Changes greet students as school year starts in Aiken County
AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Tuesday is the first day of school for students in Aiken County with a new modified calendar this year.
Students will still attend classes the same number of days, but they’ll have more breaks spread out throughout the year.
The students on Tuesday didn’t seem to mind the earlier start.
Some parents say the change gives them more quality time with their kids, but they say it’ll be an adjustment.
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The goal is to help keep students on track, reducing the chances of backsliding during the long summer break.
School is starting about three weeks earlier than it did last year in Aiken County. School also ends about a week earlier this year.
Also new this year, all North Augusta Schools will have a school resource officer on campus. The district is working towards the goal to have an officer on every campus in Aiken County, but a law enforcement shortage is making that hard.
In North Augusta, the new Highland Springs Middle School is opening Tuesday. It’s been under construction with s hoping it would open when the new school year started. There was some doubt as construction fell behind, but it ed inspection Monday.
CONTINUING COVERAGE:
- We’ll be keeping an eye on how the first day is going at Aiken County schools, so watch for updates here on WRDW.com and all day on News 12.
New for high school students in Aiken County is the switch to a block schedule. This allows students to take more classes in total, while only having to handle the workload of four classes at a time instead of seven. Instead of seven 50-minute classes all year, students will have four 90-minute classes each semester.
School also starts Tuesday for students in the Edgefield County School District, although teachers have already been back at work for a week.
“We’re so excited to have our teachers back with us and we’re looking forward to welcoming back our students this week,” Superintendent Dr. Kevin O’Gorman said. “We appreciate everyone who ed and attended our events this past week.”
In McCormick County, kids returned to class last week.
On the Georgia side, students in Columbia County return to the classroom on Aug. 3.
In Richmond County, elementary schools start classes Aug. 3, then K-8, high schools and middle schools will return Aug. 7.
Expensive proposition
From laptops to binders, families with kids in elementary through high school plan to spend an average of $890 on back-to-school shopping this year.
That’s around $25 more than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.
We went shopping for a second-grader attending North Augusta Elementary School to see how much it would cost.
The total came to more than $80 for items like pencils, folders and crayons.
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