Six things to know heading into the 2023-24 school year in Western New York (2024)

It’s not just students who get nervous and excited on the first day of school.

Longtime educator Michael Cornell still gets butterflies, too.

“There’s comfort in that, because it means it still matters,” the Hamburg school superintendent said. “You know that you still love it if you’re excited about it.”

While some charter schools started last week, most students will start school this week, including 30,000 in Buffalo public schools who return Friday.

It is an unusual year in that three new schools are opening in Erie County. Covid-19 and its after-effects remain as teachers continue to focus on academics and the emotional well-being of students.

Here are six things to know about school this year:

New schools

Some students will enter renovated classrooms, and others will go to new schools and programs.

In the City of Tonawanda, all pre-K through fifth-graders will be together in the new Tonawanda Elementary School. They got a look last week at the results of the $53.46 million construction project that completely remade the existing Fletcher Street School and added 100,000 square feet of classrooms, a gym, fitness center and library.

When they walk through the doors on the first day of school Wednesday, they’ll see colorful classrooms and bright hallways. And when they look down, they’ll see in the floor the signature blue terrazzo likeness of the Erie Canal, from the Niagara River to the Hudson River, with towns along the way.

BRICK Buffalo Academy Charter School opened Aug. 28 at the King Urban Life Center on Genesee Street, despite more than a year of opposition from Buffalo Public Schools. Approved by the State University of New York’s board of trustees, BRICK relies on the progressive approach of New Jersey-based BRICK Education Network and has enrolled students in kindergarten and first grade. It is led by founder Antwan Barlow, a Buffalo native, and Superintendent Jeremy Esposito.

Erie 1 BOCES is opening a state-of-the-art Career and Technical Education center within the Calspan Business Park in Cheektowaga. It will contain its Digital Media, Web Technologies and Game Programming, and Video Production and Recording Arts programs for more than 250 students, helping reduce waitlists for the popular programs. There also are plans for an Esports arena.

In the Frontier Central School District, 15 freshmen and 15 sophom*ores will start in the Big Picture Academy, a high school program that combines project-based learning with internships. The program, on the SUNY Erie Community College South Campus, eventually will have 60 students.

Start times

There is cautious optimism about Buffalo Public Schools’ new three-bell schedule, which debuts at the start of school to help curb the bus driver shortage that has forced some schools around the country to close temporarily. Buffalo’s solution adjusts the start and end times of every school in the district to allow bus drivers to complete two morning routes and two in the afternoons.

Buffalo’s approach remedies equity issues identified by Superintendent Tonja M. Williams and parent leaders. To address the driver shortage the last two years, elementary students were dismissed about 20 minutes early, which denied them a full instructional day. Only students who could secure their own transportation could attend after-school educational programs, which the district said were vital to overcoming learning gaps widened by the pandemic.

Closer watch on bullying

The May suicide of a 12-year-old boy bullied relentlessly in a Buffalo public school and a lawsuit filed in June by the mother of a Lancaster student with a disability who was also bullied have heightened attention on the topic, as well as the proper means of prevention and action. The Buffalo School Board has zeroed in on the process to report bullying, a state law through the Dignity for All Students Act, and demanded that each of its schools identify a coordinator to assure each case is noted and staff follows through on corrective action.

A collection of Buffalo high school students at a Community Health Worker Network training in mid-August said bullying was among their biggest concerns entering the new school year, along with a desire to reduce suspensions and have cleaner schools. The students said many bullying reports are not taken seriously by authorities, while other students do not report experiencing bullying to avoid being labeled as soft.

Added security

While schools have ramped up safety efforts over the years, school shootings across the country and an increase in student fighting closer to home will mean more stringent security measures in some districts.

Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda is imposing greater scrutiny of those attending all Kenmore East and West high school home football games.

All spectators, including adults and students from home and visiting teams, must show identification and pass through weapons detectors. The weapons detectors also will be used at School Board meetings, according to the district website. No backpacks or large bags or purses will be allowed. Small bags no larger than a Chromebook size, such as clutch bags and fanny packs, will be permitted.

Lake Shore Central added safety film to all first-floor windows and doors to make them shatterproof. Other schools, including in Williamsville Central, have updated entrances with secure vestibules. Williamsville also is adding an additional measure to screen visitors’ government-issued IDs with a system that also produces a visitor’s badge with photo.

Covid-19 impact lingers

Schools want children to be medically and emotionally healthy so they can learn.

Covid-19 cases are increasing as summer wanes, although there are fewer cases than at this time last year as medical experts monitor new variants and subvariants. But the advice for students, teachers and staff when it comes to the coronavirus is the same as for other illnesses:

An updated Covid-19 vaccine will be available in mid-September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mental health is just as important to educators, and schools have used federal pandemic stimulus funding to hire more counselors, social workers and aides to help children come out of the pandemic.

“If we don’t help them in this way, in our schools, they’re just not going to be available for learning in our schools,” said Cornell, also president of the Erie-Niagara Superintendents Association.

Leaders and staff from school districts, community agencies and county government started meeting last school year to collaborate on available mental health and social-emotional learning tools. The collaboration will continue, Cornell said.

Culture wars

Battles in schools during the pandemic that focused on mask and vaccination requirements have shifted to LGBTQ+ issues and library books.

As political campaigns ramp up for the 2024 presidential election, disagreement over what should be taught in the classroom and how much say parents should have continue.

Book bans around the country in the 2022-23 school year centered on race, history, sexual orientation and gender, according to PEN America, a nonprofit founded in 1922 dedicated to protecting free expression.

Some parents in the region have asked that books to be removed from several school libraries. The Erie County Chapter of Moms For Liberty website lists two dozen school districts that have books with sexually explicit content in their libraries. The group wants schools to remove the most extreme books or allow parents to have a say in whether their children can access them.

Last fall, a group of Orchard Park high school students formed Students Protecting Education to promote a diverse, inclusive and equitable education for all students.

“We’re going to keep going,” said Jillian Yarnes, a group founder, “and we’ve been building our team a lot.”