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HANOVER TWP. — On the sidewalk, Dave Zadzura admitted to playing hooky — er, taking a day off — from work. “My wife wanted me to make sure my son got here. It’s his first time on a school bus,” Zadzura said.
On the street, Tammy Marcincavage kept a sharp eye on parents looking to cross Lee Park Avenue, quick with a gentle but very audible advisory that hers was the only official path protected by her and her hand-held stop sign. “Sure, I’m loud,” she quipped in a voice that likely could be heard down the block. “You’re not the first to tell me that.”
Be nice, it was her first day, too — at least at this particular crossing. In fact, Monday was the first day for thousands of students in five Luzerne County school districts.
“I’m walking him to school,” one mother said as she guided a stern-faced tyke with the proverbial apple in his hand past Marcincavage. “He’ll take the bus home.”
Zadzura said he and his wife had the opposite problem. His son Preston had been so eager to return to school he woke up at six in the morning and tried to head out the door nearly 30 minutes before the bus arrived.
The first day at Lee Park Elementary isn’t the first day of school ever for Hanover Area students. In that school district, that’s likely to be Hanover Green Kindergarten Center, a building that houses kindergarten and first grade. But for a lot of students it’s the first day in a new building. Lee Park has grades two and three, so second-grade newbies like Preston have to make the transition to a new building, and often to the notion of riding a bus.
That may be one reason Superintendent Andrew Kuhl showed up at Lee Park, greeting students and parents as they approached the steps.
“Enjoy your summer?” he asked.
“Kind of,” the young man shrugged.
“Kind of?” Kuhl asked skeptically.
One lad demonstrated a key reason so many youngsters actually look forward to returning to school. Approaching the sidewalk, he spotted through a bus window a familiar face likely unseen all summer, and sprinted away from his parents. “Zach!” he yelled with a wave.
Amanda Detrich accompanied daughter Karleigh and son Connor on foot. Entering third grade, Connor approached with the indifference of a veteran returning to duty, but Karleigh, about to start second grade, seemed conflicted.
“I’m scared,” she conceded with a glance up the imposing stairs. “I’ve only been in this building once!” But then a smile as broad as a barn door told a different story.
“I’m sad,” Amanda admitted, “I love being home with them. I’m going to miss them.”
And you thought it was only the children unwilling to see summer end.
