While the past couple of days were spent sweeping up the remnants of Hurricane Earl, school principals across St. Thomas said Thursday that the real prep work was done over the summer, ensuring a smooth first day as students made their way back to campus.
Clad in chickenhawk blue, students at Charlotte Amalie High School were everywhere Thursday, creating a loud buzz of chatter that streamed through the hallways and into their classrooms. Principal Carmen Howell said the school is boasting 1,600 students this year, with more than 400 new students making the transition over from middle school.
To accommodate the load, school administrators spent most of last month laying the groundwork — making identification cards, sorting out insurance issues and getting schedules complete so that the students had less to do on the first day.
Many parents and their kids took advantage of the early orientations this year, but "a number" of stragglers still caused some delays as staff tried to "accommodate them," Howell said.
The school had its sixth and final orientation for seniors around 1 p.m., which Howell said had to be done in two sessions, since the senior class tops 600 and there is limited space in the auditorium.
Other than that, the biggest issue so far at CAHS is a shortage of teachers, which Howell said is critical. There are three vacancies for English teachers — one is currently being filled by a substitute — while one or two more are needed for social studies. Howell said the general practice is to not schedule students for classes where there are no teachers, but English is a core subject, so the school has to do the best it can for now.
Education officials have long said that the nationwide teacher shortage is mirrored in the territory, but there are some areas — such as English — which are not as much of a problem in the states as it is here. Lower salaries, coupled with a lack of students going into the field and staying at home to teach are just a few of the factors that many said have exacerbated the situation.
CAHS was working around some network and phone problems Thursday, but Howell said that overall, the school was prepared for another year. Summer maintenance was fruitful this year, yielding a new stage for the auditorium, air conditioning work, roofing on the music suite, reenforced railings and the anticipation of corner fencing on the north east side of campus.
Some of the projects, such as the "Wall of Fame," will be more personal in nature, commemorating successful alumni and faculty in the hopes of inspiring the students to continue to strive for excellence, she said.
At the core of many schools’ academics this year is the AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) program, which several principals said Thursday is meant to prepare students as much as possible for college.
At CAHS, Howell said that many of the students going through the program this year as ninth graders were able to follow it from the seventh and eighth grades.
And over at Bertha C. Boschulte Middle School, principal Carver Farrow said the program is designed to start at the lower levels so students can gain as many advantages as possible. Even little areas, such as proper note-taking skills, can make a big difference when it comes to performing well at the high school and college levels, he explained Thursday.
Also new at the school this year is an elective ballroom dancing class and an anti-bullying initiative spearheaded by First Lady Cecile deJongh that is being piloted this year at five schools throughout the district.
Of course, BCB is continuing its award-winning chess and music programs, and is looking forward — with the matriculation of three students from Joseph Gomez Elementary — to possibly having a "fungi band" that focuses on local music.
BCB has a total 640 students this year — approximately half of which are new. Farrow said about 100 were from E. Benjamin Oliver Elementary, while 200 joined from other schools around the island.
To help in with the transition to junior high, BCB has a "team system," pairing sets of 100 students with four teachers, a counselor and administrator. Some of the older students were also showing the newer ones around campus Thursday, while teachers and monitors surveyed close-by.
But the kids seemed as enthusiastic as their principal about being back to school, showing little nerves over their first day of junior high.
"I’m excited about it because I like to meet new people," said seventh-grader Dariea Monrose, whose schoolmates also said they enjoyed working within the team system.
"It’s really a good way to get to know the teachers and other students," said Kyliel Barnes, a BCB eighth-grader. "We have really great teachers, and I especially like the math teachers, who are really nice and help make some of the work easy by explaining the material so well. I am excited to be back."
And other than a few air-conditioning issues, which were being fixed, Farrow said there was little to worry about, particularly since Hurricane Earl caused very little damage to the campus.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case throughout the entire island, but Education officials said later that outstanding issues, such as a lack of power, didn’t seem to dampen the students’ spirits.
"The E. Benjamin Oliver School, they were on generator power only throughout the day," District Deputy Superintendent Michael Harrigan said. "So there were programs they weren’t able to do, and things they couldn’t have, like air-conditioning in the middle of this heat, and yet their spirits were very, very high."
Harrigan said reports from many of the schools yesterday were not as positive, as many struggled to get through without power. But V.I. Water and Power Authority crews were around to help sort out as many issues as possible, and Harrigan said there was no shortage of enthusiasm from school staff as officials made the rounds Thursday.
"My personal favorite visit was with all three administrators at Joseph Gomez Elementary, who were just all smiles and so pleased about what a smooth opening day it had been," Harrigan said. "And you know, like them, we’re just all really thankful for all the hard work the maintenance crews did to get the schools ready after the storm.
"A lot of the problems we expected were going to be related to the hurricane, and we’re so pleased that the schools were able to open and that the first day went so well."
