After more than three years of meeting and planning for the new Penn-assisted school, Nancy Streim could could only watch yesterday morning as she waited for the first students to arrive.
"This feels like the calm before the storm," said Streim, associate dean of the Graduate School of Education, who led the team that devised the school's educational plan.
Her tension ended a few minutes later when an enthusiastic girl bounded down the path to the school at 42nd and Locust streets, which some consider to be a model for urban education.
With family members, teachers and the media watching, the students -- all first-graders and all dressed in the school's requisite blue and white uniform -- lined up according to homeroom and prepared to tackle their big first day.
"It's a little unusual to focus all this attention on 35 first-graders, but that's okay," city Education Secretary Debra Kahn said. "They don't know what to make of all this. All they're doing is going to school."
Kindergarten will begin next Thursday, and the remainder of the school's eventual 700-student pre-kindergarten through eighth grade enrollment will fall into place next year when a new school building on the same site is completed.
Due to the new school's borders -- which run from 40th to 47th streets, and from Sansom Street to Woodland Avenue -- many of the children are able to walk to school. The decision to choose such a catchment area, as opposed to a city-wide lottery, had been highly controversial when it was made in 2000.
However, no traces of tension were perceptible yesterday.
"It's a blessing," Bogoljub Lalevic, a longtime neighborhood resident, said while waiting for his grandson to arrive. "This will bring more young people into the neighborhood. It will help to revitalize it."
One person who is calling University City home because of the Penn-assisted school is Maria Schellhorn-Secchi, whose daughter Sofia was part of the entering first-grade class.
"We were more excited than she was," Schellhorn-Secchi said as she waved goodbye to her daughter. "There are international students from everywhere. It's wonderful."
The enrollees hail from 19 countries. Forty-one percent are black, 32 percent white, 23 percent Asian and four percent Hispanic. According to Streim, they are also from a variety of educational backgrounds, including private, parochial and other public schools.
Some are even from the University City New School, the private school that once occupied the Penn-assisted school's temporary home. The New School closed its doors permanently in June.
"It was a wonderful, wonderful school," said Beth Jarret, whose son Zane is now a first-grader. "But since Penn is backing up this school, I think it's going to do well."
While waiting for the school bell to ring yesterday morning, many of the parents said that this school's small class size, emphasis on technology and nearby location were the primary draws.
However, some were quick to realize that not all of the schools in the academically and financially-troubled Philadelphia School District have the same resources as does the Penn-assisted school.
"We are uneasy about the fact that that this quality of education is not available to all elementary school children in Philadelphia," parent Cathy McCoubrey said. "I consider it an unearned privilege. There's no reason why my kid should get this and somebody else's kid should not."
The school pays for its benefits partially from the contributions of Penn, which is providing monetary and academic support.
"It will bring together the best of what the teachers know about teaching... with the best of what the University knows from its research and experience," Streim said. Eventually, School of Education students will receive part of their training in the new school, and veteran district teachers will use the facility to update their skills.
But during the first day, the emphasis was on simpler things than theoretical teaching methods.
"They told me they were having fun -- if you hear that from kids, we were successful," school principal Sheila Sydnor said.
On their first day, the students did manage to sneak in some learning between the good times.
"I was surprised by their skill level," teacher Fatima Welcome said. "I... had everything planned out for the morning and these kids just breezed right through it, so I had to come up with new things very quickly, which is good."
