It was two times the hustle and bustle that comes with the first
day of school at P.A. Walsh Elementary School today as the staff
there welcomed more than 300 new students.
It was two times the hustle and bustle that comes with the first day of school at P.A. Walsh Elementary School today as the staff there welcomed more than 300 new students.
Students delighted to reunite with their long-lost classmates after a summer apart, some of whom weren’t sure they’d see each other again.
Walsh’s student body swelled from 365 to 735 this year, after budget cuts totaling about $9 million over the past 18 months caused the Morgan Hill Board of Education to vote to close Burnett Elementary School and send its students to Walsh this year.
Walsh’s campus was outfitted with nine new portables, for a total of 14; a new portable restroom facility; seven new staff parking spaces; a third lunch hour, and five or six new buses (last year they had none).
Students relished in the large population.
“I made some new friends today,” first grader Brianna Mandujano said.
The parents, however, weren’t quite as thrilled.
“I had to park five blocks down,” Brianna’s father Ricardo Mandujano lamented as they began the trek after school let out.
