It was a joyful and noisy scene outside Harold Keller Elementary School in Metairie on Thursday morning as principal Jessica Smith warmly greeted the swarm of students as they hopped off buses donned in their first-day-of-school outfits.
Inside a dual language kindergarten class down the hallway, district Superintendent James Gray chatted with students and staff, doling out high fives and handshakes and inspecting art projects.
“What languages are we speaking today?” he asked as he knelt beside a group of three small boys who were hard at work connecting counting blocks to make sticks as they waited for class to start.
Despite the familiar first-day celebrations, the start of the new school year brings changes for the state’s largest district, ranging from new policies banning the use of non-clear backpacks, to the rollout of the state’s new school-accountability system, which could have a major impact on testing…