Friday, July 28 was the last day of school for the 2006 summer. Summer school represents a tremendous amount of work and collaboration across all school district departments. Approximately 3,800 students participated.

I am very proud of our summer school model. Thanks to all of the staff and students who made this an outstanding summer.

The Madison Metropolitan School District's comprehensive summer school program continues to be a successful intervention for those students attending by:

• increasing academic skills
• providing credit recovery for high school students
• providing safe, appropriate enrichment and recreational activities

All students experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities in the summer.

Students lose approximately 2.6 months of grade level equivalency in mathematical skills over the summer months. Low-income children and youth experience greater summer learning loss than their higher income peers.

Students participating in summer school not only stop summer learning loss but increase their academic skills.

Summer school is composed of many different programs.

Extended Learning Summer School:
The Extended Learning Summer School, K-Ready (students entering kindergarten) through 8th grade promotion, had a total of 1,831 students enrolled across 6 school sites. The program provides 4 hours of literacy training in grades K-Ready through 2nd grade and 2 hours of math and 2 hours of literacy for the upper grades. Students are invited to participate based on academic need as identified through report cards.

This summer we were able to increase the enrollment of K-Ready students from 148 to 227.

ESL/Bilingual
Bilingual classes in Spanish and ESL "Newcomers" classes were offered at 2 elementary sites and 2 middle school sites. There were 156 students participating in ESL/Bilingual classes.

Madison School and Community Recreation-Afternoon Program
An important part of Extended Learning Summer School is the option for participation in afternoon recreational programs. Students could enroll in a program at their site or be transported to Safe Haven or middle school programs in other sites. Activities included arts and crafts, outdoor adventure, outdoor games, indoor games, fire safety, field trips, swimming, roller skating, and cultural fairs and events.

Of the students enrolled in summer school, over 1,500 were also enrolled in one of the MSCR programs.

Enrichment
Summer enrichment courses are incorporated into the MSCR Summer Flyer and coordinated with the academic summer school program. Enrichment courses were offered at each of the 6 summer school sites. Course titles included Art Lab, Digital Photography, CSI Madison, Field Biology, Nimble Numbers, Puppetry and Science of Fun.

Enrollment in enrichment courses is open to the public. There were about 800 students enrolled in enrichment courses.

High School Summer School
Courses are offered at East and Memorial High Schools. The summer curriculum included courses in the required content areas of English, math, science, social studies, health, and physical education. In addition, elective courses were offered in keyboarding, computer literacy, art, study skills, algebra prep, ACT/SAT prep, and work experience. A number of the courses included incoming 9th graders.

Approximately 1,200 students were enrolled in high school courses. This has proven to be a very effective way for students to recover credits not earned during the school year.

Peggy Swailes works with a small group on "expressive voice" in a 1st grade literacy class at Leopold Elementary.

Students were relaxed, but all engaged in reading.