SAN ANTONIO – Summer break is over for some students as they heard the bell ring on the first day of school Thursday morning.
Of the 90 campuses in the San Antonio Independent School District, Lamar Elementary School became the first to begin classes. The campus is partaking in a new pilot program that has the school year running longer, as well as the addition of bilingual classes.
School days are also 30 minutes longer than usual.
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Lamar's summer vacation is only six weeks instead of the usual 11 and the next summer break won’t begin until June 22, 2018.
Kids will still have the time off as other students in the district, as well as week-long breaks in the months of February, September and May.
"They're excited to have downtime so they can kind of recharge their batteries," Lamar Elementary principal Brian Sparks said.
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The district said parents are excited. They have 150 more kids attending Lamar over last year, bringing their head count to 400 students.
Some families are commuting from as far as Helotes, and one parent said she is excited to see the change.
"They're not going to have as long a break. They are not going to forget as much," said parent Amanda Groff.
There's also project-based learning to look forward to and studying local issues like elections and trips outside the classroom to learn about the ecology of the San Antonio River.
"The river is very important to our city. So our students talked about pollution with the river (and) they did some research projects on that," Sparks said.
"It gets the kids involved and excited about subjects and about things that are going on in their community, rather than just, you know, here, here are the facts, memorize this and test over it," Blake Hernandez said, as she dropped her two daughters off.
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The kids are also excited for the new school year. Kindergartener Addison Smith said she is looking forward to the new dual-language program.
"Cause I like Spanish. My mom teaches me a lot," she said.
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