The drop-off line on the first day of school can be an emotional place. Young students saying goodbye to their parents after a long summer together can bring on the tears and tantrums.
But not for everyone.
As he arrived at Pulaski High School on Tuesday morning, one young student proudly announced in Spanish, “Hello! I’m ready for school!” He slung his backpack over his shoulder and scooted out of the car.
Tuesday was an unusual scene at Pulaski, at Oklahoma and 27th Street on Milwaukee’s south side. An hour before teenagers filed in the front of the building, hundreds of tiny elementary school students arrived in the back.
They were greeted by cheers, teachers waving blue pom-poms and Gov. Tony Evers.
The new students at Pulaski are transplants from Lincoln Avenue Elementary School just 1.5 miles away. A fire in June destroyed the school, which was over 100 years old.
Milwaukee Public Schools kept the students together by temporarily relocating them to Pulaski High School. The elementary students have their own entrance, lunchroom and classrooms on the ground and third floor of the building.
Gov. Evers joined MPS Superintendent Dr. Brenda Cassellius, State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson to celebrate the new school year.
The outgoing governor, who started his career as a teacher, praised the educators and school leadership for relocating their classrooms and making the students feel welcomed.
“Take a look at this school here. People had to kind of move things around in a huge way to make sure that the education system is working here," he said. "This doesn’t happen magically, this happens because a whole bunch of adults got together and said ‘this is how we’re going to make this work.’”
Heat steals the show on MPS first day of school. How can the district respond?
Evers and the other visitors were crowded into a hallway at Pulaski where outside temperatures were forecast to reach 90 degrees on Tuesday. The remainder of the week is also going to be hot, and most of MPS’s decades-old schools don’t have central air conditioning.
Across town, Sara Brown, a K5 teacher at Burbank Elementary School, was helping her young students form Play-Doh into letters. She had taken climate control into her own hands by wearing a rechargeable neck fan.
Does it help?
"No, no it doesn’t," she said. "It’s blowing warm air on me. There’s no airflow because we can’t really open the windows.”
In recent years, MPS called off school early due to extreme heat – dismissing classes at around 11:30 am so students could get home before the hottest part of the day. Usually, the heat index needs to hit 95 degrees for the district to consider changing schedules.
A few years ago, MPS even moved back the start date for some schools, from August to September, to try to avoid hot weather cancellations.
Asked whether the district would consider early release or closures this week, Cassellius said yes. She’s working with the National Weather Service to determine when schools are too hot to be safe.
“As long as we have climate change, it is just going to continue to get worse. Our facilities are an average age of 85 years. We know we have to do something," she said. "So there’s a lot of reasons why we need to do some investments and give our children the learning environments they deserve.”
In the meantime, students are back in class for another year.
And at least one is ready for all that is to come.
Do you have a question about education or how schools work in our area? Submit it here to WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal.
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