Bend La Pine students will head back to class this morning. Normally students start school the day after Labor Day, but this year it was delayed a day. School Superintendent Ron Wilkinson explains why: “Actually the delay was for a couple of purposes. One, we're on a reduced contract length for teachers and in balancing the school year, if we had not made the reduction at the beginning of the school year, we would have ended the last day of school on a Monday and that didn't make sense.” So instead they started school a day later and shifted things around a bit. 9th graders and below will return to school today. 10th through 12th graders return on Thursday.