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Schools

2 schools, 1 campus

Turner Elementary students are being housed at Heritage while their own site is completed.

By EMILY NIPPS
Published August 7, 2005

CROSS CREEK - On the outside, kindergarten teacher Tara Evans' classroom was a pale gray box with a sign outside that said, "GE modspace.com."

On the inside, there were tiny tables and chairs, colorful pictures and decals of things like pancakes and smiley faces covering every wall, and a beehive-shaped sign that said, "Welcome to Mrs. Evans' Hive - The Best Place to Bee."

The few children who arrived early sat quietly at the tables, coloring pictures while their beaming parents took their last few snapshots. One little girl sat puffy-eyed, sniffling as she sipped from a paper cone of water.

"We have a bathroom, we have a water cooler, we have a rug," Evans said. "What more could we need?"

It was the first day of school at Hilda T. Turner Elementary, where learning to share wasn't as tough of a lesson as some might think - at least not at Thursday's opening.

The brand new school won't have a permanent home until construction at its site in nearby Live Oak Preserve is finished in January. In the meantime, the 400 or so students will share space with about 500 Heritage Elementary children.

As buses began pulling up to the school around 7:30 a.m. on Thursday, parents parked across from the Cross Creek Boulevard campus and walked their little ones to their Turner classrooms.

Only the big kids, such as fourth- and fifth-graders who could manage a flight of stairs, had classes in second-floor classrooms. The rest were spread out among the 20 portables near the back of the school.

Some of the new Turner kids showed up in their yellow Turner Tigers shirts, which distinguished them from the Heritage kids, some of whom wore blue Heritage Bobcats shirts.

Teachers and faculty members, also wearing color-coded shirts, stood along the campus sidewalks and directed parents and kids to the right classes.

There was the typical first-day craziness - the crying fits by nervous children, the fathers walking backward as they videotaped mothers and kindergarteners walking hand in hand to their portables, the occasional stray kid who couldn't find his or her classroom.

In one fifth-grade class, Priscilla Towner assigned her students to their seats and showed them where to put their lunch boxes and supplies.

She also had them fill out paperwork to avoid any after-school confusion. Kids who rode the bus wore paper bracelets indicating so, but they still needed to put their plans in writing.

"I need to find out how you're all getting home tonight," Towner said, "because we have two schools here."

Packing two schools' first days into one didn't seem to cause any real problems, though. There were no lost kids, no accidents caused by the hourlong influx of cars and buses, no Turner kids in Heritage classrooms, or vice versa.

Even feeding 900 mouths during the same lunch hour was a relatively simple task, Turner principal Donna Ares said.

"I am so excited!" she said. "(Opening) was smooth. It was calm. I see happy children. Overall, it's been a really good day."

It didn't happen by luck. Ares and her staff spent months preparing for Turner's opening, and Heritage principal Cora-Lynne Wimberly and her staff pitched in, too. Teachers decorated their portables for days to make them as homey as possible, while the schools held a July orientation to introduce new kids to their surroundings.

By the time things got going Thursday morning, no one on campus seemed at all fazed by the situation. For the handful of adults who still needed comforting - the parents of kindergarteners - there were glasses of orange juice and plates of little pastries in the library.

Typically called a "boo-hoo breakfast," this sendoff for parents dropping their kids off at a real school for the first time was renamed "The Celebration of Learning" breakfast. It was a chance for Ares and Wimberly to welcome any newcomers, introduce them to the PTAs and assure them that everything was going to be just fine.

"Is this for Turner or Heritage?" asked one nervous-looking mother who walked into the library door.

"Both," Wimberly replied. "This is a family affair."

- Emily Nipps can be reached at 813 269-5313 or nipps@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 6, 2005, 10:10:08]