Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools leaders shared key details about the beginning of the 2024-25 school year during a press event at Old Town Elementary School on Monday morning.
There was special significance to Old Town’s role as host for the kickoff event, as this will be the school’s 100th year of serving the area’s students. Established in 1925, the campus may have had to close decades ago if it weren’t for the 1996 renovation project made possible by a community contribution of $8 million. Educators at Old Town are planning a wide array of special activities for the year that will celebrate historical events from the past century of education and encourage students to think about the community building strategies that go into building long-lasting achievements like the legacy of their school.
“Throughout this school year, we’ll be honoring our past while inspiring our future by continuing to dig deeper into the culture of our school and our community,” said Principal Samantha Manring.
At 10 am, there was plenty of good news to share about the beginning of the first day of school. 51,200 students are already registered at schools throughout the district, a figure that is close to the early projections of 51,500 with many more students expected to register throughout the first week of school. District administrators and Board of Education members observed no major issues with security matters, and with 245 school buses on the road, they also saw good safety practices from bus drivers and commuters while they were on the road. It will take a few days before adequate data on attendance is available (absences won’t be counted in the first two weeks of school out of acknowledgement for families who made plans before the earlier calendar was adopted) but the prevailing impression was that students and educators all seemed very excited to be back. It was a highly successful first morning, and district leaders extended their thanks to everyone who made it possible.
“We know already that preparing for the first day of school is extremely difficult, but one of the things we always love to see is that we’ve been successful in this effort,” Board of Education Vice Chair Alex Bohannon said. “Based on our visits today by our board members and staff, we’re happy to say that we’re on track.”
Superintendent Tricia McManus took the opportunity to go over several key educational priorities that the district will pursue in the 2024-25 school year. Those priorities included future-ready academics centered on deeper learning initiatives that encourage students to take ownership of their own futures, promotion of good citizenship in schools with a disciplinary system built around universal standards of restorative justice, and inclusionary practices that make sure students of all backgrounds feel they have a home in the district. The programs that will advance these goals are largely already in place, including the North Carolina Portrait of a Graduate, the Code of Character, Conduct, and Support, and a variety of social-emotional learning curricula, and district leaders are eager to see how another year of implementation refines the progress of these initiatives.
“We’ve got three main priorities as we head into this school year, and the good news is they’re really the same ones as last school year,” McManus said. “We know that we’re focused on the right things. We just need to continue to improve the implementation.”
There’s plenty of work left to be done to make the most of this school year. 57 bus runs are still securing permanent drivers, which will lead to some delays in the first few weeks of the year, and the Transportation Department is still working on early troubleshooting for the Edulog Bus Portal. There are also about 100 classroom teacher vacancies that need to be filled, particularly for positions in exceptional children’s classrooms (although no class was without a teacher on Monday thanks to the support of long-term substitutes). However, the results of the first day of school gave district leaders ample hope that there’s a great year of academic excellence on the horizon. Above all, they were all ecstatic to have students back in the building.
“I think everything has gone incredibly smoothly,” said Board of Education Chair Deanna Kaplan. “There have been a few little hiccups, but they’ve been addressed right away… we’re seeing a lot of excitement today. It’s great.”