The upcoming school year may mean less pandemic worries and a return to some normalcy for students and parents as COVID-19 safety policies loosen.

Families who spent their last day of summer break at Croton Point Park tell News 12 that their social lives are going to be so much better because of fewer restrictions and in-person classes.

"You can talk. You can play around. I feel like friend-to-friend and teacher-to-teacher is the best thing. I hope nothing bad is going to happen this year with COVID," says Lesly Cardenas, who is entering fifth grade. 

Lifeguard Brandon Orozco says he is leaving Tuesday for what he hopes is going to be a more traditional college experience. He says the last couple of years hasn't done it for him. 

"A lot of the time I was learning just by myself, just being self-taught, or using the internet to learn all these different topics that we had to in school," he says. 

According to guidance from the state Education Department, students are not going to have to deal with strict quarantine rules or pod systems.

A pod system kept certain groups of students together all the time, limiting their contact with students from other groups, in order to reduce COVID spread.

Parents say they're glad, because it's much less likely this year that their kids' classes would suddenly go remote, leaving them to scramble for last-minute child care.