Scenes from the first day of school in NW Philadelphia [gallery]

Throughout the city and in Northwest Philadelphia, Philadelphia public school students headed back to school. 

 

“It’s not real until they walk in the door. [The students] make the place come alive without them we wouldn’t be here,” said newly-minted principal at Roxborough’s Cook-Wissahickon Elementary School, Melanie Lewin.

“We are really excited for this school year to begin, and what made me excited to be here, in particular, is that Cook-Wiss is a very cohesive and dynamic group of teachers and dedicated family and community members, so there’s no better place that I’d rather be,” she continued.

At Martin Luther King High School in West Oak Lane about a dozen freshmen milled around a parking lot in black polo shirts and khaki pants at 7:30 a.m.

Some quietly chatted with one another. Others just picked a spot to sit down and waited silently until being beckoned into the building’s first floor, where the 9th grade wing sits.

That happened shortly after 8 a.m., when a security guard emerged from a set of mud-brown doors to tell students to start removing their belts and electronics for a walk through the single metal detector perched just inside a long, narrow hallway.

By then, dozens more freshmen had showed.

Slowly, but surely, though, the crowd went through security, got their homeroom assignments from a lamented list on the wall, and started their first day of high school, their first day as a Cougar.

Aaron Moselle and Lauren Gruber contributed to this report.