Chapman — "First day of school is always an exciting day," said Marilyn Weishaar, 7th grade Language Arts teacher in Chapman. "Always a fun beginning to your routine starting all over again."

For Weishaar, starting school is about the most normal thing she's done all summer, the summer of the Chapman tornado.

"For a lot of us, it's been an emotional summer," said Weishaar.

In addition to holding class in a modular building, another difference this first day was dealing with some of those emotions.

"Whether they were on the side that wasn't affected or on the side that was directly affected and they're still very emotional about the situation," she said.

For students, this first day of school does have a much different feel.

"Usually, the first day of school is not anything teachers or people are looking forward to," said 7th grader Stone Hayden. "This year, it's really different. Everyone's excited and that's just something you don't see for the first day of school. "

Weishaar is confident this school year is going to be just fine.

"Kids are very flexible," she said. "Kids are very adaptable."

But flexibility has its limits, and modular classrooms will be just fine, for a while.

"I'm hoping that they get everything they need and get the school put back together," said Hayden. "Because I don't want to end up graduating out of one of these."

Chapman's superintendent expected about 975 students to return to school.

That's about the same as last year's enrollment.

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