Students of the Steelville R–3 School District will be headed back to class on Aug. 25 with Aug. 20 marking the planned open house and student orientation events for all grade levels. At these come-and-go events, students and their guardians will meet teachers, explore school facilities and attend orientation and information sessions. Information about open houses and other back-to-school resources are available on the Steelville R-3 School District’s website.

The kindergarten open-house is from 5-6:15 p.m. at the Steelville Elementary School. A 6-7 p.m. Meet-Your-Teacher-Night event will overlap for first through fourth grades.

At the Steelville Middle School, a Meet-Your-Teacher-Night will be held from 5 to 6 p.m. for sixth through eighth graders. An orientation will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. for fifth graders.

Freshman orientation is from 4:45-6:15 p.m., followed by a Meet-Your-Teacher-Night from 6:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at Steelville High School.

This year, orientation and Meet-Your-Teacher-Nights have been scheduled on the same evening in order to be more convenient for families. 

“We’ve kind of tried to integrate those just to make it a little easier on families,” said Steelville R-3 Superintendent Steve Vetter. “You’re not up and out multiple evenings as we get started.”

The most important thing for parents to handle before the first day of classes, according to Vetter, is simply getting students registered. Parents will need to register their students online before the first day of school by visiting the Steelville R-3 School District website.

“Honestly, that’s probably the biggest thing: just get registered,” Vetter said. “And make sure they’ve gone through the school supply list.

School supply lists are available online. Vetter said that the school district will help families who are unable to get school supplies.

“If somebody’s unable to get school supplies, we have stuff we stock up to make sure that all the kiddos are taken care of when they come back to school,” Vetter said. “They can just shoot their teacher or their principal an email or talk to them at meet-your-teacher-night. We will take care of those things.”

Vetter also encouraged students to apply for free and reduced school lunches during their routine school registration.

“You know, we do ask, and as part of the registration, that they fill out a free and reduced lunch form, even folks that know they don’t qualify,” Vetter said. “The more of those we collect and turn in, the better it is. And then sometimes people do qualify, and they don’t know it.”

Parents who want to apply for free and reduced lunches should also do so online before the first day of classes. Physical copies of the free and reduced lunch application are also available at school offices.

For the 2026-27 school year, elementary school breakfast costs $1.80, with lunch costing $2.65. Middle school breakfast is $1.80 and $2.90 for lunch. High school breakfast costs $1.90 and $3.15 for lunch. Reduced breakfast costs $0.30 and reduced lunches are $0.40. Adult breakfast is $2.05, and lunch for adults is $3.20.

Teachers and staff in Steelville are also preparing for the start of the school year. This week, Steelville R-3 teachers worked with Step Up, an education consulting service to review and revise educational curricula used by the school district.   

Vetter said that the curriculum workshop will help teachers deliver better learning outcomes, while aligning to state standards for educational material.

“They go look at test scores. What standards did students do very well in? What standards did they struggle in?” Vetter said. “As an educator, then we look back and go, okay, how did I deliver this? And they struggle because I need to do something different. And then it’s just going back through and making sure that we’re hitting on everything at the right grade level for those kiddos.”

School custodial and maintenance staff have also been preparing to welcome back students and teachers.

Custodial Director Ted Brazel said that his team has worked throughout the summer to get school facilities first-day-ready.

“Our main goal during the summer is pretty much just to try to get the buildings and the school district in better shape than it was the year before,” Brazel said.

For Brazel and his team, doing so required stripping, cleaning, and refinishing tile floors throughout school facilities, and replacing any broken tiles from the prior school year.

Brazel said, “it’s pretty rewarding, especially when it comes to stripping floors, because you’re actually bringing the tiles back down to the base layer, so you get to see the whole year of built up dirt just disappear.”

Maintenance Director Sam Mueller’s team also spent the summer months making upgrades to school facilities. They installed new LED lighting in Steelville High School and new air conditioning mini-split units in the elementary school, measures which Mueller said will have cost-savings in energy.

A planned renovation of the Steelville High School’s gymnasium floor will intrude into the school year. According to Vetter, the project will start around Aug. 24 and take approximately a month to complete. For the first several weeks of classes, basketball, indoor volleyball and other indoor sports will be moved to the middle school gymnasium.