You couldn’t see the lower half of their faces, but you didn’t really need to. You could see it – those familiar first-day-of-school emotions – in the kids’ eyes.

Students in rows at Garden Place Academy, the site of Denver Public Schools’ 2021-22 kickoff party, peered out over their masks Monday morning. From above rainbows and plaid, blue disposables and tiny camo prints, there was the deer-in-headlights anxiety of the first day, the eye-crinkling smiles at seeing friends and waving good bye, the solemn resignation that summer was over. 

Though they marked another school year remade by COVID-19, the first-day scenes were remarkably familiar. Parents looked on and took photos. Teachers shouted instructions and checked names on clipboards. Kids clung to parents or ran to their classmates at the first chance. Teachers wielding poles with signs announcing their names and grade levels marched into the building with their charges in tow. Ms. Lopez’s fifth-grade sign was emblazoned in graffiti font.

New superintendent Alex Marrero and the district’s board president, Carrie Olson, looked on as television reporters buzzed about. 

A DJ on the blacktop, dancing at about 50% enthusiasm in the Garden Place’s shade, played “Cha-Cha Slide.” Then he threw on “Teach Me How To Dougie,” a dance-explaining rap song. Perhaps sensing it wasn’t the right tone for the first day of elementary school, the DJ took it off within a minute.

But it was on long enough for a little girl to pause at the stairs in front of the door as her class filed in. She wore a headband with a unicorn horn sticking out of it, and her brown eyes rose above her mask. After waiting a beat, she did a little shimmy to the song, twisting her ankles side to side in her tiny Air Jordans, and walked into the school.

More than 90,000 students return to Denver Public Schools this week for a year that Gov. Jared Polis has declared, repeatedly, will be in-person. School officials statewide asked him to prioritize keeping students in classrooms – a change from last year’s see-sawing shifts between at-home learning and school.

To ward off the spread of COVID-19, which will not only protect students and staff but will also keep schools open, the Denver district is requiring all people within their buildings to mask up, regardless of grade level or vaccination status. Denver is requiring all teachers in the county to be inoculated by the end of next month. 

By 8:30 a.m., the students had filed in and parents had filed out. Vanessa Jaszczyk lingered and looked on with her 4-year-old at her side. Her fourth-grader had just walked in, and her youngest would start her early childhood education Tuesday. 

Jaszczyk said she felt confident sending her kids to school, especially compared to last year. Knowing teachers are vaccinated, a protection, she said, to younger kids who still aren’t eligible, boosted her morale. 

“I’m kind of nervous,” she said of in-person learning. But she praised the district’s COVID-19 policies. Besides, she was glad school had started.

“Oh yes,” she said, in the relieved tone only parents use.