The start of the new school year at Elgin’s Huff Elementary School was a whirlwind of activity Tuesday as students and staff greeted familiar faces, met new ones and said hello to District U-46’s new superintendent.
“We have about 500 students this year and another 60 or so in our pre-K program, which starts next week,” Principal Paula Ek said. “We’re welcoming about 100 students here today who came over from Garfield (Elementary School).”
As part of the district’s five-year facilities master plan, the 134-year-old Garfield building was closed at the end of the 2022-23 school year and some of its students moved to Huff. The rest now attend Channing Elementary.
Some of the new faces were students just coming into the district, including 7-year-old Ian Russell, whose family moved to Elgin from Arizona. His mother, Nana, accompanied him on his first day of second grade.
“The staff here has been super helpful and very responsive so far,” Nana Russell said as she waited for Ian’s class to be let into the building.
The east side school is within walking distance of the family’s home, she said, and the weather — almost fall-like on Tuesday morning — a welcome relief from Arizona’s record-setting summer heat.
Not far from Russell stood Kelsey Wagner, who kept watch on her 7-year-old daughter Leah, a second-grader, and Lucas, 10, entering fifth grade, as they waited with their respective classes.
Wagner’s family has only been in Elgin three years, having relocated from Aurora, so it wasn’t so long ago that she was going through the newcomer process herself.
“It’s so great here. We can walk to school with a lot of other kids, and my kids have made a lot of friends,” Wagner said.
She also loves that Huff has a diverse student body, giving her children a chance to know people from a variety of backgrounds.
Making the day fun for Leah was that her teacher, Amanda Zyrek, also taught her when she was in kindergarten.
Zyrek said that was fun for her as well.
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“I’m excited to see my students,” she said.
It was the first day of classes for Suzanne Johnson in her new role as the district superintendent, a job she assumed in July. Huff was her first stop in a day in which she planned to visit a half dozen campuses in a district encompassing about 95 square miles. Outside of Chicago, U-46 is the largest district in the state.
Johnson was being accompanied by School Board President Sue Kerr.
“It’s nice to see that we’re finally moving beyond the COVID-19 pandemic,” Kerr said. “Today seems like a normal back-to-school day.”
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.