It is just after 5 a.m. on the first day of school choice, and the streets are dark and quiet.
In the dimness stands 14-year-old Amanda Dennis, who is waiting at an intersection for her bus to Tarpon Springs High School.
Amanda is fighting a combination of excitement and sleepiness. She has been up since 4:20 a.m., just enough time for a quick shower and oatmeal. Now it's 5:10 a.m.
Her bus is late.
5:16 a.m. Still no bus. "I could've slept in," Amanda cracks.
The next minute, she spies white headlights and above them, blinking yellow ones. "I think that's it," she says. It is.
The bus whisks her past Eckerd College and through St. Pete Beach. Amanda rides in solitude for almost 40 minutes.
Then, at 5:52 a.m., Viet To, 17, steps on board. His dad waves goodbye from the street, which is still bathed in darkness.
5:58 a.m. Two more students, Chris Green, 15, and Jeanette Pent, 14, of Pinellas Park, board the bus. They're the last two on the route.
Time ticks by slowly. Amanda yawns. Viet crosses his arms on the seat in front of him and rests his head. Chris leans back against the windows, earphones in place.
Finally, Viet, the senior in the group, takes charge. "Are all of you freshmen? It's going to be like this every day, so you'd better get used to it."
No response.
By 8:10 a.m., Maximo Elementary School is a hurricane of students, parents, hugs, cameras and buses. Teachers and administrators repeat: "Do you know where you are going?"
At 8:30 a.m., it starts raining, and the walk from the car to the front door becomes a sprint. Little legs carrying big backpacks scurry to get out of the rain.
By 8:40 a.m., most everyone has a classroom. The hallways are quiet and the action in the office is waning. At 8:54 a.m. - 29 minutes after the school's start time - the lone late bus pulls in with only a few students.
School is ready to start for real.
The rain creates problems elsewhere. At 8:50 a.m., Nicole Perry puts on the brakes of her Dodge pickup as she drives east on 22nd Avenue S. But the truck slides and smashes into a school bus at the stoplight at 18th Street.
No one is hurt, but the seven children on board are transferred to another bus for safe delivery to Lakewood Elementary School.
At Lealman Avenue Elementary School, students wear uniforms. But kindergartener Dragana Todic, 5, doesn't have one.
"The choice program doesn't tell students that this is a uniform school," says principal Carlyn Hallin.
Luckily, the school has extra pants and shirts. The school nurse fetches a polo-style shirt and a pair of dark blue shorts for Dragana, then escorts her to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, Dragana returns to the office carrying the uniform over her shoulders. Her father, Jovo Todic, laughs.
"You have to put it on," Todic tells his daughter, chuckling.
At Pinellas Park High School, there is a line outside the library. A group of students and parents are parked in seats in the school's guidance office.
Barbara Baker, with her 15-year-old son in tow, is filling out paperwork.
"I just moved here from Vegas," she says. "In Vegas, I never had to go through a choice. I'd take him to the school he's zoned for."
Baker and other parents wear out the carpet between the library and the guidance center. Most moved here over the summer and have never heard of school choice.
"This is ridiculous," says Jaime Tusa, now on her third trip between the library and the guidance center. "The teachers are just as confused as the students are."
While this is a bad day for the many parents still struggling to find schools for their children at the district's Family Education and Information Centers, it is an even worse day for the driver of a certain Volkswagen Fox.
The car is towed about 9:30 a.m. because it is parked illegally at Universal Labeling Systems across the street. It will cost $160 to get it back.
At Fitzgerald Middle School, Lindsey Langford finds a friend she hasn't seen since last year.
"Lindsey?" asks Miranda Burton, 13, a blond eighth-grader with curly hair.
Lindsey, a 13-year-old eighth-grader wearing a black, Goth-styled T-shirt and jeans, smiles and mumbles. "Yeah, it's me."
"Oh my God, you changed," Miranda says. "You got braces."
"Yeah," Lindsey mumbles.
"She looks so different," Miranda continues. "She didn't wear makeup last year. She looked way dorkier. She didn't wear so much black. . . ."
"Yes, I did," Lindsey interrupts.
"You looked way dorkier then," Miranda says.
At 4:05 p.m., in the school bus dispatch center, a voice on a bus radio cuts through the din: "We have a kindergartener here who has no idea where he's supposed to go."
For a moment, the room is almost quiet. Then it fills again with noise as the dispatchers scramble to match kids with the right buses and to get them off at the right stops.
Throughout the afternoon, reports come in of kids late getting home, kids who are missing, kids who are clueless. In some cases police get involved.
Dispatcher Wanda Gibson suddenly waves her hands over her head, exclaiming, "We found another one!"
In the back of the room, superintendent Howard Hinesley takes it all in. "Every year we lose a few of them - temporarily," he says.
It is now 8 p.m., the scheduled closing time for the Family Education and Information Center in St. Petersburg. But the doors are still open.
The reason: 15 families are still waiting for help in securing schools.
