In-person summer school returns

School District of Manatee County summer programs are returning to in-person classes after being held virtually last year due to the pandemic.

The district will be offering all required summer programs, including a third grade reading camp and creditor recovery for middle and high school students. Both programs will run from June 7 to July 15.  

“[The programs] provide the remediation that’s needed,” said Latrina Singleton, the director of federal programs and grants for the School District of Manatee County. “We collect data throughout the years, so the teachers have that data to provide more focused in-class support because the classroom settings are smaller.”

For the summer programs, classes will have about 15 students compared to the number of students in class during the school year. According to the Florida Department of Education, the maximum number of students in each core class for grades four through eight is 22 students and 25 students for high school.

In East County, the third grade reading camps will take place at Freedom and William H. Bashaw elementary schools. 

The third grade reading camp is a requirement for third grade students who do not pass the Florida Statewide Assessments or are in jeopardy of not being promoted to fourth grade, Singleton said.

Singleton said the district uses I-Ready and benchmark data to help determine which students might need to attend the reading camp. 

The credit recovery program will be at Lakewood Ranch, Braden River and Parrish Community high schools as well as R. Dan Nolan Middle School. 

Middle and high school students who need to complete a course they did not finish during the school year can earn those credits over the summer. 

Singleton said some of the credit recovery courses available will be in language arts, math, science and social studies as those are core classes students need to pass before they can be promoted to the next grade.

The district and schools will work to identify the students who need to be in these programs. Once students are identified, the schools will reach out to the families most likely in the second week of May to notify them that their child needs to be in one of the programs.

“The programs are essential because it gives a little bit more time with the curriculum and getting the instruction from the teachers,” Singleton said. “It’s been a hard year for everyone.”

Although some students could have learning loss due to the pandemic and the changes in learning modalities such as being on campus full time, doing e-learning full time or participating in a hybrid schedule, Singleton said the district doesn’t expect there to be more students needing to participate in the summer programs compared to last year. 

Last year, as of May, 407 third graders were invited to participate in the reading camp.

“Truthfully, I think the data is showing we’re probably running about at the same level because we have almost 85% of our students back on campus brick and mortar,” Singleton said. “The ones that have been on e-learning or hybrid, I think a lot of the families have supported them throughout, and the ones that were not successful, a lot of the schools made sure they were back in brick and mortar. There’s a lot of efforts between the schools and the families to make sure we were noticing that the kids were not successful with remote learning.”