INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — While the vast majority of students who headed to school Monday morning were either returning to their old stomping grounds or headed to a school they’d never been to before, several hundred others walked into the brand new campus of Vero Beach Elementary School. Those returning to the school and first-timers alike got to experience what it was like on a very first, first day.
“He’s been awake since a quarter after 6,” said 5-year-old Shaun Sanford’s mom, Robin. “We was already ready.”
Shaun entered Kindergarten and shyly nodded his head when asked if he was excited to be at a brand new school.
“It’s very awesome,” Robin said of the new campus.
“We’re trying to figure out the layout,” Shaun’s dad, Anthony, said.
Vero Beach Elementary students weren’t the only ones headed to a different campus at the start of the school year. Hundreds from Osceola Magnet, which was previously on eastbound State Road 60, flocked to the “new” campus at the former Thompson Lifelong Learning Center south of Oslo Road.
The School Board opted to relocate the magnet school to the learning center instead of building a new campus as it had for Vero Beach Elementary.
Vero Beach Elementary ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Coordinator Nancy Hatcher said moving from the old Vero Beach campus to the new one was like moving from a small town to the big city.
“We’re going to have to get used to” walking distances, she said. “We have space now.”
Parents and students she met with during last week’s orientation, she said, were pleased with the new campus and excited to get the school year started.
“Excited” was the word kindergartener Arlemaro Cyrius’ mother, Suzanne Bruce, used to describe him this morning.
Along with telling her he was excited to go to school, the 5-year-old took stock of his backpack, stating, “This backpack’s too heavy,” Bruce recalled.
Bruce’s three other children went to the former Vero Beach Elementary campus and, she said, they were a little jealous of their little brother.
“It’s very nice, very lovely,” she said of the new campus.
