By MOLLY DAVIDSON / Staff Writer

PELHAM—After two full weeks of classes, things at Pelham City Schools are going well, PCS Superintendent Dr. Scott Coefield confirmed.

“They’ve been busy, but they’ve gone very well,” Coefield said of the School System’s first academic weeks during an Aug. 22 phone interview.

Coefield has visited and walked through each school facility. He confirmed finishing touches are being put on the updated and cleaned school interiors and landscaping work at each academic facility is nearing completion. New lighting and signage will be installed at Pelham High School in the coming weeks, Coefield said.

“We’ve done well, we’ve met most of the deadlines,” Coefield said. “We’ve gotten a lot of compliments (on the schools’ interiors) from the staff.”

New school programs are also going well. Pelham’s new middle school and high school Blazer BEST robotics teams kicked off their six-week competition preparation period at Bartow Arena on Aug. 21, and the project-based afterschool programs run by Appleton Learning are off to a strong start.

“As far as I know, it’s going really well,” Coefield said of the afterschool programs.

Two weeks into the school year, the faculty and community response to the new Pelham City School System has been positive as well.

“I have not gotten any negative responses (from the community),” Coefield said. “I think our staff is excited.”

The School System overcame “poor communications in the summer” and several technological and network issues early on.

“We were not able to communicate with parents like we normally would before school,” Coefield said, noting phone and email systems were down for a large part of the summer, making it difficult to communicate lunch and bus information to parents and for the school to receive student information. “We were really up against the clock getting those things in,” Coefield said.

“All the kinks are working out,” Coefield said. “I think we’re off to a really good start.”