FLOMATON, Ala. — Flomaton Elementary School’s new principal is easing the youngest members of the student body into their first year of school before the rest of the building even reopens for the fall. Leslie Sellers, who officially took over as principal on July 1, launched a kindergarten boot camp this week to help incoming students get comfortable with their classrooms, meet their teachers and start building routines ahead of the first day of school. The camp began Monday and runs from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. through Thursday.
The half-day format is deliberately gentle. Instead of a full schedule, the youngest Hurricanes get a compressed version of a school day — the morning routines, the classroom walk-throughs, the introductions — and then head home before lunch. For many of them it is the first extended time they have spent in a school building at all, and the camp is designed to make that first exposure feel like an invitation rather than a test.
Teachers across the school are scheduled to report Aug. 4, with students returning to class Aug. 10. For a five-year-old walking into a school building for the first time, though, that first bell can be less intimidating with a practice run already under their belt. By the time the full student body arrives, the kindergartners who attended the camp will already know where their classroom is, what their teacher looks like and what happens when the morning bell rings — small advantages that educators say compound quickly in the opening weeks.
Sellers said the camp reflects the approach she wants to bring to the school as a whole.
“I’ve enjoyed working in the Flomaton community,” Sellers said. “This is my next step in my career path.”
A Career Rooted in Escambia County
Sellers is a native of Atmore and was a member of the first graduating class at Northview High School in 1996. She went on to attend Jefferson Davis Community College in Brewton for two years before transferring to Auburn University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business education. She later returned to Auburn for a master’s degree in the same field.
Her teaching career began outside the region, with stops at Sylacauga High School and then eight years at Vestavia Hills. It was during that stretch that she married her husband, Ray, who is also from Atmore. The couple has two sons, Jackson, 16, and Myles, 13.
When the family moved back to the Atmore area, Sellers returned to Northview before spending three years at J.U. Blacksher High School and five years at Escambia County High School in Atmore, where she was promoted to assistant principal. From there she moved to Rachel Patterson Elementary School as assistant principal, then to Flomaton High School in the same role, before being named principal at Flomaton Elementary.
That résumé gives Sellers an unusually complete map of the Escambia County School System. She has worked at the high school level in three different communities, at the county’s largest high school in Atmore, at an elementary campus in the county seat, and now at the elementary school serving Flomaton — a progression that has put her inside classrooms at every grade band the district serves.
New Faces in the Building
Sellers said she is starting the school year with a significant amount of turnover on her staff, including nine new teachers, an additional pre-K aide and a new bookkeeper. Despite the changes, she said the team is ready.
“Everybody’s on board,” she said, adding that she was encouraged by colleagues to apply for the Flomaton Elementary position and is looking forward to the new school year.
The scale of the turnover is considerable for a school of Flomaton Elementary’s size, and it makes the kindergarten boot camp more than a tradition — it is also an early test of a substantially rebuilt staff. New teachers get the camp as their first exposure to the school’s rhythms and its families, and Sellers gets a week of watching her new team in action before the first official day arrives.
The pre-K aide position adds capacity at the earliest level of the school, where Alabama’s voluntary pre-kindergarten program has expanded across the state in recent years and where staff ratios matter most. The new bookkeeper, meanwhile, takes over the office-side operations that keep a small school running — a reminder that leadership transitions touch every corner of a building, not just the classroom.
Why Kindergarten Boot Camps Matter
Transition programs like the one at Flomaton Elementary have become increasingly common across Alabama school systems as educators look for ways to ease the jump from home or day care into a full classroom setting. A short, low-stakes introduction before the first official day gives young children the chance to learn where their classroom is, practice basic routines such as lining up and using school supplies, and meet the adults who will be guiding them each day — all without the added pressure of a full class schedule.
For families, the camp offers an early look at what the school year will bring and a chance to ask questions before the larger rush of the first week of classes. School officials say that early comfort with the building and staff often translates into a smoother adjustment once the full student body returns.
The benefits run in both directions. Teachers get to observe their incoming students before the roster becomes official, spotting which children already know their letters and numbers, which may need extra support separating from parents, and which are ready to run on the first morning. That early read shapes how classrooms are arranged and how the first weeks are paced, and it turns the first day of school from a roll of the dice into a planned event.
Flomaton and Its Schools
Flomaton Elementary School serves students in the town of Flomaton, which straddles the Escambia County line near the Alabama-Florida state border. The school is part of the Escambia County School System, which also oversees Escambia County High School, J.U. Blacksher and several other campuses across the county.
The town’s location shapes its schools in practical ways. Sitting along the state line with Interstate 65 and U.S. 29 nearby, Flomaton draws families with connections on both sides of the border, and the elementary school functions as one of the community’s central institutions — the place where most civic life in a small town intersects with the next generation. School events draw parents and grandparents alike, and the annual calendar of the elementary school tends to set the rhythm of the town’s fall.
Sellers’ own path through the district’s schools gives her a built-in understanding of that role. As an Atmore native who came up through the county system herself, she has lived the experience of the students now walking through her doors, and her return to the region after years in larger systems outside it mirrors the choices of many families who come home to raise their children in Escambia County.
Leadership in a Small District
Taking over an elementary school in a small county district is a distinct kind of leadership challenge. Unlike principals in large suburban systems, rural principals typically handle a wider range of duties directly — from transportation questions to family outreach to facilities issues — with fewer layers of central office support between them and the classroom. Sellers’ years as an assistant principal at three different schools in the district, plus her earlier classroom career, have given her a working knowledge of how those pieces fit together across Escambia County.
The boot camp also gives her an early signature as a leader. First-year principals often look for a visible, community-facing initiative to establish their approach, and a program that serves the district’s youngest students — and their parents — sends a clear message about priorities. Sellers has framed the camp as simply part of how she wants the school to operate: welcoming, prepared and focused on the fundamentals before the fundamentals become a struggle.
Looking Ahead to Aug. 10
With the camp concluding Thursday, the school’s attention shifts to the Aug. 4 return of teachers and the Aug. 10 arrival of the full student body. The intervening week is the standard scramble of any school opening, but Sellers begins her first full year as a principal with the hardest part already tested: her kindergarten families have met her, her new staff has met them, and the building’s newest students have already learned the most important lesson of all, which is that school is a place they can manage.
For a community watching a new principal take over its elementary school amid significant staff turnover, the early signs Sellers points to are intentionally modest: a smooth camp, a team she describes as on board, and a first day that should feel familiar even to the smallest students in the building. The longer work of the school year begins Aug. 10, with a boot camp already in the books.