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WILKES-BARRE &mdash; Fatima Sanyang stood patiently outside Heights Murray Elementary Friday morning with her mom and two sibling, waiting for some minor issue to be resolved before she could get in line. Was she eager to get back to school.
				&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t been in it for a long time, she said from behind the pinkish face mask. &ldquo;I miss my teachers and my friends.&rdquo;
				She also said she had heard that they would &ldquo;never&rdquo;go back to school, but that clearly was not the case as Wilkes-Barre Area School District opened its doors to students for the first time since March 16, the last of Luzerne County&rsquo;s 11 districts to start school this fall.
				&ldquo;We have about 43% of students in schools today,&rdquo; Superintendent Brian Costello said after stopping in to check things out.
				The district offered families three options: In-person learning at the schools, synchronous live learning remotely at home, and asynchronous recorded learning online at home. About 7 percent took the third option, with half taking the second, leaving 43 percent &mdash; about 2,300 &mdash; of the district&rsquo;s 7,200 students in schools Friday.
				This made it easy to maintain social distancing, Costello said, and means those in group one can attend classes in person five days a week. The plan is to give parents a chance to reconsider their choices in November.
				Students arrived and approached a table for their grade set up outside the school. Principal Melissa Myers said this helped organize them before they went in, so they could go directly to their assigned rooms. They also got a quick temperature check.
				School halls and classrooms were unusually quiet with the number of students reduced by so much. But in each room teachers, despite the masks, showed their exuberance for the return to in-person teaching.
				&ldquo;This is my bitmoji,&rdquo; Jamee Capristo said with obvious glee barely hidden by the face mask as she brought up a computer drawing of herself in an expansive, animated classroom for her sixth grade students to see. The image may not have been photo-realistic, but it was true to likeness, right down to the long braided ponytail.
				Capristo demonstrated how many parts of the screen classroom were actually links to different lessons and resources. This will be where many of the elementary students spend their time during live lessons, Myers explained. The students will start by logging into Google classrooms, where a teacher can see their face, but many of the lessons will be taught using the resources programmed into the bitmoji classroom.
				The live classroom part won&rsquo;t really start until Monday, Costello said. Friday was for teachers and students in the schools to go over the procedures, while those at home got a chance to make sure computers and related equipment work. The district will be using cameras in the classrooms that can zoom in on what a teacher is doing or writing on a white board, but that will be more often used in high schools than in the lower grades.
				Students are relatively sparse, with as few as four and no more than eight in several classes visited. Each class had bags of pandemic-appropriate goodies for students to take home. One teacher had opted to hang clear shower curtains between students to further protect them.
				Spacing reminders are everywhere. Outside in back of the school, the sidewalk from the bus drop off to the doors is marked with giant blue paw prints (the school mascot is a bulldog), and students waiting in the morning stood diligently one to a paw. The cafeteria is similarly marked with black footprints in yellow circles leading to the counter, while he seats are marked with either yellow or white square tags.
				Myers said the students are assigned alphabetically by class, so the school will always know who they sat next to. That way, if anyone tests positive for COVID-19, it will be easier to &ldquo;contact trace&rdquo; who may have been near enough to warrant concern.
				But students weren&rsquo;t thinking about that &mdash; well, not about the virus, though maybe about the lunch. At the start of class fifth-grade teacher Nicole Zekas took roll, then asked each what the wanted for lunch (the hot option Friday: Pizza).
				In Melissa Matello&rsquo;s first grade class, students started out coloring &ldquo;Welcome first grade&rdquo; pictures of a student holding a kid-size pencil, a picture of a puppy projected on the white screen, and a conversation about pets.

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Small class sizes, masks and goody bags: First day at Heights Murray Elementary