‘We’re coming home’: In odd year, new Fort Mill school hits refreshing milestone
It technically wasn’t the first day of school for the students, parents and staff who stood in front of River Trail Elementary in Fort Mill on Wednesday morning.
But it certainly felt like it.
Balloons and a makeshift red carpet decorated the entryway to the school’s front office. A small amplifier blasted upbeat songs like Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” Kids, lugging their oversized backpacks and wearing first-day-of-school garb ranging from princess tiaras to Spiderman shirts, were helped out of their cars and directed where to go by a who’s-who of Fort Mill celebrities — including Catawba Ridge High School football players, CRHS cheerleaders and River Trail’s recently assembled staff.
“We are so excited to finally open up ‘Otter Country’ to our students,” Savannah Steger, principal of River Trail Elementary told The Herald on Wednesday morning. Steger, who was previously the assistant principal of Pleasant Knoll Elementary, said her staff had spent “countless hours moving and unpacking” and hanging the students’ artwork on the walls to get the school feeling like “home.”
“We’ve had an outpouring of support from the district, helping us get settled,” she said. “I don’t think any of us slept last night.”
The River Trail Elementary campus, which is on the Fort Mill Southern Bypass and is a stone’s throw away from Catawba Ridge High, was not open for the first part of the 2020-21 school year. Students assigned to River Trail attended school either at Doby’s Bridge Elementary or Kings Town Elementary before the district’s winter break after bad weather delayed River Trail’s construction, The Herald previously reported.
Those circumstances, however, turned out to largely be overshadowed by the rest of the 2020-21 academic year’s general oddity — the COVID-19 pandemic affected when, and how often, students were in a brick-and-mortar school, and when they were learning virtually.
“I think for us, as a school, we feel like we’re coming home,” said Kristy Swingunski, the LEAD teacher at River Trail. “We moved in. Our kids are finally here. It’s really like the first day of school for a lot of us.”
The Fort Mill School District, with the addition of its 11th elementary school in River Trail, now has 19 schools open and more than 17,000 students. The district is sustaining a growth pattern that could at some point surpass Rock Hill as the largest school district in York County.
Zac Lendyak, the Catawba Ridge High football coach and a parent of two kids attending River Trail Elementary, was out there in the freezing morning with several of his players, who wore their green jerseys and assisted kids out of cars.
To him and others in the Fort Mill School District, Wednesday marked an important day for the community.
“It shows that people want to be in Fort Mill, and we want to do our part to get out here and show them the love,” Lendyak said. “I told the team, ‘We got so much support from the community through our season, it’s time to give back a little bit.’”
He later added: “We wanted to come in and support the Otters. That’s what they’re called. But they’re future Copperheads, you know?”
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