Cash-poor districts cut summer school

Article

Across the country, districts are cutting summer school because it's just too expensive to keep. The cuts started when the recession began and have worsened, affecting more children and more essential programs that help struggling students.

And in districts like Raymore-Peculiar, although lawmakers ultimately decided to maintain summer school funding, they made the decision so late in the session that many administrators already had eliminated or scaled back the programs.

The cuts come even as President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan call for longer school days and shorter summer breaks. But in many states districts cutting summer school outnumber those using stimulus money to expand their offerings.

An American Association of School Administrators survey found that 34 percent of respondents are considering eliminating summer school for the 2010-11 school year. That's a rate that has roughly doubled each year, from 8 percent in 2008-09 to 14 percent in 2009-10.

This has been going on since the recession started, but now it seems to be getting worse. What are our kids going to do when the cant finish what they need to finish during summer? Are they going to re-take the semester they need to, the next semester? If the fail the school year, will they repeat the entire thing the next year, bypassing the summer school part?

This is going to be setting alot of our students back. If I was still a kid, I would be jumping for joy for cutting summer school, but now that Im older, I understand how important education is.

This does not look good for our future generations. How long are these cuts going to continue? 2 years? 5 years? Whenever the recessions over? Unknown how long thats going to be....

15 years from now, what will our generation be like if this continues?

We're still having summer school here in SE Georgia but it will cost parents $100.00 per subject taken for their child to attend.

This is unfathomable to me. Education should be of utmost importance.

reply to post by dizziedame


$100.00 per class for summer school? Is it a public or private school, k-12, or college? I could understand if it was a private school, or college, but a regular, public k-12 school? Public is meant to be free, "public". Funded by our tax dollars.

Personally, if its a public school, it should already be paid for. No need to pay more to go to a public service while you are already paying for it. If I was a parent, I would be ticked.

Education should be one of our top concerns. Our goverment needs to stop spending money oversea's and focus on our own. As the days go by, it's starting to look like the future may just be something like the movie "Idiocracy."

reply to post by buni11687


Summer school has become a joke, mostly a way to provide daycare for folks during the summer along with free school meals. With the decline in the standards of public schools, who is really going to summer school?

I'm sorry, but absent a lengthy illness that keeps a kid out of school, which requires him to catch up, there is no reason to need summer school.
Lose the video games, lose the other activities and focus on school work and you should not need to go to summer school.

I grew up in a large east coast city and there was summer school, but it was not at every school or even in every district, there was one place out of dozens of schools that had summer programs and it was pretty much for kids who did nothing all year and needed to go to summer school to stay on grade. You had to get there on your own, no lunch, no fun

I'd rather they spent more money looking into why kids needed to attend summer school in the first place and fix that problem rather than worrying about cutting summer school

We had to pay out of pocket for Summer school when we were kids.

That was a little added punishment for wasting your school year. Mowing lawns and cleaning gutters to fund your own Summertime incarceration.

You're there because you screwed up. Why should your class skipping and non-homework doing self cost society even more than it already does?

I dont consider this a big deal. How about having the kids stay later in teh day?
I agree, maybe paying for it is a good idea.

I have always worked fro local governments, I find it hard to believe that there are other places that they can't cut from other then education. Though my last agency has been hit pretty hard and reduced by 30%.

reply to post by buni11687


This is public school I'm speaking of. It is 6-12 grade classes.

There are many retired or out of work adults that could teach summer school and not charge.

Seems to me it's time to show concern and a sense of giving to help our students do the best they can.

This may have one good outcome. Parents that have to pay for summer school may take more interest in their child's school work next semester.