Northern Lehigh School District had a smooth start to the 2023-2024 school year.

Superintendent Dr. Matthew J. Link gave his start of the school year report at Monday’s school board meeting.

As the district begin its first five day week of the school year, Link shared some updates on the start of the school year.

Start of the year

Link said that Aug. 15-17, the district welcomed its new teachers to the district so they could begin their orientation and inclusion induction program.

“We have a great group of new teachers this year, and I’m excited to see how they share their gifts and talents with our students and their colleagues,” Link said.

Link said that from Aug. 22-24, the district held its annual start of the year teacher in-service offering various professional development sessions along with several state required trainings.

“I would like to thank all the administration and faculty who had input into planning these sessions,” he said.

For the second year in a row, Link said the district ended the last in-service day with an Employee Appreciation Picnic “which included honestly the biggest make your own taco bar I’ve ever seen, it was like the entire back wall of the middle school cafeteria.”

“We would like to acknowledge that the Lehigh Valley Educators Credit Union made a very generous donation of $1,500 to cover the complete cost of that picnic,” he said. “So we’re very grateful for their support and the services they offer our employees.”

Transportation

“I’m also happy to report that our transportation department had an almost seamless transition from Brandywine Transportation to Krise Transportation during the summer while simultaneously implementing new bus routing software system,” he said. The amount of work that goes into making sure that transportation is ready to go on day one for our students is not a light lift and our transportation department did a great job with that. There were very few issues and they were resolved very quickly by our transportation department working in conjunction with the new bus company.”

Link said the technology department had new Chrome books for all high school students, fifth graders and kindergartners ready to go on the first day, and have also prepared new laptops for all faculty, office staff and the administration. The department was ready to support students and staff the first few day of school and will continue to do so all year long, he said.

Third-day enrollment

Link said the district’s third-day enrollment included 130 kindergarten students, 140 first-grade students and 100 second-grade students for a total of 377 children at Peters Elementary School.

He said Slatington Elementary School had 480 students, with 115 third-graders, 122 fourth-graders, 129 fifth-graders, and 114 sixth-graders.

Link said at the middle school, seventh and eighth grade had 116 students each totaling 332 students.

He said the high school had 119 ninth-graders, 132 10th-graders, 107 11th-graders, and 118 12th-graders, totaling 476 students

In all, Link said the district on the third day enrollment had 1,565 students, though that number continues to fluctuate because of withdrawals and open enrollments.

“Overall, I’m very happy with the 2023-2024 school year, and I look forward to the days and months ahead,” he said. “I want to thank our students, their families and our employees for a great start to the new school year.”