School secretary Demitra Cain, left, greets Danielle Outley for her first day of second grade at Codwell Elementary School in Houston on Monday. Students in Houston are finally starting their new school year after a two-week delay because of damage from Hurricane Harvey.

HOUSTON — The first day of classes for students in Houston on Monday was filled with the excitement of meeting new teachers and making new friends, while also allowing the nation's fourth-largest city to return normalcy to an area still wending its way through the healing process following massive flooding from Harvey.

Students “are excited to be back. Parents are excited to get students out of the house, to get them back to something normal, to be with their friends,” said school secretary Demitra Cain as she greeted students and parents outside Codwell Elementary. The longtime school district employee said she had probably given out at least 200 hugs on the first day of the new school year, which was delayed by two weeks due to Harvey.

Superintendent Richard Carranza said the new school year was “going to be a year of not only incredible academic achievement, but it's going to be a year of healing.”

None of the district's more than 300 schools and facilities escaped without some impact from the tropical storm, Carranza said. The district estimates Harvey caused at least $700 million in damage to schools and other buildings as well as other costs.

Students at 268 of the Houston school district's 284 campuses started classes on Monday. Houston has the nation's seventh-largest school system, with about 215,000 students.

Some of the students who returned to school on Monday included many of the less than 1,500 students who remain at shelters because their homes and apartments were flooded. The district bused these students from shelters to their campuses, officials said.

The remaining campuses will start classes on either Tuesday, Sept. 18 or Sept. 25 due to ongoing cleanup and repairs from Harvey, which dumped more than 50 inches of rain in some areas.

Nine campuses were so severely damaged that their students will have to be temporarily relocated to vacant district buildings or transferred to nearby schools, and three of these campuses likely will be closed for repairs the entire school year. These nine campuses served about 6,500 students last year.

In the Houston suburb of Humble, Summer Creek High School will share its building for the entire year with students from Kingwood High School. In the Katy school district, students at Creech Elementary will attend classes at an unused satellite location of the University of Houston.