By R.E. Spears III, Matthew A. Ward and Tracy Agnew

The first last day of school at Pioneer Elementary School was the last first of the school year at the new school, which opened this fall and served about 545 students this year.

“I think it’s been great,” assistant principal Janice McCarter said. “I don’t think we could have asked for anything better.”

The school met its academic goals and came together as a community, she said.

“It really has been a great year, one full of pride,” McCarter said as she prepared to dismiss students. “I think we came together very successfully.”

Unlike most days, all students went to the bus ramp at once so they could wave goodbye to their fellow students as the first buses pulled away. There were lots of smiles, shouts and waves, and also a few tears.

It was a good thing 5-year-old Olivia Miller’s mother came to pick her up, because it’s doubtful Olivia would have been able to get her new bicycle onto the school bus. She won it in her class for having perfect attendance, her mom said.

Tori Colliflower also came to pick up her daughter, Abigail, from Pioneer. The family planned a full summer vacationing with family in Kentucky and having all sorts of other fun.

Of course, it was also the last day of school for Suffolk’s bus drivers, and as they lined up to pick up students at Mack Benn Jr. Elementary School, drivers seemed as excited as everyone else for the end of the school year.

As teachers hugged children who were headed for the bus ramp, driver Renee Hines sat on a sweltering Bus 217 and thought about the cold shower and air conditioning awaiting her when she finished her route at 5 p.m.

“It’s the last day,” she said. “There’s no complaints about that — it’s the last day.”

Hines has been driving three years for Suffolk Public Schools and has had the Mack Benn route for the past year. She loves the job, she said, but after three years she has no illusions about it.

“You have 64 kids behind you that you’ve got to be sure are OK,” she said.

She’ll spend the summer working her second job, she said, but in the fall she plans to climb behind the wheel again and spend another year delivering students back and forth.

On Friday, with a bus full of happy students ready for summer break, Hines fell in behind a line of the other Mack Benn buses, which concluded the year by doing two laps around the bus loop, past the teachers lined up along the sidewalk.

The teachers shouted their goodbyes and waved noisemakers as students stretched their arms through the windows and waved.

In a hallway at Creekside Elementary School a little before 4 p.m. on Friday, Maria Pablo was arming her sons, kindergartner Juan and fifth-grader Jose, with flower bouquets to give to their teachers.

“This is their first year in an American school — we are from Mexico,” Maria Pablo explained.

“We are hoping to make some reviews during the summer so they won’t forget what they learned.”

Pablo was one of many parents visiting Creekside to collect their sons and daughters on the last day of school.

During the summer, Mary Fairlie said she’d be keeping 6-year-old Kendall Fairlie busy. “A lot of swimming, play dates and the park” is how, she said.

With temperatures exceeding 90 degrees, Taniya Taylor, leaving the school with mom Toni Taylor, asked what she’d be doing over the summer, said: “Play in water.”

Hundreds of other students marched outside to the bus loop for the last time until the fall. Faculty and staff greeted them with pom poms, oodles of silly string and lots of hugs.

As the buses sped away, children waved from the windows and their teachers waved right back.

“No child left behind!” one teacher quipped.

“School’s out for summer!” said another.