Bearcats return to school
Bearcats were buzzing in the hallways of each Pilot Point ISD campus on Monday.
New faces mixed with familiar ones as the new academic year began.
'There's been such a great energy this year,' Superintendent Dr. Shannon Fuller said. 'It started, really, at convocation, and it just feels like it's kept going through professional development and then I went to all the Meet the Teacher nights, and everybody's excited. The buildings all look decorative and welcoming.'
At the Early Childhood Center, Brandon and Shanda Guffee helped their daughter, Berkley Guffee, settle into Dominique Gauthier's kindergarten classroom.
'All of her best friends are in this class over here,' Shanda said, pointing across the hall. 'So, there's nobody that she really knows in this class, so she was a little less confident. The teacher seems really nice.'
Inside the classroom, Gauthier took time to reassure her young students that it was OK to be nervous on the first day.
'I was scared today, too,' she said to her kids. 'I was. I really was. I didn't get to meet anyone because I had to go on a very big plane.'
Gauthier, who is in her second year at the ECC, said she's excited to work with the new group in her class.
'I'm just excited for a new class, excited for the new faces and the new relationships,' she said.
Her campus principal, Andrea Kennedy, spoke about how she and her staff try to create a great foundation for their ECC families.
'We are their first entryway into Pilot Point ISD, and so I feel like it's my job to make sure they walk away with the best experience they could from our district,' she said. '... I don't get them very long, so I try to make it meaningful while they're here.'
For Amber Hagood, bringing her granddaughter, third-grader Isabell Weaver, to school in Pilot Point had them both excited.
'We've just heard wonderful things about Pilot Point,' Hagood said. '... She's been so excited. It took everything in her to go to bed last night. We're so excited. She's never been excited about school before.'
That enthusiasm is a feeling Pilot Point Elementary Principal Shana Pike said she and her staff share with the kids this year.
'I'm more excited about this year than I have been about any year ever in my 22 years,' she said. 'I just feel like the teachers, all the staff, just everybody is in it to win it. ... High expectations and love and caring and fun and positivity, and all those things [are] going to bleed off onto the kids, and then the kids are going to feel that, the families are going to feel that. It's going to be a wonderful year.'
Pike mentioned that her campus is feeling the squeeze that comes with growth.
'I've had to be creative with some spaces, but we made it work,' she said.
Pilot Point Middle School Principal Taylor Penn, too, said he can see the impact of the growth throughout the campus.
'The growth is here,' Penn said. 'I think when I started here, ... the middle school had like maybe 330, 340 students somewhere in there, and now we're over 420.'
He said that seeing the kids back on campus reinforces why the educators got into the school business.
'That's why we do this job,' he said. 'It's for the kids.'
Theater teacher Whitney McCracken took her theater class down the hallway from their classroom and into the cafetorium so they could see some of the supplies they will use to practice makeup design and other aspects of the class.
Before they made the visit to the stage, though, McCracken shared an experience with her students to show them that secondguessing a decision isn't restricted to middle school students.
'Last year was our first year to do [theatrical design], and I was kind of nervous at first,' she said. 'I was like, 'Oh, why did I sign up for this?' ... Then we did, and it was awesome. It was so fun.'
At the high school, students made their way through their first day, learning their schedule and establishing expectations for the year.
Each campus has a theme, and the high school's is that 'Friday nights start on Monday.'
'Everybody enjoys Friday nights,' PPHS Principal Marzia Infante said. 'Everybody's all about the Friday nights, but it's the hard work and dedication that starts on Monday that really gets you to those Fridays.'
She shared that the connections she and her staff have made and retained with the students mean a great deal to them.
PPISD Police Department Officer Kelley Wilson, who is new to the district, echoed that having good relationships with the kids is important.
Infante, too, spoke of the way growth has shifted the administration's approach to classroom assignments for staff, leading to some floating teachers.
The district administration is keeping an eye on the enrollment numbers and comparing them to those the demographers projected for the upcoming snapshot day in October.
As of Wednesday, PPISD's current enrollment was 1,823, up from the ending enrollment of 1,754 in May.
The amount also exceeded the low projection rate for the district's population by snapshot day of 1,806 and is approaching the moderate growth projection of 1,831 with two months left for the student population to change.
'Typically we see growth through Labor Day, and then they trickle in,' Fuller said.
Fuller also expressed her appreciation for the school supplies the district's community partners have provided for the year.
'Nobody should feel any stress about coming to school without supplies or without something,' she said.
Like Fuller, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Alicia Bonnett visited each campus.
'Watching the students walk back in is the joy,' she said. 'That's why we do what we do.'
