For so many of our students, the first day at Orchard Friends means so much more than the start of another school year—it’s the start of an entirely new relationship: with school, with learning, and with themselves.

When Charlie Donegan was getting ready to leave preschool, his teachers took his mother, Carla, aside. “They told me, all of the warm fuzzies of this place are going to evaporate; his experience in kindergarten is going to be different.”