My granddaughters and I saw only a couple of jellyfish on our last trip to the beach. The weather was perfect and the water was warm. All told, it was a beautiful beach day. And, we were able to be there because school hadn’t started yet.

This year, in order to give the school district more time to prepare the buildings for opening during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, school didn’t begin until after Labor Day. As a youngster, the day after Labor Day was always the first day of school, where we all trooped off to Mystic Academy with our new pencil boxes and lunch boxes (except for those kids who walked home for lunch).

However, in more recent times, the opening of school has gotten earlier and moved into August. I have always been opposed to this because the period from the mid-August to mid-September is the nicest part of the year, unless, of course, there is a hurricane. The air is warm and so is the water in the Sound.

When the Board of Education first talked of moving the start date earlier, one member spoke out against it. The late Frank Hagerty, whose name adorns the Fitch auditorium, called it un-American to begin school before Labor Day. I agreed with Frank, but he lost that round. After all, the administration wanted more time to prepare the students for the all-important Connecticut Mastery Tests, which were then given in the fall.

This year, school began after Labor Day, but the new middle school wasn’t quite ready and the opening of that building had to be delayed a week while all the students became remote learners. This isn’t the first time a school hasn’t been ready. In 1961, Cutler Jr. High, which was built because Fitch Junior and West Side were getting overcrowded, opened almost two weeks behind schedule. However, Cutler students didn’t learn remotely. They simply kept going to the beach. Of course, they had to make up those days by going half-days on Saturdays. And most went.

In 1974, I began teaching at Cutler, and it already had become so overcrowded that kids had to share lockers.

I remember having a seventh-grade class of 28. One morning, two new girls came to join the class. Later in the day the guidance counselor came to see me. She said that she realized that by putting those two youngsters in my class, I was at the maximum allowed under the contract.

Did I want her to move one of them? I told her that I realized I was at max, but the two girls seemed to be nice children, and if I took both of them, then I didn’t have to worry about who the next kid might be. Besides, they had already become somewhat friendly in the short walk from the guidance office to Room 2.

Eventually, portable classrooms were added to all three middle schools. In fact, I later taught in one at Fitch, Room 402, and enjoyed it very much, though it was a bit cramped.

The new Groton Middle School should be able to handle all our kids in grades 6-8 when the coronavirus crisis is over and everyone is back in school full-time. That being said, two new submarines have arrived recently. I wonder how many of those families have middle school aged kids?

Robert F. Welt of Mystic is a retired Groton public schools teacher.