DR DEBBIE HUFF
School begins in Joplin on Wednesday August 17th, Less than 2 days away now. About 1 day and 17 hours and I'm really looking forward to the kids being back. Having my teachers here, hearing them laugh, It's great.  Sound of laughter  We needed to see them and our families and they need to see their friends that they haven't seen all summer and their teachers. We're just excited to get our school year underway again. 

WENDY HANADY 
I am excited. Look at my room. I'm so excited just to be in this room, it's so  great. I'm going to miss the old Irving, but our new Irving is going to be a good safe place for our kids and that's what we need.  

DR DEBBIE HUFF
Irving as we knew, is no more. But there'll be a new Irving someday and I'm just very happy that we're all still together. It has truly been a collaborative effort, from the leadership to team of Dr Huff, once he made the declaration of, We will begin, lots of wheels were set into motion.   WENDY HANADY I give full credit to our administrator, I mean, if Dr Huff didn't have the vision to push this forward or Dr Fort, whose worked endless hours, we would have never ever been here.  

DR DEBBIE HUFF
We are aware that there will be some issues that we didn't deal with before. We saw that in summer school, if it would lightning or thunder it really impacted the children a lot. 

WENDY HANADY 
It's a summer we'll always remember. I don't know how you can ever forget this summer  

Sound of pencil sharpener  

WENDY HANADY 
Here's what I think my first day's going to be. We're going to come in here and we're going to reconnect. And we're going to let the kids talk to one another. It wouldn't be our usual. We're where we jump in and do curriculum. It's going to be more of letting them just release what their summer was like and how different it was. We're just going to talk. We're going to talk and hug and hi-five and we're just going to build our community back.