Andrew, who said he was excited to make new friends, sat in teacher Tony Torres’ classroom, which was decorated with Giants memorabilia and Funko Pop figurines. As the school day started, Torres led an exercise meant to reduce first-day jitters, in which students shared their anxieties with a peer.
“I’ll go first,” Torres told his students. “I was nervous this morning because I hadn’t taught fifth grade in four years.”
Torres previously worked as Landels’ STEAM teacher, and it was his first time teaching a designated classroom in several years, Principal Pieter Dolmans told the Voice.
Across campus, in a transitional kindergarten class, students started off by playing quietly, before learning about the concept of recess and the rest of their daily schedules.
In a second grade classroom, teacher Kimi Ng read a book about the first day of school to her students. A few rooms away, third-grade teacher Natalie Hillebrecht led her class in the morning meeting, where students sat in a circle and introduced themselves to their classmates, while learning about the importance of eye contact and body language.
Changes this school year
While students were taking part in normal first-day routines on Wednesday, this school year brings changes at the district level. Faced with stagnating revenues and growing expenses, Mountain View Whisman’s school board approved $7.4 million in budget cuts back in January, which are taking effect this fall. The cost savings include reducing individual computers for younger students and eliminating roughly 20 district office positions, as well as nightly custodial services, among other changes.
Students from kindergarten through third grade won’t be issued individual computers to take home, but will still have access to personal computers while at school, Superintendent Jeffrey Baier told the Voice.
Additionally, behavioral therapists will be shared across the district. Instead of each being allocated to a specific school, they will be “assigned as needed to specific situations with students,” Baier said.
Despite the multi-million cuts, the district is still piloting a new math program across its elementary and middle schools this year. Otherwise, there are no major changes to curriculum, Baier said.
Summer construction
Landels, like other Mountain View Whisman schools, received a number of facilities upgrades over the summer. Water bottle filling stations were installed toward the end of last school year, Dolmans said, and construction crews replaced the roof before classes resumed. Roofing projects were also undertaken this summer at Graham, Crittenden, Theuerkauf, Bubb, Imai and Mistral.
Construction on a new playground and outdoor learning area at Landels started over the summer, but work is not yet completed.
“There was a lot of work to do this summer, and unfortunately, construction didn’t start as quickly as it needed to. So it just pushed the timelines later,” Hausman said. “It was already going to be a tight squeeze to get it in before the end of the summer.”
The district took on outdoor learning projects at a number of its other schools this summer. Work on those campuses is also still underway, Hausman said.
“Portions of the blacktop areas will remain temporarily unavailable during landscaping, site work, painting, and equipment installation,” she said in an email. “Work behind the fences will continue until early November.”
Fiber optic cabling was also replaced at Landels, Graham, Bubb, Imai, Stevenson and Theuerkauf. Kindergarten-specific bathrooms, as well as ones for older students, were renovated at Theuerkauf.
