Principal extends warm welcome to University Park Elementary students in Monroeville

Talk about a warm welcome.

“Hello!” Jennifer Hoffner called as youngsters emerged from big yellow vehicles, calling most by name and giving quite a few hugs. “How was your summer? My, you’re getting tall and handsome!”

The principal of Gateway’s University Park Elementary School even expressed her enthusiasm and appreciation by hugging a bus driver, something she apparently does often.

Whatever the case, the students must have felt reassured on the morning of Aug. 25, the first day of the new academic year.

Also greeting the Monroeville school’s kindergartners through fourth-graders were a series of chalk drawings along the front sidewalk carrying messages of encouragement from the University Park Parent Teacher Organization, and “Super heroes enter here” was sketched on the crosswalk leading to the main entrance.

Considering that the weather couldn’t have been better for a late summer day, everyone seems to be off to a good start toward fulfilling an especially inspirational prediction in chalk:

“This will be the best year ever.”