DeKALB – The new school year began Wednesday for the more than 6,300 DeKalb School District 428 students amid an early morning rainstorm, but teams of staff at the district’s 11 schools helped make sure the kids got off to a positive start.

It had been a tense few weeks before the start of school, with the threat of a teachers strike. But negotiations that went late into the evening Aug. 12 yielded a deal that teachers signed off on five days later, and the school board approved it Saturday.

So, school bells rang on time Wednesday.

“The schools are ready, the teachers are ready,” said Superintendent Doug Moeller, who began the day at DeKalb High School. “I just hope they all have a positive attitude and look forward to a good year.”

Some parents at Founders Elementary weren’t aware of the new process for dropping students off who arrive by vehicle. But a slew of staff and the bright markings on the newly redone and painted pavement helped with navigation – especially with the rain. Kids hopped out of cars and were immediately led into the building and off to their new classrooms.

“Our expectations are for (everyone) to be responsible, respectful and be ready. So we’re really just going to focus on those this year,” Founders Principal Connie Rohlman said. “If we do those things then we’re going to do lots of learning.”

Rohlman is new at Founders this year. She came to the school from Malta Elementary, a school half the size of Founders, and replaced Kristen Smith. The new principal also welcomed several new teachers to the school, a few of whom were hired within the past week.

Founders has one of the largest student counts among the district’s eight elementary schools. Rohlman said the school has 22 sections of classes: Kindergarten through second grade and fourth grade each have four classrooms of students; so far, there are three rooms each of third- and fifth-graders.

“At this point, we’re not concerned. But we’ll see if more students register how we’ll handle that,” said Rohlman, who has been with the district for 26 years, 10 of them at Malta.

Class size was an issue for teachers as they negotiated their new contract. They had asked for caps on the number of students per class, but the school district prevailed on that issue with no limits being placed in the contract.

Founders and other schools also received a bunch of new students as a result of new address boundaries. Last spring, the school board redrew the boundaries that schools serve. Moeller said the change still kept about the same number of students in each school building.

Starting this year, eight students get to attend school a bit closer to home as the district reconstituted its deaf and hard of hearing program. The students faced having to move with their previous program to another school building that would have been a one-hour-each-way commute.

Administrators decided last spring to bring the program and the students back to Tyler Elementary School and Clinton Rosette Middle School. Cristy Meyer, head of special education for the district, said six new staff were hired for the program.

It also was a big day for Michelle Albano, DeKalb High School’s new principal, and at least 19 new teachers. She was hired in April and officially started July 1, and welcomed students back Wednesday for the start of the new school year. She comes to DeKalb High School from Bolingbrook High School, where she was an assistant principal.

“The energy level, despite all the things that happened with the (union) contract, has been extremely positive. I think people were just waiting for the green light to move forward ... and get the kids here,” she said.

She will be part of the school district’s roll out of Chromebooks to high-schoolers. For the first time since the district started its one-to-one technology program that put the Google-based laptops into elementary and middle school students’ hands, the ninth- through 12th-graders will use them as part of their instructional experience.

“That’s (technology) what they’re going to be using in college,” Moeller said. “It’s also about the research component ... so they can get a basic understanding of how to go about doing quantitative and qualitative research.”