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From the Desk of Dr. Halley: Summer School 2020 Information

By Halley, Heath on May 18, 2020

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Summer school rundown! Article number three for today. I know Mrs. Altiser has already communicated the June summer school cancelation for June 2020. I want to take a moment and provide additional details to explain why.

For the 2020 summer school, our enrollment was down over 100 students from 2019. This is the crux of the problem. Summer school funding is derived from Weighted Average Daily Attendance (WADA). I want to simplify this for anyone reading. Basically, the number of students in attendance multiplied by hours attended multiplied by $3,400 per WADA. Yearly we range from 35 WADA to 40 WADA. Most generally summer school is budget neutral. The money is just flow through. So, whatever we earn goes to pay expenditures. Last year the district made $8,600 after all expenditures were paid. With 100 fewer students enrolled this was going to equal about 13 WADA less. Which equals a financial loss of over $40,000 from summer school for the district. Unfortunately, we cannot reduce expenditures enough to make the budget work.

We will be hosting a Credit Recovery summer school session beginning June 1- June 30, 2020. Phone calls have been or are being made to the 6th grade-12th grade students that are in need of this opportunity.

The summer school provides an opportunity for growth, enrichment, and for some students a time to catch up and review. So, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has extended our opportunity to possibly have a summer school at a later time during this summer. We will continue to monitor the situation while surveying parents to see if it becomes feasible.