Having mastered kindergarten, Evie, 6, knows what she wants — and expects — from LINC as she starts the first grade.

Plenty of outdoor play, she says, plus her favorite — necklace and bracelet art craft — and for sure a lot of coloring.

“Because I’m good at coloring,” Evie said with her mother Jenny Tucker at Boone Elementary’s back-to-school picnic in the Center School District.

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“I colored a dinosaur picture with four colors really good,” she said, “and I didn’t even scribble.”

LINC Caring Communities team members welcomed Evie and thousands of other children and their families in the Kansas City Public Schools, the Hickman Mills, Grandview, Center, North Kansas City and Fort Osage school districts, and Lee A. Tolbert Community Academy and Genesis charter schools.

Yes, there will be plenty of all the creative fun that kids enjoy in LINC’s before- and after-school programs, but just as reliable are the broader supports LINC’s Caring Communities bring to the children, families and neighborhoods.

At Melcher Elementary in the Kansas City Public Schools, lines of big-smiling, cheering neighbors greeted the children as they stepped off the bus and onto the steps leading up to school’s front doors.

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Many were part of the Million Fathers March that LINC has helped organize for many years to get each new school year off to a rolling start.

“We want to show our kids we have great support within the community,” said Pierre DeClue, LINC’s Caring Communities Coordinator at Melcher. “We want to make sure they see that there are men in the community who appreciate them and love them.”

A line of purple shirts in the greeting line showed that the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity — of which Melcher Dean of Students Kenneth Ellison is a member — came out in abundance.

“I love to be here . . . welcoming our students with a fresh, healthy start,” Ellison said. “It’s a great school. It’s a great community.”

College students Damien Daniels and Marty Jackson, both from “the inner city,” joined in the line.

“We want to make sure they have fun and make sure they feel comfortable wherever they’re at,” Jackson said.

It’s going to be a big year with some new sites and faces — including opening a new LINC program at the new Sixth Grade Center in Hickman Mills, and welcoming Red Bridge Elementary students into LINC’s combined program with Indian Creek Elementary in Center.

And there will be families, from North Kansas City to Grandview, getting to know LINC for the first time, like kindergartner Carter, 5, and his father John Atchley at Boone.

“He’s excited and nervous,” the father said about his son. But it’s comforting, Atchley said, that “LINC has a reputation for taking care of kids, making sure they’re happy and safe.”

That’s what Caring Communities look like.

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