Triangle schools open smoothly

Triangle school officials reported few problems today as students returned to class at traditional calendar schools.

First-day attendance fell slightly short of projections in Triangle districts that reported figures, but school officials say this is normal. Officials in Wake County, the state's largest district, did not report a first-day attendance figure because they said they didn't receive returns from all of the districts 156 schools. The projected enrollment for Wake is 139,247.

Attendance in Durham Public Schools totaled 30,123 students, school officials said. First-day attendance last year was 29,683 students.

Durham kindergartner Carson Holland, though, nearly didn't make it to class. The five-year-old had been excited to go to Little River Elementary School, but at the last minute, panicked, said his mother Anna, as she picked up the toe-headed boy in the car-rider lane Monday afternoon.

"It was just going somewhere he had never been before," Anna Holland said.

But around 4 p.m. when his mother and big sister came to get him, he climbed into the car with a smile on his face.

The car-rider lane at Little River flowed constantly for more than 40 minutes Monday afternoon as parents collected their children.

Others opted for the buses. A few buses did arrive at their schools late Monday morning, Transportation Director Scott Denton said, but drivers could make some quick changes to their routes Tuesday morning to ensure an on-time delivery, he said.

As many as two buses had more students to pick up than would fit, Denton said, so substitute buses were dispatched to pick up the overflow, which occurred because more students than anticipated gathered at certain bus stops. The first day is always unpredictable, Denton said. Students who might have gotten a ride to school end up taking the bus, and vice versa.

"We're hoping by the end of the week to have it all smoothed out," he said.

In Orange County schools, 6,865 students attended the first day of class out of a projected enrollment of 7,030. Chapel Hill-Carrboro school officials did not report first-day attendance although about 7,600 lunches were prepared. The district has a projected enrollment of about 11,763 students.

The fast-growing Johnston County school system reported having 29,891 students today, 762 more than the same time last school year.