While there's still a month left until autumn begins, summer break ends for many with the start of a new school year. At DeKalb Consolidated School District, Superintendent Dr. Minerva Garcia-Sanchez hoped to share her enthusiasm for the upcoming school year with ice cream.
The school district leadership made several stops in the district to promote the start of the new school year including at University Village.
On a hot summer day kids were hanging out around the ice cream truck and surrounding Garcia-Sanchez.
“Y'all want some ice cream?” the superintendent asked several children who looked up to her.
“You ready? Yeah. Are you excited?" she asked. "I'm so excited. I'm giving away ice cream."
Garcia-Sanchez began hosting these events back when she joined the district as the school superintendent in 2021.
“I started doing this because I wanted to get to know the community and get to know the kids," she said.
“I wanted them to see me. I wanted them to know that going to school was important -- and that my favorite thing is to eat ice cream. And my other favorite thing is to go to school. So, I wanted them to be ready for the first day.”
Some children approached the superintendent rather bashfully, unsure of how to ask for what they want.
Their path to ice cream is through her. Several kids just stand near her until they’ve gotten her attention.
One child was helping a younger kid answer the questions.
“So, he doesn't want to talk?" she said. "What is the first day of school? You could tell him.”
In addition to asking them about their first day, she also asked them to name the school they’re going to. Answer successfully, and she hands them a ticket in lieu of money to select a treat from the ice cream truck.
She asked older kids to commit to attending school.
“By you taking it means that you're ready to go to school and you're gonna go to school every day, right?” Garcia-Sanchez said.
“You're gonna do your best?. Yes? Okay, here you go. You can have any ice cream.”
Education experts highlight the first day as one of the most important days of the school year, one in which teachers make their first impressions on their students and lay the groundwork for the rules and expectations in the classroom.
As Garcia-Sanchez puts it, the first day helps to set the tone for the rest of the year.
“So, if you're there ready for the first day, then you're going to be there, ready every day after that,” she said.
“Because things are special when you feel like you belong, and you're a part of everything. So, we want the children to feel that way. We want the parents to feel that way, teachers, everybody, every adult, to feel like they belong in the building.”
For some kids, the upcoming school year may stir feelings of excitement and anxiety.
For 11-year-old Dariah, she is a little apprehensive about entering sixth grade.
“I'm not gonna see of all my friends at the same classes,” she said.
“It's complicated to like, say it because I haven't experienced it before. So, I'm scared.”
Even so, she said, things will work out.
“I don't know a lot of information yet, she said, but like, it's gonna be like easier for me.”
For 12-year-old AJ, he’s geared up to go into middle school.
He’ll be a linebacker for his school’s football team. He grabbed some ice cream before heading to practice.
He said he said he wasn’t sure how he felt about going back to school.
“I know I’m just playing football right now because I got my patch for football,” AJ said.
At the ice cream truck Nancy Crowe, the owner and attendant, kept up with the steady line of customers.
She says the biggest requests have been for “Oreo and Sponge Bob.”
And by the looks of the number of blue lips, the Sonic the Hedgehog ice cream made it on the list of favorites too.
Among some fans are several elementary age students. A future journalist helped the reporter with an interview.
“’She said, ‘How’s your summer been?’”
‘Good, good, good,’” the boys responded providing their own version of the common phrase.
And as they ate their ice cream -- before they’ve had dinner -- the school leadership hoped the upcoming first day of school incites a similar response.
Preschool students to high schoolers in DeKalb start this Thursday, Aug. 17, with a half-day schedule.
Pre-K through kindergarten starts with a full day on Monday, August 22.
