School starts again on the Peninsulas, with some help from friends

Thousand of students took their seats in the Peninsula School District classrooms yesterday, including what was expected to be the largest kindergarten class ever enrolled.

Students and volunteers from local churches had spent the previous work scrubbing, cleaning and raking the grounds at many of the district’s 15 schools.

The first day of school also saw the first pupils in the old Boys and Girls Club, which is being used to ease overcrowding at Discovery Elementary School. It’s being called Peninsula Elementary Annex, and it’s housing 5th graders from Discovery, as well as some preschool classes from Harbor Heights and Purdy elementary schools.

Eventually, it will be expanded to become Pioneer Elementary School, opening in 2020. The planning principal is Stephanie Strader, a graduate of Peninsula High School.

District officials were still counting heads, but were expecting around 700 kindergarten students — a record number — according to Aimee Gordon, the district’s communications director.

Official known as School District 401, the Gig Harbor-based school system comprises 15 schools with more than 9,000 students. Geographically, it sprawls over 120 square miles on two peninsulas.

The two high schools, Gig Harbor and Peninsula, had student bodies last year of 1,600 and 1,400, respectively.

Some students at Peninsula came back earlier this month to scrape and paint the school’s commons area — a job which included “pulling out millions of staples” used over the years to hang posters and pep banners, said assistant principal Danielle O’Leary.

Students in drama, band and choir similarly worked over the performing arts hallway, and volunteers from Peninsula Life Church spiffed up the science wing. The football team shoveled gravel and bark to beautify the school grounds.

And more than 200 volunteers, mostly from Harbor Covenant Church, worked over the weekend to clear brush and clean up the grounds at six schools near the church.

This story was originally published August 29, 2019 at 12:00 AM.