New school

The school my kids go to, Vista Verde, moved to a new campus and had their grand opening yesterday. The politics of the move is complicated, but in a nutshell: it's a public school combining the K-5 elementary and 6-8 middle school grades, on a year-round schedule, in a district with mostly K-6 elementary schools and 7-8 middle schools on a traditional schedule. So it wasn't the neighborhood school for any neighborhood; instead one had to request to go there. The year round schedule works better for my kids (no long summer break to forget everything) if worse for me, and having the middle school incorporated into the campus gives the kids more personal attention than they would at the larger regular-schedule middle school. But the old campus had some size limitations and a new development in town needed a new neighborhood school, so rather than closing this one at the same time as opening a new one there, the school board several years back decided to move the school — that is, to build a new school, but to keep the old school's name, its students, its teachers, and its K-8 year-round style. The new location is actually much closer to my home, and the new facility improves the old one in many ways, so I think this is could end up being a good move despite the pain of the people from whose neighborhood the school moved.

Anyway, the opening itself consisted of the kids being bused from the old campus to the new campus, kids and parents being shown around the campus by the kids' teachers (chaotic), a cafeteria-style lunch for all while a local band called Corday played covers (also chaotic), and speeches which I ducked out of but Diana tells me were mercifully short. While I was there I took some photos, of course, of the tours, lunch, band, and a wall of commemorative tiles made by the students, placed as a windbreak near the outdoor eating area.