Tens of thousands of English public and Catholic board students are back in school.
The pencils were sharpened and new backpacks were slung over shoulders as children headed off to school.
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board opened three new facilities this year, including Summerside Public School on Portobello Boulevard in Orleans.
Andrew Schrock started grade 5 at the school.
"I'm really nervous," he said. "I've only seen the school once and going to it for the first time."
He said he was excited to see his friends and that math was his favourite subject.
Principal Christine Lanos, says it's an exciting time.
"When we think back to the first time that I drove by the school, which was the end of November 2015, then it's very exciting now that we have our whole staff assembled," said Lanos. "We took occupancy of the building on August 22nd and since then staff have been in working incredible hours, making sure that everything is ready for the students."
The school itself, includes outdoor classroom space and areas in the school where kids can gather to study.
"We've set up our learning spaces, trying to prepare our students to be 21st Century, to have all the 21st Century skills, so collaboration, teamwork, cooperation," said Lanos. "A nice feature in the school is we have very unique spaces where the students can go outside of their classroom, work together on a variety of projects and everything to promote critical thinking and also the whole creativity piece is really important."
"If you walk around our classrooms, you'll see it doesn't look like the traditional classroom that we probably knew as students," she said. "We've replaced the traditional desk environment with all tables, so all the classrooms are set up to really promote that collaboration amongst everybody."
The majority of students at Summerside came from the nearby Avalon Public School.
Summerside has 400 students this year, ranging from kindergarten to Grade 7. This year's Grade 7s will stay at the school next year when they enter Grade 8.