CLEARFIELD – On Monday night, the Clearfield school board approved a Memorandum of Understanding with the Clearfield Education Association (CEA) for summer programming to help students prepare for next year.
The programming has three parts: Summer Academy, Summer Online and Early Start, according to Superintendent Terry Struble.
Summer Academy will be based upon subject areas that teachers believe are of interest to students. Some will be a half-day orientation and some take place over multiple days like Lego-robotics.
“It’ll just be a variety of things meant to be fun,” said Struble. “There will be a little bit of learning, but more or less it’s to keep the kids in touch with school.”
Summer Online will consist of reading, English/language arts and mathematics programming, and is expected to last approximately six weeks.
The independent reading program will utilize Reading Counts software to encourage students to increase the number of books read, comprehension, etc. Reading coaches will encourage students, and tests will measure their achievements.
“They might put some motivational markers out there,” Struble said, providing examples like reading 10,000 words or so many hundreds of pages as well as showing increases in reading levels.
Additionally, English/language arts and mathematics programming will utilize Waggle and assignments will be made appropriate to the students’ skill level. As students improve, they will move on to higher skill levels.
Early Start is a possibility for students, grades 1 through 4, for the two-week period between the Clearfield County Fair and the start of the regular 2021-22 school year.
Next year, Struble said incoming first-graders won’t have the benefit of a full-year of kindergarten. “This year, they got an every-other-day experience” and this will help them get into a normal school routine.
CEA’s executive board also approved the MOU earlier on Monday, according to Struble, so the district will begin posting available positions Tuesday to help ensure there’s adequate staffing.
Once staff is in place, Struble said information will be distributed to parents/guardians and the district will begin the process of student recruitment.
“It’s geared – at this point in time – towards the younger learners,” he said, noting the independent reading will be for grades 1-12 and the Summer Online will include some Waggle for seventh- and eighth-graders.
“It’s not perfect; we know that, but I’m excited for it. We’ve only approved it for summer of 2021, which was intentional on the part of the district and CEA. We don’t know what’s good or bad yet, but let’s use this as a foundation for next summer and the next summer.”
In the fall, Struble said that the district will identity needs of students in grades 9-12, then explore tutoring and extended-day opportunities to help them.
