Back to school means back to routines for many

LYNN – Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy admits that when back-to-school time rolls around, “I do a little happy dance.””Don’t get me wrong; I love my kids,” she added quickly. “But it’s nice to see routines re-establish.”This week rituals and routines will be experienced all over the city as nearly 15,000 students head back to school.Classical High School Principal Gene Constantino said the first day of school “is always kind of exciting.”He said he remembers his own rituals, when his mother would make his sandwich and pack it in a lunchbox and send him on his way. His grown up rituals are geared more toward his students, however.”I always like to remind the staff that we see kids at the end of their school career,” he said.He said kindergarten students never start out thinking they will ever fail a class; there is a lot that happens to impact students by the time they get to high school.”I tell them to try and remember that,” he said. Molly Cohen is both a mother and School Department employee.As a former teacher, guidance counselor and Breed Middle School’s newest vice principal, Cohen said her administrative rituals include meetings, meetings and more meetings, reminiscing about the previous year’s antics, drinking twice as much caffeine as in an average day to make up for the lack of sleep the night before due to the typical anxious excitement that comes with a new year.As a mom her rituals have a traditional spin: school clothes shopping, digging out cleats and making room for fall sports equipment and an end-of-summer family getaway to New Hampshire over Labor Day weekend.Ward 2 school committee candidate Jesse Jaegar has a first-grader and a fifth-grader at home and one fabulous ritual.”We like to make them a really nice breakfast, get them all ready and then we all walk over to school together,” he said. “We’ve been doing it since our oldest was off to kindergarten.”City Council President and mayoral candidate Timothy Phelan said he also has one ritual that he maintains even though his kids are older now.”Send them off with a big hug and a kiss,” he said. “You want to make sure they’re ready to go back. It’s kind of an exciting day, especially when they’re younger.”Although her kids are in high school Kennedy said there is one ritual she has managed to hang onto and she is grateful for it.”We still go school clothes shopping together,” she said. “We have fun getting all their school supplies.”Like Kennedy, Jamie Cerulli’s children are both in high school now but she still makes them submit to the same ritual as she did when they were little.”I take a first-day-of-school picture of them every year in the same place,” said Kennedy’s chief of staff with a laugh. “They hate it, but we walk around the corner so my mother can see them and I take their picture. I’ve done it every year and I love it.”