Summer school in Oregon starts in just a few short weeks, but in many Portland-area districts, and for some families, it remains a moving target.
Planning for summer programming at public schools — which at its peak in 2021 served around 100,000 children statewide — has been complicated this year, given last-minute scrambles over shifting state funding and persistent staffing struggles.
Nearly all Oregon districts still have federal pandemic aid on hand they can use to fund summer instruction, however. And several Portland-area districts report they are being more strategic this year, gearing help to schools and students at highest need and to whom they think they can give the biggest boosts.
Done right, education experts say, summer school programs can help youngsters who are struggling with reading and math make up ground, particularly in the wake of the pandemic’s dismal, well-documented effects on the most vulnerable students.
In Alabama, for example, half of the 30,000 struggling readers who attended intensive summer literacy camps in 2022 caught up to the rest of their grade by the program’s end. North Carolina requires districts to offer summer reading campsto all students who are below grade level in literacy at the end of third grade.
In 2021 and 2022, Oregon lawmakers poured a collective $250 million into summer school programming, in a calculated bid to help kids catch up after extended school building closures. The emphasis was on joy, fun and reconnection, with extra doses of games, hands-on arts projects, music and athletics, as children reacclimated to being back together.
This year, things look different.
Funding from the state never materialized, save for what districts might carve out from the $140 million “Early Literacy Success” proposal that top Democratic leaders talked up this week but have no immediate odds of passing. That’s funding that’s intended to cover a host of reading instruction improvements, including summer programming. The money might not materialize in time to make a dent this summer, given that a vote on it requires the Republican senators currently staging a quorum-denying walkout to return to the Senate floor.
Districts do have pandemic relief funds to use for summer school, and many are doing so. Gresham-Barlow has invited around 1,800 students to participate, close to last year’s numbers, by backfilling the lack of state funds with federal dollars, a district spokesperson said.
But without state funding, other metro area districts are scaling back this summer’s programming and tightening the criteria for student participation.
In Hillsboro, for example, the district isn’t offering literacy and enrichment programs at all of its elementary and middle schools, as it did last year, said district communications director Beth Graser. Additionally, class sizes at its summer programs for bilingual students will be higher than they were last summer, and extracurricular offerings have been trimmed, she said.
Last year in Beaverton, every elementary school had 100 spaces available, regardless of demographics or demonstrated need, said Vanessa Davalos, assistant principal at William Walker Elementary School, who oversees summer programming districtwide.
This year, academic coaches, social workers and teachers at each elementary school pored over data to pinpoint which students would most benefit from its summer school, known as Camp Achieve. At some schools, nearly 200 students got a space; at others, fewer than 50, Davalos said.
Staffing continues to be a challenge, she said, especially because the lack of state funding means that Beaverton can’t offer the $250 weekly bonuses it paid to bus drivers, educators and nutrition staff last summer. And there are other cutbacks: Some sites will offer just snacks, not hot meals. And when summer school ends at noon or 1 p.m., afternoon enrichment programs and childcare options will be more limited this year.
There have also been changes at Portland Public Schools, after two years during which the district struggled to staff its summer classes and meet transportation needs. This year, the district based invitations to its intensive, four-week Summer Acceleration Academy on students’ reading scores, but it excluded its very lowest-performing students. Instead, invitations went to students who scored between the 10th and 40th percentile on reading tests, or between the 5th and 40thpercentile if they attend a high needs school.
Parents of some of the children who read too poorly to meet that criteria have questioned the cutoff, saying it leaves out children who need the most academic support.
Teresa Hovis said it was surprising that her son, a second-grader at Harrison Park K-8 School in Southeast Portland who qualifies for special education services, wasn’t invited. He started kindergarten online during fall of 2020 and has struggled to pay attention in class since; she estimated that his reading remains at preschool levels.
“He is not in the classroom long enough to learn anything because he is doing things to get removed from the classroom,” she said. “He’ll tell us, ‘If I misbehave, I get to leave.” And then he doesn’t have to do what is hard, which is schoolwork.”
Meanwhile his older brother, who is not in special education, was invited to take part.
Hovis appealed the decision, and said she thinks her second grader will wind up getting placed in the district’s extended school year program, which also lasts four weeks, serves a small group of students with very small student/teacher ratios and is aimed at those who need extremely intensive supports.
Less money this year meant hard choices, said PPS Director of Learning Acceleration Darcy Soto, and after two bumpy years, the district wanted to be sure it had enough educators hired and could give families earlier notice, so people can plan for vacations and other child care outside of summer school dates.
“Students who fall below the 10th percentile need small group instruction, with a maximum 5-to-1 student to teacher ratio, and we just don’t have the highly trained staffing or the funding to provide that this summer,” she said. “We would need about 400 reading specialists or teachers who are trained in the science of reading to support those students to make gains over the summer, in this very short, half-day program with an hour a day devoted to literacy.”
But Nicole Bechtel, whose daughter attends Creston Elementary school, falls below the 10th percentile in reading and hasn’t been invited to any of the district’s academic summer programming, said she thinks her child benefits just as much from the literacy instruction she gets during class time with the rest of her peers as she does from small group pull-outs with the school’s reading specialist.
“All students benefit from inclusionary practices,” she said. “Do they believe my daughter only learns how to read when she works with the reading specialist?”
There is additional targeted help available for some of the most struggling students, Soto said. And new invitations to participate in the Summer Acceleration Academy went out to another 1,000 students on May 22, thanks to a new math curriculum that can be adapted for students at any level, which made it easier to adapt programming to an even wider range of students, Soto said.
In addition to extended school year, which will enroll about 145 students this summer, another 400 or so PPS special education students will get recovery services this summer, aimed at helping them catch up on the intensive help they missed during the pandemic, like one-on-one tutoring and speech therapy, according to Soto.
And about 350 rising first through fifth graders who’ve been in the U.S. for less than six months, along with rising middle schoolers who’ve been here for less than a year, got invitations to the district’s inaugural Newcomer’s Program, Soto said. It will use curriculum tailored to those who are just learning English.
— Julia Silverman, @jrlsilverman, jsilverman@oregonian.com
