Cape Suzette Elementary School

The home base of public education in Cape Suzette is the Cape Suzette Elementary School building. It is certainly not the only schoolhouse in the city, but it is the largest. With a lovely and spacious campus, ample playground, and location in a quiet, suburban neighborhood, C.S. Elementary opens wide its doors and welcomes grade schoolers to its halls of learning.

SCHOOL LAYOUT

The main school building of Cape Suzette Elementary is two floors tall and looks like a 'U' or horseshoe from overhead. The outer grounds are wide and well-watered, hedged by chain-link fence around the back yard playground and meticulously-trimmed shrubbery to the sides and front of the school building. Criss-crossing sidewalks run at right angles along the property, connecting to flights of steps leading to the street and a paved circle at the corner with a flagpole flying Usland's red, white, and blue colors.

The school's interior is pleasant, colored in muted blues, greens, and off-whites appropriate for academia. Plenty of bright sunlight warms the tile-floored hallways, whose ceiling lamps provide illumination on stormy days and after hours. School custodians keep the place spic-and-span, aided by school policy which bans littering. Lockers are in every hallway but vacant ones are few, so two classmates often share one locker. Other areas are the gym, the school nurse's office, and the cafeteria; maps at each stairwell ensure that no student will ever have the excuse of getting lost on the way to class.

CLASSROOMS & CURRICULUM

Each classroom at C.S. Elementary School contains a blackboard, supply cabinets, a desk for the teacher, and tables and chairs for the students. Reference materials include bookshelves with encyclopedias and dictionaries; world study aids include an atlas and a globe of the earth. Teachers occasionally show films in class, hence a pull-down screen is mounted over the chalkboard. A radiator at the back wall provides heating on cooler days, while ceiling fans and the school's ventilation system circulate cold air on warm days.

Morning classes are held at regular school hours for grades one through eight. A typical day starts with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance; followed by study periods interspersed with gym class, lunch, and recess; then finally the bell to leave.

Coursework entails basic studies in mathematics, grammar, geography, history, and science; advanced studies such as algebra and English composition are reserved for sixth grade and higher. Pupils pair up using the buddy system, in which teachers assign a "study buddy" for the week to help learning and encourage cooperation among the kids. Thanks to these scholastic efforts, very few students flunk a grade or suffer the humiliation of being expelled. Any who do fall short of graduating may take what's known as an "equivalency test" — an hour-long test covering a years' worth of study — to earn their diploma.

FITNESS & SPORTS

Knowing that physical exercise is vital to growing youngsters, Cape Suzette Elementary runs an excellent youth fitness program to strengthen children's bodies as well as their brains. Daily gym class introduces participants to basic exercises and mild aerobics, under the tutelage of a school coach. Students inclined toward organized sports might try out for the track and field team or join junior league teams such as C.S. Elementary's basketball squad, the Cape Suzette Tigers.

"Kick 'em in the shins, make 'em sweat,
Yowzer, yowzer, Cape Suzette!
Are we gonna beat 'em? Yeah you bet!
Yowzer, yowzer, Cape Suzette!"

— C.S. School Rallying Cheer

FACULTY

The city school board strives to make Cape Suzette Elementary School a beneficial influence in each child's life. Much of the credit goes to the teachers, who patiently guide pupils through lessons but also give demerits for misbehavior. Mrs. Morrisey, a senior member of the faculty, loves to instill knowledge in her young audience but frowns on laziness and classroom tomfoolery. Exceptional offenders may spend time in detention, or take a visit to the office of the school principal, Mr. Pomeroy. A stickler for the rules, Principal Pomeroy ardently upholds school policy and will not hesitate to expel problem students, though he may grant amnesty in unusual cases. School administration hardly sways to questions of unfair grading, citing the accuracy of their test checking and the veracity of textbook information.