Photo by Samantha Davis Students make their way into Southview Elementary School in Marshall on the first day of school Wednesday morning while being cheered on by Southwest Minnesota State University student athletes.

MARSHALL — Students heard cheers and received high-fives as they strolled into Southview Elementary School on Wednesday morning.

Southwest Minnesota State University student athletes lined up in front of the school’s front doors to welcome in the students on the first day of the 2024-25 school year.

“It’s just gotten to be kind of a neat, new relationship where they (SMSU students) just come in. Sometimes they’ll come in and read to our kids, so our kids just enjoy seeing that part of it,” Southview Principal Peter Thor said. “They get to know the kids, the kids get to know them. They just look forward to it.”

Elementary and middle school students started school on Wednesday, while high school students already attending classes on Tuesday.

Third and fourth graders also helped welcome in the second graders and their new peers, at Parkside Elementary.

“When our fourth graders come back, they’re almost ready for middle school … One of our things we like to do is have that transition where third and fourth graders welcome in our second graders,” Thor said. “Then at the end of the year, we have our fourth grade graduation, where we congratulate them for leaving behind a good example for our younger kids, too.”

As parents dropped off their children at Southview, faculty members could be seen inside the school gathering around and parents taking photos.

“It’s always nice to see kids back in the building,” Thor said. “I feel like I’ve worked throughout the summer, and it’s nice to see community events within the buildings, but it just doesn’t feel right without kids running around. (Excited to) see the kids, and see how much they’ve grown over the summer.”

Also to ring in the start of the school year is first-year principal Peggy Reynolds at the middle school. She previously was the assistant principal the last two years.

Reynolds has expectations to continue building off of school success during her first year leading the school.

“We had updated our handbook last year for our students, as well as our discipline policy, and we really communicated that well to our students — our expectations,” Reynolds said. “At the end of the year, we saw a 40% reduction in behavior referrals from the previous year. That’s a huge success, just a huge success. So, we’re going to continue with that.”

The middle school theater, which has been undergoing construction throughout the summer, is also nearly done and ready to host events.

“The theater is close to completion. There’s a few things that need to be pushed up, but the majority of the theater is done,” Reynolds said. “Really excited about that. It’s a beautiful space. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to utilize it more as a school district, and then as well as the community.”

Both Thor and Reynolds mentioned they are looking forward to implementing BARR (Building Assets, Reducing Risks), a framework to help support specific needs in student’s academic careers.

“It’s (BARR) a framework that we’ve implemented at the high school. We’ve been using it there for about five years, and now we’re adding it at the middle school and Southview,” Superintendent Jeremy Williams told the Independent in August. “It’s a framework to help organize MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support) things. So, it’s how we determine students’ attendance and their needs, or their behavioral needs, their academic needs, and who’s touching base with that kid and making sure they have some individual attention to whatever their individual needs are.”

The middle school will be pairing together specific teachers with students for the year.

“A math teacher, a language arts teacher and a social teacher will see the same groups of students all year long … Each team will have approximately 80 to 90 students,” Reynolds said. “It’ll enable those teachers to really focus on the strengths of each student, get to know each student, as well as (knowing) what their student needs and how can we best meet the needs of those students.”

Southview will technically be going into their second year implementing BARR, as they will be growing the amount of teachers involved.

“(BARR is) really based on making connections with kids, building relationships … So we’re in the second year of that, out of our three years that’s allocated through a grant that we applied for last year and got,” Thor said. “Last year, we had a pilot team that kind of just started within their classrooms. This year, we’ll have all of our teachers take on that.”

Reynolds said the middle school has also expanded their family and consumer science classes into sixth and seventh grade, which teaches life skills, and also added enrichment teachers throughout the grades to further ensure the kids are exceeding grade level education.

Assistant Principal Bennett Appel is also joining the staff with Reynolds, who transfered from teaching at Southview.

“I want people to know that we are super excited to build off of what we’ve done in the last couple of years here at Marshall Middle School,” Reynolds said. “We’ve got a great staff, we have great students. We’ve really worked hard to put some positive policies in place, build some expectations that our students are buying into, and we are seeing those positive effects.”