Updated as of 3:47 p.m. on Aug. 26 to include video.
On Aug. 25, the Alamance-Burlington School System welcomed students back for the first day of school. Western Alamance senior Lillie Margaret Wilson said she can’t wait to dive back into both her dance team and classes.
“I'm also excited to learn more about calculus,” Wilson said. “I'm not really a math person, but I'm excited to have my wonderful teacher who is gonna help me through it and help me learn more.”
This year, ABSS implemented two changes, one to comply with new state-level legislation and the other to change the student information system the schools use.
The first change comes from the North Carolina Senate, which aims to restrict cellphone use in North Carolina classrooms, known as the Cell Phone-Free Education Bill. The bill was passed this July and eliminates or severely limits student access to cellphones in K-12 classrooms.
ABSS Board of Education Chair Sandy Ellington-Graves said this statewide change brings both opportunity and challenge.
“Young people have that fear of missing out, and with everybody having their phones put away, I think there's less pressure, and they can really focus on what's important during the school day,” Ellington-Graves said.
She said the biggest question she’s received from the cell phone restriction is related to safety. As a parent herself, she agrees that cellphones should still be available in an emergency.
“Making sure that we've got policies that protect everyone, I think that's really our goal,” Ellington-Graves said.
Wilson said the restriction is a good policy that will help students with their grades and their attention spans by limiting their distractions.
“It'll help bring more focus onto the teachers who are doing their job and trying to help us succeed and learn,” Wilson said. “These changes will help me in the next year to become less reliant on a device, learning things for myself and paying more attention, and maybe gaining some social skills while I'm at it, and I think that will help me when I go to college next year.”
The Principal of Altamahaw-Ossipee Elementary School, Erin Millspaugh, was recently named ABSS Principal of the Year. She said she’s looking forward to a new program beginning this school year at Altamahaw-Ossipee called Capturing Kids’ Hearts.
“We've actually, as a staff, just gone through training together, and we can't wait until our students come into the building in just a few days, so that we can strengthen those relationships with our families and our kids,” Millspaugh said.
Millspaugh said Capturing Kids’ Hearts is a program designed to strengthen school communities and build relationships. Millspaugh said this helps students build culture in the classroom, creating a comfortable and collaborative learning environment that can grow their academic success.
The nationwide program has been implemented at other North Carolina schools, including Wake County Public School System. Teachers in the program may greet students at the door with a handshake, encourage them to share positive experiences and close the class with a meaningful message or activity.
ABSS Superintendent Aaron Fleming said he wants ABSS to have significant academic growth and reduce ABSS’s low-performing schools by the end of the next school year — something he said Capturing Kids’ Hearts can help with.
“We want to be able to ensure that students not only are doing well academically, but also that when they graduate from school and get into college or the world of work, they are able to be very good, productive citizens as well,” Fleming said.
Alamance-Burlington Early College senior Shawn Means said his college application journey would not have been possible without the opportunities he’s had as a student at the Alamance-Burlington School System.
“The characteristics that I've built, the qualities I've obtained, have just been of my wildest dreams, and I never thought that I would be where I'm at,” Means said.
Southeast Alamance High School visual arts teacher Windy Lampson was named the 2025 District Teacher of the Year.
Lampson said her budget for her visual arts classes went up this year — something she said was much needed for her students.
“I'm going to get a display space so they need to be able to show their artwork and show off what it is that they're doing in class,” Lampson said. “That's going to be very helpful. I teach pottery, so giving them more options with glazes and things so that they can get really creative and learn how to incorporate those.”
In addition to her teaching duties, she is also the Infinite Campus leader at Southeast Alamance — ABSS’s new student information system for managing data and communication between students and parents. ABSS previously used PowerSchool.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction voted to move all North Carolina schools to Infinite Campus following a previous data breach in the PowerSchool system, and Lampson said she’s the one getting all the questions and figuring everything out.
“There's going to be a little bit of a struggle as we figure stuff out, but I think it's going to work out fine in a few days,” Lampson said.
The biggest question from teachers, according to Lampson, was how to receive the parent email list for their classes — which has since been resolved.
“One thing to another, but if that's our biggest problem, I mean, we have other ways of doing that,” Lampson said.