Schools

Hollywood Elementary Office is a Place of Controlled Busyness on First Day

The first-day-of-school experience varied from parents, administrators, teachers, staff and students at Hollywood Elementary School. This is one of those stories.

Lorraine Storck talked on the phone with a woman who said she was interested in getting her granddaughter into school this year, but it turned out she was too young.

“She’s looking for child care,” Storck said when she hung up.

This was just one of several phone calls that the principal’s secretary and the office secretary, Shelly Jackson fielded Monday, the first day of school, at .

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It was 7:25 a.m., 10 minutes before the roughly 450 students waiting outside would enter the building, and it was busy in the office.

But the busyness was controlled, because of preparation throughout the summer, Storck said. The main task is making sure all the students are registered in the system, or else they won’t know where to go on the first day of school, she said.

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This was the case for two students who came into the office that morning. A quick phone call to a guardian, and Storck said she’d assigned them to a class.

The flow of students and parents in and out of the office accelerated a bit by 7:30 a.m.

“This is when it gets busy, just before the bell rings,” Storck said.

Five minutes later, the bell sounded and students and parents streamed in the front door and scuttled to classrooms.

Some of them went straight to the office, and by 7:44, the line of was out the door as parents made last-minute registrations, checked on classroom numbers and bus routes.

It wasn't long before the line was dissolved.

“[It was] not as bad as I thought it would be,” Jackson said almost an hour after students were settled in their classrooms.

How does staff prepare for the first day of school?

“You don’t,” Jackson said. “You just got to let it happen.”


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