School bells rang for Brewton City and Escambia County Schools Monday morning with hundreds of students clamoring on the first day of classes.
At Brewton Middle School, greetings and questions filled the halls of the new school as the first day of classes finally arrived.
Although BMS principal Doug Prater was steadily answering questions from students and parents Monday morning of where students needed to be, where homerooms and school offices were, he was excited to be in the new building.
Instructions of turn left at the red spot on the floor and go left, go through the big double doors to get in there was followed by good mornings.
“Things are going all right so far,” BMS principal Doug Prater said. “We have only been here 20 minutes and the buses just unloaded a little while ago and we are just trying to figure it out. We will go slow and hopefully folks will not get to frustrated with it and it will work out. It is exciting to finally be here and I just can’t believe it.”
After years of debates of where to build the new school and the rumors of deadlines being met, students and teachers were also excited about the new school.
BMS eighth grader Tamerick Jenkins was greeting fellow students outside as they entered the hallway of the school.
“It is really nice,” Jenkins said of the school. “I like all of it. It is really nicer than the old one.”
Brewton Middle School teacher Gerald McAnally said things still needed to be worked out and finished at the new school, but overall, things were nice.
“We have a lot of bugs to work out to start with, but of course you could not ask for anything nicer,” McAnally said. “This is such a beautiful building and it is just unbelievable at all the storage space and room we have here. I would come over here day by day and look at the school and I knew it was going to be big, but you have no kind of sense how big it is actually until you get in here. It is all just so new and I think it is, hopefully, going to give us a new sense of pride in what we have. It is just unbelievable. It really is.”
At W.S. Neal Elementary School, Principal John Knott was pleased with how smoothly the first day of school had gone.
“It’s gone pretty good without too much trouble,” Knott said. “We’re really looking forward to a good year.”
Knott said enrollment seemed to be steady this year with few changes.
“We’ve had a few new students so far and we’ve lost a few,” Knott said. “When the dust settles we’ll see where we are. Right now we’re looking at about 570 in enrollment.”
No serious issues were reported at any of the schools in Brewton or East Brewton, officials said.