Kimbrough stayed at CRLS during the summer and watched workers frantically putting on finishing touches, right up until the day before school opened.

"It came down to the wire. The week before Labor Day, we had folks in the building doing construction," he says. "Maintenance worked around the clock. We opened intact. They really worked their butts off."

Another logistical headache was scheduling, which kept guidance counselors and administrators busy during the first weeks of school.

Students sign up for courses in the spring, then their preferences are typed into a computer system called StarBase. The computer program produces a schedule that administrators send out late in the summer.

Evans says the scheduling problems were "horrendous." Though she says restructuring may have exacerbated them, the schedules didn't go smoothly last year, either.

"We still don't know how to use the system we bought two years ago," she says. "You can't blame the computers or the software."

Debra Socia, dean of curriculum in School 2, sits on the scheduling committee. She says some scheduling problems took weeks to resolve.