“You’re in charge of the whole country!”
“You’re the boss of everything!”
These were two of the many guesses from first-grade students at Jamestown Elementary School when asked by Jamestown Mayor Regena Hinton about what they think her job entails.
Hinton was at JES to read the book “My Grandma’s the Mayor” to a group of kindergarteners and first-graders in what would be that group’s first-ever school assembly. After taking a moment to laugh, the Hinton explained some of her duties to the students.
“The mayor goes to lots of meetings,” Hinton said. “They actually hire people to work for the city. They go out when there’s a fire at night sometimes or the roads are bad. They try to plans things for people to have stuff to do, try to get businesses to come to Jamestown so that we all have somewhere good to go eat and have different things to do.”
In addition to reading a book — with her grandson and JES student Joshua Inguagguatio by her side — Hinton also brought a picture of the old elementary school, taken in 1938, and a piece of wood from the old JES gym floor for students to pass around and look at.
Following the reading, the students had the opportunity to ask Hinton some questions, which allowed the mayor to share some memories she had from the previous JES building.
“When I went here, it was first through eighth grade,” she said. “There was no middle school … When I went to school here, all the grade schools had basketball teams and cheerleaders: Jamestown, Union Chapel, Russell Springs, and Salem. Each school played basketball, football, softball, whatever sports there was. There was all kinds of excitement because everybody wanted to beat the other schools.”
“Our gym and lunchroom was all the same room, and in our gym, we had a really huge trampoline,” added Hinton, which elicited a strong and enthusiastic response from the students.
The assemblies — kindergarten and first grade were separated into two different groups — both ended with Hinton showing off her basketball skills and the students joining in.
