Improved impressions

While eating lunch with his buddies in the Central Junior High cafeteria Wednesday, seventh-grader Andrew Westcott said the cafeteria personnel made a good first impression.

"The lunch ladies are nice here," he said. "At the other school, when you accidentally lost silverware in the trash can, they would make you reach in and pull it out."

The school district as a whole seemed to make a positive impression Wednesday, the first day of school in Cape Girardeau. During last year's opening day, school officials had to scramble with all the problems that go along with a new high school and the reconfiguration of its campuses. Central High School administrators weren't reaching in a trash can, but they were searching for ways to ease traffic congestion.

This year was less complicated.

"The first day this year has just been lovely," said superintendent Mark Bowles. "I've got a great feeling about having a positive start to our school year."

School begins in Jackson today, with Scott City to start Wednesday next week.

At the high school, cars steadily weaved their way through campus.

"Traffic was much, much better this year," said police Sgt. Barry Hovis, a student resource officer at the school. "The traffic lines got painted in the parking lot, and that was a big help. We had some apprehension that traffic might be bad the first day of the second year, but it was a lot better with everybody having a year under their belt. As far as dispositions go, I haven't seen any frustrated drivers."

Several of the high school students being dropped off at the school Wednesday were wearing camouflage. It was a student senate thing.

Katie Porter, student senate president, said the clothing was symbolic of military discipline. If students were found not having fun, well, they just might have to be whipped into shape.

"We're just trying to put everyone in a fun state of mind, trying to get everyone excited about school," she said.

Another concern within the district was the bus routes. The district, this year, has separated the students into two bus categories: kindergarten through fourth grade; and fifth grade through eighth grade. The idea is for the middle school students to be picked up separately from the elementary, thus eliminating the need for buses to stop at more than one school.

Bowles said a couple of buses arrived late at the middle school, but that the system worked well overall.

"The buses ran as smooth this year as I've seen since I've been in Cape Girardeau," said Bowles, who has been with the district since 1999.

At the junior high, the buzz has been about cafeteria renovations. The district added 2,200 square feet to the space, which allowed the school to reduce the schedule from six lunch periods to three. The room can now seat 290 students. The largest of the three lunch groups has about 250 students.

However, the dishwashing system is not quite completed, and for the first few days of school the students will have to eat off paper trays. The students had no complaints, other than that the trays were a bit flimsy.

Everything else received praise from the seventh- and eighth-graders.

"I think it's great that they made it bigger so the seventh-graders can eat with the eighth-graders," seventh-grader Christen Edmonds said.

"It's better than the middle school, I can say that," said seventh-grader Malcolm Jones, who had a difficult time adjusting to the time constraints between classes -- he was late for his first four classes. But he chased away his worries with a piece of pizza and good, light-hearted conversation with his friends. "It's pretty cool you can pick out what you want to eat."

There were some glitches in the junior high cafeteria, however. The computers that scan the students' lunch badges malfunctioned and the workers had to write names down individually.

"We were writing names like there was no tomorrow," said Barb Pinkley, the cafeteria manager. "We rang up about two or three kids and the computers shut down."

The computers didn't shut down at Alma Schrader Elementary School. A few kindergartners in Sharon Shaw's class said working on computers was their favorite part of the day.

Alma Schrader principal Ruthann Orr said the first day was more traumatic for the parents than for the students.

"We had two kindergartners in tears and we had more parents crying than that," she said. "We had a great first day."

Brandi Knight said neither she nor her daughter, Megan, shed tears Wednesday.

"We were excited about it," Knight said. "I thought it was amazingly organized for the first day."

bmiller@semissourian.com

243-6635