It was the end of the day, and it was relatively painful. Not really painful, but it was painful to think about what Thursday would be like. All the students will be there Thursday, all 800 of them, and the stress that dismissal caused today will only be amplified.

Since we are a charter school, we have no buses, so every child is a car rider. That means every child must be picked up by a car, which means that all those cars have to line up and then pick up the kid, one by one.

We have a system in place, but it’s not the best. It’s a new school and we are working out techniques as we go along. We try something, it doesn’t work, and then we go back and try something else.

Our dismissal technique yesterday was slower than today, so we are improving. But we still have only faced two grades at a time since we’re doing a staggered start: third and fourth grade came Monday; fifth and sixth grades came today; seventh and eighth grades will come tomorrow.

It’s only on Thursday that all grades will arrive and leave. The arriving is fine. The time between arrival and departure is fine. It’s the last step that needs the work.

Still, that means we have a lot of learning to do through tomorrow, when we only have 150 students.