KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – The children flood out of corridors and classrooms and gather at the bus loop where the principal pipes Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” from the loud speakers. Each student flails onto the busses with all the enthusiasm and spirit of confetti falling from the rafters as McRae Elementary celebrated its 20-year school year-end.

The triumphant students board the buses and hang out of the windows facing the loading stations where they wave to their teachers and friends, some of whom they will never see again. The bus drivers then give students celebratory laps around the cement doughnut of the loading station, horns honking, children yelping and teachers crying the whole way.

“We’re called the best kept secret in Clay County,” said Eileen Johnson, pre-kindergarten teacher at McRae Elementary. “We have done this every single year. Every year, they put on the halleluiah music every year and all the kids know: around, and around, and around, and around. It’s wonderful.”

Perhaps, Johnson said, the colloquial title of ‘best kept secret’ has to do with the kinds of celebrations they throw every year.

For instance, Johnson prepares a birthday celebration for all of her students who have summer birthdays, so they have a chance to celebrate their birthday much like all of the children who have birthdays during the school year with a gift bag, a certificate, singing and, as Johnson explains, a celebratory spanking.

However, for some teachers the event reminded them of students they’ll never see again. McRae Elementary’s ESE program is being transferred to Keystone Heights Elementary next fall. Linda Waters, because of this change, will never see some of her previous students again, some of which have followed her from kindergarten to sixth grade.

“Some of these children I’ve had for six years, so this is the last year I’ll see them, even the students that are in third grade,” Waters said. “It was bittersweet. We all gave hugs and kisses. Happy in a way, too.”

The bitter comes in the tears she wiped away under her blue sunglasses while the students drove away in their school busses for the last time. The sweet comes with the change – the change for her former students, and her own change while she prepares to teach a different curriculum.

Nevertheless, in keeping with the school’s time-honored tradition, Waters and her class held a going away celebration the day before with hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill and a slip and slide.

Summer’s shadow creeps over teachers all over Clay County. Johnson and Waters might not see some of their students again. It’s difficult to stay sad while the kids ride away with waves and laughs while Mendel’s “Messiah” chants,

“Hallelujah, hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!”