Back To School

Getting the great gears of the Newtown school system back up to speed each fall is a Herculean task. The logistics of getting the classrooms ready, the storerooms supplied, and the boiler rooms stoked for the start of the school year have been filling the daily schedules of school administrators for several weeks this summer. This past week, one of the biggest hurdles was crossed. Mary Kelly, director of transportation for the school district, released the bus schedules and routes for the 2000-2001 school year, which we are publishing this week in our annual Back To School supplement.

As much as we hate to be the harbingers of the end of a long leisurely summer, we must admit that we have been caught up in the enthusiasm of the educators we spoke to in preparing this week’s special section.  The school system is our community’s most expensive and most important collaborative enterprise. As Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Donna Pagé pointed out to us, however, education isn’t about money, or books, or bricks and mortar, or even mortarboards. It is about people – students, parents, grandparents, teachers, custodians, cooks, bus drivers, coaches, school nurses, secretaries, and administrators – all working together in recognition that an educated life is a better life.

So if summer must end soon and we must all rouse ourselves from our leisure to continue on our way, we draw encouragement from knowing what lies along the way for the children of Newtown in the coming weeks and months. In school this year, some will learn to read their first words, some will get their first look through the keyhole of mathematics at the limitless universe, some will hear for the first time the wit and poetry of Shakespeare, some will arrive at their first realization of the atomic and molecular connections that have built the natural world, and all will be asked to walk right up to the edge of what they know and to take another step. This is certainly worth getting out of the hammock for.