‘‘At school, you don’t have to be afraid of strangers. All the teachers here are good people. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t,” the Bowie mother said. ‘‘I love you. You are so special.”

Braving traffic and overcast skies, roughly 9,400 students returned to Bowie schools Monday, some more reluctantly than others.

While parents and children lined up at the brand new Northview Elementary School on the first day, others waited at bus stops.

The swarm of yellow school buses joined a fleet of cars and pedestrians crowding area roads, bringing out crossing guards like Kim McDermott, who has been stopping traffic near schools for the county for a decade.

‘‘Drivers have to keep an eye out for the kids, and the kids have to keep an eye out for the cars,” she said as she helped Northview pupils cross at the new stop light.

Northview Elementary, built over the past two years, had parent volunteers helping children through the bright hallways into their classrooms.

Second-grader Naj Moore seemed lost in the front hallway as a volunteer tried to locate his class.

‘‘You’re in Room 218. Can you remember that?” the aide said.

The extra help made things go smoothly, said Jennifer Nash, who sat filling out emergency contact forms for her 7-year-old daughter Samantha.

‘‘I expected it to be much nuttier,” she said.

It was not quite as smooth on the roads outside Northview.

Even though City of Bowie police were on hand to help direct traffic and a new traffic light was in place, the line of cars and buses stretched a half-mile down the road by the time school began at 7:45 a.m.

‘‘It looks like a parking lot,” McDermott said, referring to the jammed roadway.

The 2007-2008 school year is scheduled to run through June 6.

E-mail Daniel Valentine at dvalentine@gazette.net.