FAIRVIEW, Ala.- It was a bittersweet farewell at Fairview Elementary School Monday as administrators, teachers and staff waved and greeted students- from a safe distance, of course. A parade of approximately 200 cars lined up to allow the students to see and speak to their teachers after the decision was made by Governor Kay Ivey to cancel school for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year.
Principal Marty Hardman said, “One of my teachers had mentioned to me that East Elementary had done that and it looked really impressive and wanted to know about us trying it. I said, ‘Let’s do it!’”
He then reached out to all the teachers and staff to come out and invited all the parents.
He said, “They showed up in waves.”
The teachers and students made signs and had a great time.
Hardman said, “The students were sitting on cars through sunroofs and back of trucks. It was very good. Good to see the kids and I think the teachers really enjoyed it.”
FES Kindergarten teacher Stacey Gardner described the parade as a bittersweet moment.
She said, “It was just really neat to have them all come through. As bad as it is right now, I just like to see their faces. It’s always fun to see how much they grow from the time you begin with them until the end of the year when they leave. I hate that they aren’t getting these last months of all the field trips and kindergarten graduation but we will be ok! Not being able to hug them at the parade was hard. I just wanted to go up and hug the ones I did get to see but you can’t do that.”
FES counselor Candi Martin said of the parade, “I think it went great. I was actually surprised. I was afraid we wouldn’t have a huge turnout like we did. The last week of school was so rushed and so much uncertainty about how things were going to play out. This gave us an opportunity to see those kids in a more relaxed atmosphere to tell them we love them, we miss them and to tell them goodbye.”
Martin pointed to a great silver lining to the current situation.
She said, “In the faces we saw coming through, they were all happy and they seemed to be enjoying it. It’s giving them time to spend with their parents that they normally don’t have. I know with my family, spending a lot of time with my kids that’s normally spent on the ballfield or school activities. Now, we are spending our time here at home. We have a pond and we are able to go fish and spend time together as a family. So, I do feel like for lots of families, it’s bringing them closer together.”
The school also used the parade as an opportunity to clear out the snacks remaining at the school’s snack bar. Snack bags were made to pass out to the cars as they came through.
Assistant Principal Caleb Elrod explained, “We met a little bit before and started making bags to give out with Capri Suns, chips and Uncrustables. We made up about 75 bags and thought that would be plenty.”
The bags ran out quickly, but the school had plenty of boxes of Capri Suns, so it was able to give each car something to take home.
“There’s a lot of fun things we didn’t get to finish. After testing is over, we do a lot of fun things and we are going to miss those. A lot of the parents were emotional when they came through. They were emotional not because they were sad that they have to keep their kids, but they were emotional because I think they realized, and we all realized, that we are a community and this has affected us as a community because we are not getting to have the interactions and make them see the impacts on those kids. I think they appreciate that we were willing to come up there and see that,” Elrod said.
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