Students and parents stand in front of Hubbard Middle School sign on the first day of classes in August 2023. (Raquel Villatoro/Tyler Morning Telegraph File)

Tweens and teens beamed with confidence as they entered Tyler ISD’s Hubbard Middle School for the first day of class Wednesday morning. Some were excited to see their friends, some were just trying to remember their locker combination and some were telling their parents to park the car as far away from school as possible.

“I think the first day of school is like Christmas,” said Ashley Feldman, a mom of two middle schoolers and a high schooler. “You wake up, get up early, curl your hair, get ready and head on to school.”

Hubbard currently has 904 students enrolled, with 89 staff members, including its newest principal, John Smiley.

“We are excited to welcome students on campus,” Smiley said. “We have been training the teachers the last two weeks about building relationships and rigor and things like that in the classroom. So, we’re excited to have them back and to get the year started right.”

Smiley has been with Tyler ISD for 15 years, nine of those as an administrator. He was principal of Rice Elementary prior to Hubbard.

“One of my main goals is for all the students to find somebody to build a relationship with whether that be a teacher or somebody on campus,” Smiley said.

To achieve this goal, students will have the opportunity to join clubs and organizations.

“We’re gonna try and have a big push for that to get kids involved with one another and rally around something that they all have an interest in,” Smiley said.

He reached out to Tyler Legacy High School about what clubs they have so the middle schoolers can see what options could be available to them.

“One person reached out to me and asked if she could start a board game club because she really likes board games and had some students last year that were interested in board games, but there wasn’t a board game club,” Smiley said.

Bible Club and Future Farmers of America Club are just a couple on a long list of organizations that will be available to the middle school students.

With expectations of establishing relationships and being successful academically, one of the battles Smiley and the staff of Hubbard Middle School has to deal with is cell phones.

“We’re not allowing students to have cell phones,” Smiley said. “I think it has a negative impact on their education. We’re taking a hard line on some things like cell phones, earbuds, dress code, things like that.”

Smiley said the theme for Hubbard Middle School this year is “We are the Pack.”

“We’re building around that theme with the teachers, with the community, with the students that we are all in this together,” he said “We are the pack, we run together, we work together, we succeed and we fail together.”

“I’m looking forward to just maybe more energy … the positive energy I think is what we’re most excited about and that’s what we’ve seen with Mr. Smiley already,” Feldman said.

Hubbard is one of two schools that is receiving a brand new campus to replace its 55-year-old facility thanks to the 2022 bond proposal passed by voters.

According to Tyler ISD, the constructed facility will be located on the school’s current site designed to exact specifications as other middle schools and will be designed to improve traffic flow and designated parking areas.

The new campus will also have the most updated technology for safety and security, meet all energy/building codes, ADA, TEA, and UIL requirements.

“We just love (Tyler ISD) and we’re just so grateful for everything they put into our kids,” Feldman said.