When Margie Washington woke up this morning, she knew she had to add one thing to the pile of back-to-school items awaiting her three kids - raincoats and umbrellas.

“We got new clothes, new backpacks, all kinds of new stuff for them,” said Washington, who has two elementary students and a middle schooler in the Ann Arbor school district. “We didn’t get new rain gear. At least the old stuff will keep the new stuff dry until they get to school.”

While the rain may have matched the moods of many students, Washington said her kids were excited to get back to school and see friends.

Most Washtenaw County students were headed back to school today, but not all. Ypsilanti students won’t go back until Thursday.

If you want to read about the first day of school from a teacher's perspective, click here to read Pioneer teacher Jeff Kass' take on it. Kass will be blogging about local education issues for us.

There’s other education-related news going on this week, but most will be focused on the start of school and all that brings with it.

Today is President Obama’s controversial speech to students. Several schools are planning to have students watch it in class. You can read the speech here.

I’m planning to go over to Ann Arbor Open at Mack to watch with those students. I’ll post a story shortly after the noon speech.

The Ann Arbor school board will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Because of the holiday weekend, I haven’t seen the agenda, but once I do, I’ll post an update.

If there’s stuff going on in your student’s school that we should be letting other folks know about, e-mail me.

David Jesse covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at davidjesse@annarbor.com or at 734-623-2534.