Jake Hammond, a former teacher, assistant principal and career-tech education director, was welcomed with open arms Friday, Aug. 2, as he began his first day as the new principal at Blue Springs Elementary School.

“I’m really excited to finally be here and to get the school year started — we have a great set of faculty and staff, but more importantly we have great students coming in,” Hammond told The News Courier after the initial rush of opening day settled on Friday. “I’ve been at the central office level for a little bit, so I’m just truly excited to be back in the building to see the kids achieve everything we know they can.”

According to Hammond, BSE is home to roughly 500 students this year with about 60 staff members to help the 2024-2025 school year run as smoothly as possible. As the county schools opened their doors Friday, Hammond accredited the parents and his staff for making his transition just as smooth.

“We have a wonderful team here and the community support has been more than I could ever imagine,” Hammond said. “We had great parent engagement this summer, with the open house, and the teachers have worked extremely hard to get their lesson plans and classroom set up. I think the teachers and the parents might be more excited for this year than I am.”

Blue Springs Elementary has students from pre-K through 5th grade, most of who take part in the school’s designated art and physical education time. The school also has a computer cart installed with Chromebooks for each classroom to utilize during the school year for hands-on learning lessons.

Hammond highlighted the students’ joy and ever-growing learning potential as some of the main reasons he decided to come back to the school building and take on the role of principal.

“We had a lot of smiling faces this morning — from the kids to parents — and that’s what you do this for, for moments like that,” Hammond said. “This is just the start of their academic career, we are the first step until they walk across that graduation stage. We have the opportunity to expand their learning capabilities and that’s what I’m looking forward to the most.”

Teamwork, with his staff and with the parents, was another skill that Hammond mentioned as playing a key role in helping expand the kids’ education.

“We can’t effectively do what we do without the parents’ help,” Hammond said. “Communication is going to be key, because we believe that the parents need to have a major input in their child’s education. We are going to need to work together as a team to educate the students to the best of our ability.”