Meridian Public Schools and Lauderdale County Schools have a strong start to a new school year.

The summer is over for students, and while they return to school, principals and educators are expecting to have a positive outcome this 2018-2019 school year at Meridian and Lauderdale County Schools. Principal for Southeast High School, Russell Keene says education is taken very seriously on campus.

Meridian HighSchool principal Victor Hubbard says the first day of school just doesn’t compare to any other day of the school semester.

"The beginning of the school year has been an incredible day; it 's great to see students excited about returning to school.”

Southeast HighSchool student Tyra Cooper believes her future relies on her education and plans to stay on top of it so that she can get accepted into the University of her dreams by the time she graduates.

“This year I plan to lean more towards my education, I don’t really want to do sports, I just want to be very involved and get up my grades that way I can get a full ride to Ole Miss and major in psychology.”

Principal Keene says even though today was the official start of a brand-new school year, everything flowed smoothly, and there were no major concerns.

“It’s all coming together. The kids were here and ready to go this morning early, we always have some little traffic concerns and problems with so many people coming in, but we worked through that just like we always do, and we’re expecting a great year this year as well.”