Lucky to Have an Old Friend

Regina Ives and Sheila Breeden lingered at the door of Mrs. Snyder’s first-grade classroom on Monday.

The two have been friends since seventh grade, they said, and now they were making sure their daughter and niece were settling in on their first day of school at .

One child was eager to be there. One was not.

“She’s been excited all summer,” Ives said of 6-year-old Alina Cole.

Ives watched her daughter from the back of the room, but Breeden tried to stay out of sight of Stephani Breeden, 6, for whom she is a guardian. Her niece was crying that morning about being at school. 

“I think she just needs to get back into the groove of things,” Breeden said. 

She said her niece was disappointed to not be in Ms. Galarza’s kindergarten class across the hall, where she was last year.

“I tell her that she’s going to get to make new friends and see old ones,” Breeden said.

Perhaps it’ll help to have Alina there, too, who just happened to be assigned to the same classroom.

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