VIDALIA — When Concordia Parish students wake up this morning, they won’t have to gather their books and put on their school uniforms because, in the immortal words of one rock song, school’s out for the summer.

And while — unlike in Alice Cooper’s antiauthoritarian anthem — school isn’t out forever, Wednesday was a bittersweet final day at Vidalia Lower Elementary for 8-year-old Julia Stelly.

“I’m sad,” Stelly said. “I wanted to go school to learn more information.”

Karley Clark, 8, had a similar case of the end-of-school blues, when she considered that the next step in her education means going to Vidalia Upper Elementary.

“I am sad because I don’t want to leave the school and go to the third grade,” Clark said. “My brother wants me to stay here. He’s in the first grade.”

While Clark wanted to stay at the school with her little sister, Orianna Banks, 8, was in the opposite boat.

“When I go to third grade, I will get to see my sister at the Upper,” Banks said.

But 9-year-old Dezmon Bowman’s thoughts were on the immediate future, and he could hardly sit still waiting for the final bell.

“I want to go outside and play football,” he said.

Bowman found himself in the same company as Dawson Thompson, who by his own count, is 8-and-three-quarters.

“I am jumping for joy because we can start summer and not have to get up early for school,” Thompson said.

However, there’s another reason Thompson was glad to see the school year done.

“We get to get away from all kinds of girls and don’t have to hear them say, ‘Blah, blah, blah,’” he said.

One of the girls Thompson wanted to get away from was Lexy Sontoyo, 9, and vacation was just close enough she could almost taste its chlorine-tinged goodness.

“I get to go to Blue Bayou (water park) and I don’t have to learn anymore,” Sontoyo said.

But when Nathan Nations, 8, was confronted with the end of one academic year, he said he was looking forward to his academic future.

“Next year, I might get to go to the honors banquet again,” he said.

The fun of summer wasn’t lost on Nations, though.

“I’m going to get to go swim at my church and play Pac Man,” he said.

But there is one universal happening on the last day of school that never fails, Vidalia Lower Elementary Principal Doris Polk said as she waited outside the front entrance.

“When the bell rings, they are going to be running out here,” she said.