Submitted Photo Jude Lucas, daughter of John and Laurel Lucas, boarded the bus last Wednesday to begin her kindergarten year at Tidioute Community Charter School.

For many of us, today is another Tuesday.

For the thousands of students in the Warren County School District, it’s the first day of school.

The first day of school culminates a planning process that is many months long.

“It’s literally January,” Superintendent Gary Weber said.

Those early decisions are the “directional changes” that you’re “never going to do on the fly mid-year,” he said. “Then behind the scenes, there are so many intricate pieces.”

There’s transportation, registration, scheduling and staffing,

And some of the work in those areas has to start before the budget for the school year is finalized.

“It’s hard when you don’t know what you’re staffing is going to look like,” Weber said. “That’s the toughest part.”

While budget cuts impact that process, Weber said they go into the budget process with “several plans, not waiting for the board to make that decisions. We have three or four different staffing plans (for) what ever they (the board) choose to do from a budgetary standpoint.”

Other elements of the preparation process include updates from the state that need to be implemented, aligning professional development, hiring new employees, updating courses, purchasing and athletics. There are the bricks-and-mortar pieces – waxing, moving, etc.

“We have a boatload of moving parts,” Weber said. “Dr. (Patricia) Mead spends a significant amount of time processing transfer requests and homeless applications” and making preparations to serve special education students.

Each student computer gets a new password from one year to the next.

“The building principals have lists they work off of to make sure they are ready,” he added. “I could go on and on. I am missing a ton I’m sure. I didn’t even mention the business department and what they have to get done from last year and roll over for this year.”

Even with all that work, there are still those unknowns as students return to the classroom.

Weber specifically highlighted transportation as one such area.

“Just making sure kids get to and from,” he said. “I have every administrator in central office at a building to start and end the day.”

The specific concern is those younger students who might be new to riding the bus.

“We have everybody in place to communicate” any issues, he said. “We just want parents to be at ease in terms of where their children are.”

From a staffing perspective, Weber said the district is in “pretty good shape. (We’re) trying to bring back as many cuts as we could.”

He said there are two staffers from last year that won’t return for this school year due to cuts.

In addition to the transportation, Weber explained they’ll also be looking at class sizes throughout the district in the first couple weeks of school.

That can quickly require changes to the staffing plan if enrollment spikes anywhere in the district.

“Right now our numbers for kindergarten in the central attendance area are really low,” he said. “That has us worried a little bit. We did go to an online registration system. That always has a hiccup. Everywhere else, the numbers are pretty solid.”