Parents and guardians scan the schedule for bus routes outside of Gearhart Elementary School on the first day of school to make sure they know when their students will get dropped off. The 2014-15 school year started this week the day after Labor Day.

Gearhart Elementary School was a hub of hectic activity Tuesday morning as parents and guardians helped students find their appropriate classrooms, meet teachers and staff and get prepared for the upcoming school year.

The morning also was a busy time for Juli Wozniak, who had a lot look forward to on her first day of school in her position as the new principal of Gearhart Elementary School. Wozniak was hired over the summer by Seaside School District to replace former principal Melissa Linder, who took a curriculum job with the Astoria School District.

Wozniak was excited about the beginning of the 2014-15 school year, especially “meeting all the new kids and seeing all the smiling faces.”

Many of the students were, in fact, smiling and seemed to be anticipating the first day of classes as much as their principal. Others showed trepidation or, in the case of many of the older elementary students, nonchalance — this wasn’t their first rodeo.

Mark Jovalusky, a parent who helps with the school’s backpack food program, said his fifth-grade son was excited, especially to reunite with many of his friends after a long summer. Since he has been going to the school since 2009, he’s comfortable in the setting, and there are no more first-day-of-school jitters.

For parent Shasta Hoff, it was she who was experiencing the jitters. The first day of school can be “very nerve-wracking,” she said. She already had dropped off her daughter Talya, a first-grader, at teacher Kellyann Pinkstaff’s classroom but was lingering outside the door to make sure Talya got settled in and then blow her a final goodbye kiss.

It’s scary for Hoff to take her daughter to school, she said, and she can do nothing but hope the girl is treated well by other students and teachers. She also has to hope her daughter doesn’t get scared and want her mother to come back. Hoff finds comfort among the familiar faces of other parents she has gotten to know over the years who are faced with the same predicament.

Even though it was her first year at Gearhart Elementary School, Wozniak was excited to facilitate the back-to-school process to ease the transition for everyone involved.

She tried to make the morning on the first day of school a reassuring time for parents by allowing it to have a more casual and open feel. Because the school had not yet held its open house before class was back in session, many students and parents were just meeting teachers and scoping out new classrooms for the first time. Parents were allowed to walk their students to their classrooms so they could get a visual of the setting where their children would be learning.

Providing support to teachers is an important goal of Wozniak’s, as well. The most important thing she could do this year to make sure the first day of school went smoothly for them, she said, was by keeping things as organized as possible so everyone could know what to expect.