Adult Education supports Summer Enrichment Program and Extended School Year at Rose Elementary

threby Giuliana Brahim

Milpitas Adult Education successfully coordinated the Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) at Rose Elementary School as well as partnered with the District’s Student Services department to oversee Extended School Year (ESY), the summer program for students enrolled in Special Education.

We recruited youth from Milpitas High School and Calaveras Hills to volunteer this summer working in both the SEP and ESY programs. Youth Volunteers worked for up to six weeks in our programs to provide support and guidance to all our students. Altogether we had 41 youth who volunteered over 200 hours. In addition, we had two Youth Coordinators to help supervise our youth volunteers. Both volunteers are currently focused on long-term careers in education. Stephanie Dang will be an elementary school teacher next school year in the Evergreen School District and Ida Julissa Rivera is currently attending school focusing on Early Childhood Education. Their knowledge in Education was an asset to our success of the Youth Volunteer Program this summer at Rose Elementary School.

Our SEP program had two three-week sessions. Students were combined by grades 1-2, 3-4, 5-8 and were given specialized academic instruction in common core English Language Arts and Mathematics at their grade levels. We were able to give many MUSD teacher an opportunity to work in our SEP program. We were also able to partner with the University of San Francisco to support a student teacher who worked with our SEP staff for six weeks. In addition, MUSD through Learning and Development supported some foster youth families with a SEP sponsorship.

Our ESY program at Rose Elementary had classes from pre-K to middle school enrolled to ensure students in Special Education continued to make adequate progress towards IEP goals and academic skills learned during the regular school year. We were able to provide work opportunities for many MUSD teachers as well as, Paraeducators, Behavior Intervention Tutors, Speech Pathologist, and classified staff.

This year we were fortunate to work with two seasoned MUSD classified staff, Ms.Dawn Betner and Ms.Alicia Chaidez. Betner oversaw the SEP and Chaidez the ESY. The amount of support we received from staff at SNS and MOT made the programs run smoothly. Both the SEP and ESY programs were able to run as a cohesive unit this summer. We were able to overlap the lunch and recess periods, and allow for inclusion between both the Special Education and General Education students.

Our Student Nutrition program ran smoothly and successfully gave free lunch to SEP and ESY students as well as the Childhood Development Center, Santa Clara County Office of Education Special Education classes, and the local youth in our community.

This program’s success was also due to the leadership of the summer school Principal, Ms. Vanessa Espitia.  Her positive attitude and welcoming smile made staff, students, and parents comfortable coming onto our campus. Everyone working together made this a very successful summer school.
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Adult Ed is grateful for the opportunity of working with its community and proud of being a member of the MUSD Culture of WE.

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