Fears mix with eagerness at new elementary as Polk County students begin school year

WINTER HAVEN — Bradley Taylor, age 5, slumped soundlessly against his mother in the front seat of her vehicle Friday morning in the drop-off lane at South Pointe Elementary School.

After a tender and extended embrace, Bradley separated from Christina Lafreniere but showed no inclination to leave the vehicle. The boy kept his head down, staring at a yellow Transformers Bumblebee car that he slowly rotated in his hands.

Lafreniere knew that her son would eventually depart the car for his day as a kindergartner at South Pointe, and she was giving him plenty of time to surmount his fears.

“I'm nervous, but I'm also excited that he gets to come to a new school and he gets to learn and he gets to meet a lot of new friends,” Lafreniere said.

Moments later, Dee Dee Roudebush bounded out of her mother’s car, thrusting her arms over her head on the walkway.

“First day of kindergarten — woooo!” the 5-year-old exclaimed.

Dee Dee, wearing a lime-green T-shirt and red, Minnie Mouse sunglasses, posed for photos, holding a little chalkboard with an alligator outline that listed her name and other details. A preprinted heading on the chalkboard read, “I’m excited to,” after which had been written, “Learn and meet new friends.”

Those contrasting moods by a pair of kindergartners illustrated the range of emotions on display as more than 100,000 students in Polk County’s public schools began the academic year Friday. The feelings might have been heightened at South Pointe Elementary, where all students were starting anew at a freshly opened facility.

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Befitting its name, the school sits at the southern edge of Winter Haven, not far from Lake Wales. One of two new public schools in Polk County that welcomed students Friday, South Pointe reflects the feverish development occurring in the county and in much of Florida. Almost directly across County Road 653, construction proceeded on a housing development in a former citrus grove.

As students and parents approached the school’s entrance, they found a trio of photo backdrops created by the school’s staff. A professionally printed banner in navy blue displayed the school’s logo and the phrase, “Home of the Ospreys!”

Principal Dart Meyers said South Pointe is the only school in Polk County with that nickname.

The prop attracting the most students featured a large, black screen bearing the message, “Welcome to South Pointe 2023-2024," decorated with a fringe of blue and green balloons and an oversized pack of crayons. Children took turns posing in front of the sign as their parents snapped images with their phones.

Ashley Polacek captured the moment as her daughters, both wearing green South Pointe T-shirts, stood before the sign, squinting into the already punishing sun.

Polacek, a teacher in the Head Start program at the school, seemed at least as eager as her daughters — McKenna, a fifth-grader, and Hailey, a second-grader. Polacek, who lives in Bartow, said the girls attended Alturas Elementary School last year.

The teacher had brought her daughters to an orientation meeting that included an appearance by a human-sized Osprey mascot. McKenna, 10, clutching a lunch container adorned with the face of a puppy, seemed eager to start the school year.

“I think it's going to be fun,” she said. “There’s new things to do. There’s after-school activities and stuff like that.”

Her mother said McKenna had already signed up for Girl Scouts, one of those activities.

Hailey, 7, carried a lunch box with images of princesses and the phrase, “Feelin’ Fabulous.” Asked what she liked about the new school, she replied shyly, “I like everything. I like every teacher, too.”

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Kathryn True of Winter Haven escorted her daughters — Aria LeDuc, a first-grader, and Layla LeDuc, a third-grader. True said she lives closer to Chain of Lakes Elementary, about 2 miles north, which the girls previously attended. But she said that school had issues with overcrowding, and Layla spent all four years attending classes in a portable building.

“They're excited,” True said. “I wasn't sure they would want to come to the new school. We've been at Chain of Lakes for, like, four years, since pre-K.”

Aria, wearing a headband with protruding cat ears, said she looked forward to “learning new things.”

As students posed for photos and trickled toward the entrance, some of the youngest wore backpacks that drooped down to their knees. The bags’ designs projected an array of childhood enthusiasms: Batman, Spiderman, Mulan, Girl Power, Lightning McQueen, Yoda, unicorns, sharks, baseballs, flowers and rabbits, among other motifs.

Alisha Henry shepherded her son, Destin Dungee, a fifth-grader, toward the entrance after taking photos in front of the welcome sign. Henry said the family recently moved to Winter Haven from Duval County.

Destin, 10, wore snazzy, green-and-black Nike Jordan sneakers with bright gold laces and matching socks. Like many students, he responded nervously to a reporter’s questions with nods and brief answers, remarking that the school “looks big.”

Destin did not yet have an official school T-shirt. Henry, holding the hands of her two younger daughters, who are in pre-school, said the line for shirts had been extremely long during orientation, and she received a ticket to order her son’s shirt.

Some of the parents spoke to their children in Spanish as they offered their parting encouragements. Eva Boychak, a paraeducator patrolling the drop-off lane, waved to parents and students, greeting some with, “Buenos Dias!” — “good morning” in Spanish. She checked to make sure students knew which buses they were assigned to board for the ride home.

After confirming a girl’s bus route, Boychak told her, “Have an amazing day!”

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South Pointe, employing a nonstandard spelling of the second word, opened with about 500 students and has capacity for 1,000, Polk County Public Schools spokesperson Jason Geary said.

The 127,000-square-foot building features exterior walls in varying shades of sand brown, offset by a butterscotch yellow block at the entrance. The school, which cost about $47 million, contains science laboratories, a TV studio/classroom, media center, two playgrounds and a paved play area, the district said.

Meyers served as principal at Frostproof's Ben Hill Griffin Jr. Elementary for 10½ years and before that had the same position at Garner Elementary in Winter Haven. The school’s assistant principal, Maude Frazier, was the district’s 2021 Teacher of the Year while at Blake Academy in Lakeland.

Wearing a gray golf shirt bearing the South Pointe logo, Meyers greeted parents and welcomed youngsters through the front door.

“It’s just exciting that it’s open,” he said of South Pointe. “It’s new. It’s got a new smell, and I’m just excited to see all the boys and girls come with their smiling faces and all their backpacks and ready to go. I think the other exciting part is this is day one of us building our own traditions, making our own memories here.”

Meyers acknowledged the varying emotions he saw from students.

“There are a few tears,” he said. “I mean, they’ve been home all summer. We had that at Frostproof, some of those, a few tears, because, ‘Oh, Mommy, Daddy.’ But once they get in the door and join their friends, they’re fine.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Fears, eagerness on display as Polk County students begin school year