Beaufort County’s day camps, summer school sessions begin this month. What to know
More than 10% of Beaufort County School District’s students are being targeted for academic recovery in this year’s summer school programs, district officials told the school board last week.
Summer school will take place between June 28 and July 29, with approximately 140 teachers and 2,200 students participating, district instructional chief Mary Stratos said Wednesday.
“We recognize that it’s been a tough year for our parents, our students and our educators,” Stratos said. “Our goal for the summer is to bring creative learning to the school and bring the fun back in. We’re trying not to be too traditional.”
The district has also partnered with 10 community organizations, including local Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCA chapters and Love House Ministries to offer day camps for students. The combined 870 spots at these camps were filled within “hours,” Stratos said.
One program — the Historical Connections Camp through the University of South Carolina at Beaufort — is still being finalized and has not opened applications yet, Stratos said.
That camp will take place at Lady’s Island Middle School from July 26-29 and will have 25 spots available for rising sixth graders from Lady’s Island Elementary, Coosa Elementary and St. Helena Elementary. The goal is for students from the Sea Islands “to connect with their unique history through the arts and our partnership with USCB,” according to a district presentation.
What will summer school look like?
This year’s expected summer school attendance is a 1,500-person increase from last summer and a 700-person increase from the pre-COVID 2019 summer program, according to Stratos. She said the demand for the program showed that the district should beef up staffing and planning for its after-school “extended learning” and tutoring programs offered in fall.
Summer school will be offered in-person only at 21 campuses across the district and at no cost to students.
Stratos said she would not know the total cost of the summer programs until they were completed due to the hourly pay rates for employees, but that she was working with a budget of $900,000 to $1 million.
That budget will not come from the district’s general fund. Instead, it will come from a combination of state funding and the $81.2 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds the district has been approved for ($7.7 million of which has already been spent).
The district identified 765 elementary school students as candidates for summer school, meaning that they did not pass English language arts or math for the year, are third graders with reading proficiency below their grade level and/or scored in the bottom 30% of English language arts or math MAP testing in the spring.
Students and teachers will be at a 15:1 ratio, with 51 district teachers staffing elementary summer school programs.
Students will participate in “read-alouds” and reading groups, use Foss kits for interactive science projects and go over “brain booster” reading questions and STEM thinking prompts.
The district identified 1,925 middle and high school students as candidates for summer school. High school students can recover one or two course credits over the summer, and middle school students can recover content in up to four core subjects. Students can also be referred to summer school by teachers, counselors, administrators and parents.
Students and teachers will be at a 21:1 ratio, with 89 district teachers staffing secondary summer school programs.
Students will take Edgenuity course recovery lessons and answer document-based questions, science investigations and real-world math problems.