VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Much of Hampton Roads is returning to the classroom Monday for the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, including Seatack Elementary School in Virginia Beach.
Parents, volunteers and law enforcement participated in a sendoff for students' first day, and teachers shared their enthusiasm of having students ready to learn in their classrooms once again.
Other schools across the area saw familiar scenes of parents sending off their students to their first day of school for the very first time — or the tenth time; teachers welcoming students to a new year of growth and opportunity, and administrators ready to take on the challenge and the excitement of the new year.
Heading back to school means getting used to old routines that fell out of fashion during the summer months like homework, before and after school practices, and getting into the groove of bedtime schedules again. But there are some new habits that schools are trying to build.
Keeping cell phones out of the classroom, and in some cases off campus altogether will now be put to the test. It's part of the new cell phone-free education initiative handed down by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. It's something parents and teachers have expressed mixed feelings about.
The new measure aims to create a better learning environment and to get students more engaged with learning. Another key goal of this is to limit the negative effects constant cell phone use has on kids' mental health.
Keeping students in the classroom has been a nationwide struggle since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States. Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing at least 10% of the school year, nearly doubled in Virginia since the pandemic; 20.1% of Virginia students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year compared to 10.6% of students during the 2018-19 school year, according to the Associated Press.
Standardized test scores also suffered since the COVID-19 pandemic, but progress is being made following the learning loss, according to last school year's Standards of Learning (SOL) pass rates and other results.
Outside of the classroom, getting students to school safely has been a key issue. Drivers may notice that school zones across Hampton Roads have speed cameras. Anyone who is caught violating the speed limit while they are activated could face fines up to $100.
Alongside Virginia Beach, Portsmouth , Suffolk, Hampton and Newport News school divisions returned to the classroom Monday. Norfolk Public Schools started the school year a week earlier on Aug. 19. Chesapeake Public Schools starts their school year on Tuesday, Sept. 3.