The lazy, hazy pace of summer vacation has slipped into the past as schools and their students prepared this past week for the start of another school year. Riverbank School District students are back in class today, Aug. 9, with Crossroads Elementary beginning tomorrow.
Bruin Day at RHS
Bruin Day was Tuesday, Aug. 1, with classes lining up at the door to the Ray Fauria Memorial Gym, ready to receive their schedules for fall classes. At 9 a.m., it was the freshman class of 2021 spilling out to the courtyard, stretching the length of the gym to get their class schedules, locker assignments and other paperwork.
They also received their emergency packets. After that, it was across the gym to sign up for yearbooks, ASB cards, the UpWard Bound program and to purchase gym clothes.
In the lobby of the gym, the Bruin Boosters had a table set up with shirts, hats and information about joining their parents group. The Boosters man the snack bars during the different school sports seasons. The money they raise goes toward scholarships and special recognition for senior athletes at the end of their sport each season.
And the freshmen had a head start. They were on campus the day before, July 31, for orientation and tours of the campus, so they’d know where to go the next day.
At 10 a.m., it was the sophomores, 11 a.m. brought the junior class, and at noon, it was the seniors. The class of 2018, being old hands at the process, required little time to get what they needed, then headed back out to what was left of summer.
Classes for RHS, Cardozo Middle School, California Avenue, Mesa Verde, Adelante and the Riverbank Language Academy kicked off today for the first day of school for the 2017-18 year. Crossroads Elementary, part of the Sylvan School District covering southwest Riverbank, starts tomorrow.
Cardozo Middle School Roundup
CMS held its pre-back to school day on Friday, Aug. 4, on its Santa Fe Street campus.
Where seniors finished out Bruin Day activities, at Cardozo, the seventh graders came at 9 a.m., eighth graders at 10 a.m., and the sixth graders came at 11 a.m. The difference is, the sixth graders got their classroom assignments, filled out paperwork with their parents, and then stayed for lunch and tours of the campus, a kind of orientation.
During this time, sixth graders got to see one of their classrooms from out in the hallway. Turns out, finishing touches were being put on the brand new carpet of one of them. Workmen expected to have it ready for use by today.
This work accompanied a new paint job on the Cardozo campus, on both exterior walls and interior hallways.
The Cardozo campus employs a different scheduling plan for the sixth graders. They are in what is a ‘self-contained’ program, where their classes are in one wing of the campus, apart from seventh and eighth graders. They have separate PE classes and lunch separately from the upper students. A change this year will see the sixth graders eating lunch after the upper grades, where in years past, they ate earlier.
Crossroads Elementary
The Cougars of Crossroads Elementary School return to school tomorrow.
Crossroads is part of the Sylvan School District, which includes Riverbank residents south and west of the MID canal. Sylvan has a schedule more in line with Modesto City Schools, where middle- and high-schoolers from that part of town attend.
Modesto’s schedule has classes resuming on Monday, Aug. 14, though. They finish the school year a week later, too. Riverbank and Sylvan end classes on May 25, 2018.
