Glendale Unified kicks off a new school year

At Hoover High School Monday morning, more than a dozen students unloaded from a Beeline bus and walked into the quad to greet friends, look up their classrooms and find their lockers.

Across Glendale Unified, roughly 26,000 students were going through their own routines for the first day of school.

At Hoover, it was Denice Guerrero’s first day as a junior.

“Time flies,” she said.

As a member of the school’s choir, Denice said she had recently joined Hoover’s Dolce Melodia performance choir, and was looking forward to traveling with the choir outside of Glendale later in the year.

As a sophomore, she decided on studying psychology in college, and she knows the new school year will entail a series of academic challenges.

“This year’s going to be harder,” she said. “I’m going to have to work my butt off because I want to succeed.”

Fellow junior Joseph Grigorian said he was looking forward to an advanced placement literature class, his first AP class at the school.

“Hopefully, next year, I’ll take two or three,” he said.

Hoover Principal Jennifer Earl said there were about 1,850 students enrolled at Hoover this year.

Earlier in August, the Glendale teacher’s union agreed to defer five furlough days until the 2013-14 school year, which means everyone will see a full 180-day school year.

At Toll Middle School, Principal Bill Card and staff greeted about 1,200 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

There were 250 new sixth-graders alone, including 12-year-old old Kenny Uong. He said he was looking forward to both next week’s back to school dance and his new classes.

“I have life science, world history, P.E.; I’m going to work for the yearbook,” he said.

Many of the newest students had attended orientation last week, found their lockers and their paths from class to class, but there was still some first-day anxiety.

“On the first day — on the first two days — we’re going to be saying, ‘This is where you go,’ Card said.

-- Kelly Corrigan, Times Community News

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan