Hoopla in the Loop-La celebrates students

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the La Conner Schools campus has been a remote location this semester.

That changed for a couple hours Wednesday afternoon.

The La Conner Elementary School parking area morphed into a festive convergence zone with teachers donning favorite Christmas garb – and, of course, masks – while lined up to greet students and families as they drove through the school’s circular drop-off zone.

Kids hung out of car windows, waving joyfully, and sharing gleeful shouts as they passed by. School staff responded in kind.

Holiday music – a mix of old favorites and new tunes – blared from a CD player. Laughter abounded. Smiles were ever present.

Landscape trees were adorned with stockings, bulbs and tinsel. Though minus snow, there was no mistaking there was a holiday spirit in the air.

“You could tell the teachers and everybody at the school were really happy to see the kids,” said a grandmother who drove a fourth grader through the school’s first-ever Hoopla in the Loop-La event, a celebration designed to offset COVID-19 restrictions that have kept most students at home this fall.

“For some of them,” she said of the school staff, “it might have been the first time they have seen the kids this year.”

La Conner Schools has provided remote, on-line instruction since September to curb spread of the coronavirus.

Everybody made the most of the all-too-brief get together. As cars pulled through the loop, students received gift bags bearing pencils and peppermint and chocolate treats.

High school students were also invited, and afterward seniors who underwent health screenings were able to gather at Landy James Gym for homework assistance and a motivational session.

It was another example of how upside-down 2020 has been. La Conner students, homebound this semester, were happy to start winter break at school.