Children across central North Carolina are back in the classroom.

In Wake County alone about 140,000 students, both traditional and year-round, are in school.

With a new school year comes a new schedule for Wake County with the addition of early release Wednesdays. Year-round schools are already on that schedule.

The idea is to build in time for teachers to work together without having to worry about supervising students.

"It's going to be dedicated solely to focusing on student learning as our teachers collaborate in teams," said WCPSS Superintendent Dr. Del Burns, Tuesday morning.

"I'm really excited because that provides an opportunity for all of the teachers in a grade level, or in school, or content area, to focus on the learning needs of each individual student."

"Teachers are learning from teachers, and that's really important," Donna Hargens, the school district's chief academic officer, said.

Each Wednesday, teachers get together in groups and talk about strategies that work for specific courses, projects and even students.

"This has been a great opportunity to say, ‘Hey, we have a set hour on Wednesday afternoons,'" Deanna Harris, a teacher at East Cary Middle School, said.

"If you're by yourself, you're using trial and error," Hargens said. "And it takes a long time to develop strategies that you know work."

Having one day every week that's shorter than the others can be problematic.

Parents have to figure out how to get their kids home a little earlier, and groups like the YMCA and the City of Raleigh recreation department's afterschool programs have had to adjust.

"We mostly hire college students who obviously go to class in the middle part of the day, so that was a challenge for us to make sure," Beth Soles, the program manager for Raleigh's afterschool, said. "Are the staff available to come in an hour early on Wednesdays to work for us?"

Soles said some parents are sending their kids to after school on Wednesdays only, but not as many as she expected.

In addition to the new normal routine, there are six weeks spread throughout the year when the early release moves to two and a half hours; each of those will also be on a Wednesday.

The changes to the schedule mean some changes for traffic patterns, too.

Hundreds of school zone signs are in the process of being changed to reflect the new times.

In Raleigh, crews were only able to get started last week, and the process should take three or four weeks to finish.

The new signs will list the Wednesday timing under the rest of the week's schedule.

"It's going to be a little more difficult to read, but we feel like it's important that it's a consistent message across the county," Mike Kennon, Raleigh's transportation operations manager, said.

Kennon said he doesn't know how much the switch will cost yet because some signs will have to be completely replaced for $75 a piece, while others can just have stickers covering up parts of the old design.

In Cary, crews already removed any references to timing, and simply switched to signs that flash when the school zone speed limits are in effect.

Students at traditional calendar schools begin classes again Tuesday.

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