BONNERS FERRY — The day dawned cool and cloudy, fitting weather for September and the first day back to school for Boundary County students districtwide. Bus drivers warmed up their engines in the half-light, sending puffs of exhaust like helium balloons into the grey sky and filling the still, early morning with the murmurs of a theater audience waiting for the curtain to rise.

Throughout the community, teachers and school staff members eased their cars into their accustomed parking spots, opened up the doors of empty classrooms adorned with shapes and colors, freshly tacked-up alphabets, inspirational posters and slogans. Each schoolbook was neatly in place, each empty desk newly aligned beside its neighbor and every cubby sat unclaimed, awaiting a new student to fill it.

At Valley View Elementary in Bonners Ferry, kindergarten and first-grade pupils, hair combed and faces scrubbed, clung to their parents’ hands as the current of first-day excitement tugged them toward their classrooms. As buses began to arrive, the day brightened. Students dressed in new jeans and spotless sneakers, shorts and tees or dresses poured from the schoolbus steps into the main doors of the buildings in a steady flow and dispersed to their respective classrooms like molten gold in search of shape and definition.