The first day of school rang out across the Island’s public schools on Tuesday morning. At Oak Bluffs School, students excitedly chattered, parents took photos, and teachers guided the children on a cloudy and at times drizzling Tuesday morning.
Some family members were up earlier than others for the first day of school. Mary Lombardi was waiting on a bench for her grandson, Crew, to arrive and take his first steps as an Oak Bluffs kindergartener. She said Crew is the last of her grandchildren to begin school.
“It’s a little melancholy. I won’t have this experience again,” Lombardi said. “But I’m also excited. He’ll start school, meet new friends, and have new experiences.”
A sense of excitement was felt among the teachers as well.
“It feels great to be back. I can’t wait to see the students I worked with last year, and to see new kindergarteners,” Wendy Federowicz, a special education teacher who teaches kindergarteners and first graders, said. “It’s always exciting to start the new year with new promises.”
Oak Bluffs Police Chief Jonathan Searle was also present during the first day to “get a feel of things.” He told The Times there are usually some delays on the first day of school, as there are parents and children who are not familiar with the process. This is even more so since it is a return to a more normal school year after the heights of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Add rain to that today, and here we are,” Searle said. He added that there is an Oak Bluffs Police officer at the school on a daily basis.
Oak Bluffs School Principal Megan Farrell said a lot of work, from preparing the facilities and getting the curriculum ready, has been done to prepare for the new school year.
“It feels incredibly wonderful to be back here after summer vacation. Moreover, starting a school year full, in-person, after the difficult COVID years that we’ve had,” Farrell said. “We’re really, really, really, excited to come back to celebrate what it means to be ‘proud to be from O.B.’”
Farrell said this Oak Bluffs pride means celebrating community and developing classroom environments that foster “habits of kindness, goodness, and citizenship” for the school. Many staff members, including Farrell, were wearing shirts that read, “We have the power to be kind,” as a part of creating this environment, and a continuation of the “kindness campaign” the school had last year. The illustration on the shirts was based on a mural at the school that was, according to a letter to parents, designed by students and painted by local artist M-C Lamarre for the kindness campaign.
“We empower ourselves when we work on kindness first and supporting each other first,” Farrell said. She said student artwork expressing “their messages of kindness” were enlarged into posters and displayed on the school walls.
Other than fostering a positive learning environment, Farrell said the school is looking forward to its “academic focus on continual improvement,” trying to plan the best way to support students as a whole and as individuals, and the afterschool clubs.
“We really feel like when we take care of the social and emotional well-being of our children, academics will come into the fold as well,” she said.
Farrell concluded by saying this start of school felt like “we’re opening up and coming home,” after “a couple of really difficult years.”
