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Watch | 2022 POY Patrick Greene welcomes you back to our public schools

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What is a school?

Bricks and mortar, hardwood gym floors coated in years of varnish, long hallways traveled by thousands of feet each year, classrooms filled with hard seat desks, ball fields and courts lined with aluminum bleachers. Schools are just buildings, compartmentalized homes for books, iPads and whiteboards. Over the years, they seem familiar through smells of waxed hallways and lacquered floors. They remind us of lunchrooms, full of laughter and news of the day. There are hallways and commons areas, lined with lockers, where we greet our friends to say hello each morning and say goodbye as the year ends. Schools are the places where we learn to drive a car, play an instrument or discover new worlds through the lens of a microscope. They are Friday night lights, the smell of a concession stand and new paint on fresh cut grass.

Schools are buildings, filled and surrounded by the things that facilitate learning and doing. They are places where students visit, for a few years of their lives, only to prepare to visit the next place on their journey toward becoming an adult. But they are more than that.

Schools are more than a pitstop. They are places where memories are built, relationships are forged, and values are learned alongside curriculum. They help shape us into who we want to be and give us the tools to make decisions that impact our lives for decades to come. Schools are where we build lifetime friendships and earn our first broken hearts. They are places where we cheer on others as they represent us in colors and mascots and where we somehow always learn the meaning of true school spirit. They are also where we support one another when we struggle to learn that life doesn’t always go our way.

Schools are the essential fortress for educators who arrive every August, ready to charge into a new year. They are an environment where a lesson can spark an idea and where that idea can grow into a passion. And if we are just a little lucky, that passion can grow into a lifetime career. They are also a place where the lunch lady can be infinitely more valuable to a student’s day than any classroom lesson.

And at the end of each school year, we collectively celebrate students as they finish one grade and move to the next. We cheer on familiar names at high school graduations and acknowledge that crossing a stage enters those former students into adulthood.

Schools are centers of our communities far greater than the physical buildings that they embody. Schools are not pieces of our community; they are symbols of the very best of our community. Schools are bridges to the future and to opportunities far beyond the confines of those classrooms, hallways and playing fields. They are places, no matter how long you have been gone, where you can always come home again.

Welcome to the start of another school year. Thank you for supporting our students, teachers, staff members, families, graduates, and all of the many other people who work and support this place we call public school.