A WARM WELCOME BACK

Above: Iyonda Rainey, 17 (foreground), followed by Kyala Jones, 18, are excited to get their senior year started Monday at James Madison Academic Campus, 8135 W. Florist Ave. Milwaukee Public Schools staff, school staff and community leaders greeted students returning for the first day of school. Right: MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver (left) and Principal Gregory Ogunbowale (second from left) greet students returning to James Madison.

Pencils were sharpened and backpacks were dusted off for the first time since June as thousands of Milwaukee Public Schools students returned to the hallways Monday morning.

High school, middle school and select elementary school students in MPS switched to an earlystart calendar, allowing schools to start before Labor Day and end before Memorial Day. Students in K-8 schools will start after Labor Day, like most other districts statewide.

“We saw it very necessary to really use one of the resources we forget about, which is time,” said Darienne Driver, MPS superintendent, who gained a waiver from the state to implement the early start.

Driver, who spurred the calendar change, said too many students were not on track to graduate or had too low of GPAs for scholarships. She saw this as an opportunity for the students to get a head start on the school year by maximizing learning.

By changing the start and end dates, it leaves the month of June for a “J-term,” where students can make up or earn more credits.

Many students were also ineligible for internships because of how far school stretched into June, Driver said.

“We don’t want our students to have to choose between going to work and coming to school,” the superintendent said.

The semester will also end right at the holidays and the new one will begin after students return, eliminating January as a review month and maximize learning time.

Despite the expedited turnaround time from the end of the school year to the beginning of the new one, Driver said everything has gone fairly smoothly.

Professional development training for faculty was done partially in June and at the kick-off of schools opening last week.

“We found a way to use our time well so that people could still enjoy a little bit of down time in the summer but have all the information they needed,” Driver said.

Attendance numbers for the first day were not yet available.