“POULSBO – The doors opened at all North Kitsap schools on Wednesday, and in walked about 6,400 students for the first day of school. At Poulsbo Elementary, students from shy kindergartners to stoic sixth-graders were welcomed with an outdoor flag ceremony, The Star-Spangled Banner, and a few words from North Kitsap School District Superintendent Dr. Gene Medina. How was your summer? Medina asked. Did you have fun? The answer was enthusiastic: Yeeeeesssss! Are you ready for today? Medina asked. Yeeeeeessss! The ceremony then closed with the guitar stylings of co-principal Jerry Willson, as the whole school performed This Land is Your Land. Everyone’s energetic and ready to go, said co-principal Debra Otterby. The teachers have worked hard in their classrooms. Fifth-grader Krista Vestman had about as much fun this summer as a kid could have, sailing and travelling to soccer tournaments. But all the time, she couldn’t wait for school to get started. I’m really happy to go back, she said. When it’s summer, your friends go on trips and you can’t see them. But in school you get to hang out and talk to them. School is all right, Vestman said. You get to meet new people, you get to hang out; it’s really good, she said. Even the older students get excited. I remember walking around as a seventh grader, thinking those older kids were so big, said Ashley Morse, now a ninth grader and a veteran of the ins and outs of Poulsbo Junior High. We’re the biggest now. It’s pretty cool. Jenna Taylor, a classmate of Morse’s in Leadership Class, shared that view. You feel pretty tall walking through the halls, she said. Both students admit that they thought about school over the summer (All the time Morse said), and even though they had fun – Morse camping in Eastern Washington, Taylor whitewater rafting near Yakima – they couldn’t get their minds off school. I was counting down the days, Taylor said. “