By Derek Spellman
Globe Staff Writer
JOPLIN, Mo. —
When Jessica Stahl sent her daughter to summer school last year, it was as much about easing mom’s kindergarten jitters as her daughter’s.
“I’ve never been a school parent,” Stahl said Wednesday while waiting to pick up her six-year-old daughter from Columbia Elementary School.
Stahl’s daughter attended Joplin’s “Jump Start” summer program, which is for students entering kindergarten.
“She loved it,” Stahl said of the program.
“Jump Start” helped her daughter transition into a setting where she interacted with other children. It also helped Stahl learn how to be a school parent. She has plans for her daughter to attend summer school again this year.
But while Stahl and thousands of other area parents are making plans for summer schools, many schools have been in a holding pattern. They await word from the state Legislature about the extent of state funding for summer school as lawmakers work to finish the budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. Several local school districts have relied largely — if not entirely — on state reimbursement for their summer school programs in the past.
Carl Junction has already instituted some changes to its summer school. Webb City will run its program much as before. Joplin, Neosho and Seneca plan to let parents know about final plans for their districts this week.
Local districts are planning some level of summer school for this year, but long-term, the prospect is more uncertain. Pressure on summer school is likely to be even more acute a year from now as school districts have to look at funding priorities amid further expected declines in state revenue.
“There will be some hard decisions made on what to do without and what you can’t do without,” said Rick Cook, superintendent of the Seneca School District.
School evolves
Some schools also are reviewing priorities for their summer school programs.
Although catching up when students fall behind — credit recovery — remains a central component of summer school, it has evolved into a multipurpose program for many districts.
For children and parents such as Stahl, it helps ease the transition into a new school experience. It also provides a learning venue for special education students, and for students who want to take academic enrichment classes and electives, or do interactive learning exercises they otherwise might not be able to fit in during the regular school year.
Last but not least, summer school also offers an option for parents who want a place for their children to go during the summer.
Capping funding?
Last year, Joplin’s summer school programs drew almost 1,830 students from the elementary, middle and high school levels, according to the office of Angie Besendorfer, assistant superintendent of teaching, learning, and accountability.
The program cost $397,175, and the district received $365,400 in reimbursement from the state, according to Paul Barr, the district’s chief financial officer. Barr said the district used its own funding to make up the difference.
Besendorfer said school officials last week were watching to see if the various legislative proposals produced caps on the amount of state reimbursement or restricted that reimbursement to, for example, certain areas of academic study.
State reimbursement has historically been tied to attendance during summer school sessions. A fixed cap, though, would mean that local schools would have to bear more costs if they wanted to keep having as many students.
Besendorfer said the district hopes to have final plans in place for the upcoming summer school session by Saturday. The school district announced in March that this year it planned to offer summer school at the elementary level June 14-25 and again July 12-23. For middle school and high school students, summer school will run from June 7 through July 1.
Ron Lankford, the departing superintendent of the Webb City School District, said his district is not planning on any changes this summer. Webb City usually has between 1,500 and 1,600 students participate in some way in summer school. Last year’s summer school budget was about $712,000, he said, which is almost entirely covered by state funds.
For students who take summer classes for credit recovery, summer school provides a venue that allows them to “work kind of on their own pace,” Lankford said. He also pointed out that summer sessions allow some students to get caught up then as opposed to starting a new school year even further behind.
“We think it has been beneficial,” he said of the sessions.
Yet Lankford, who will be taking a position with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education later this year, said he can understand why the Legislature would seek a cap of some kind on state funding. With reimbursement now tied to actual attendance at summer school sessions for Missouri schools, the state is not sure how much the programs will actually cost until after the programs have taken place.
“It’s tough to do business that way,” Lankford said.
Richard Page, superintendent of the Neosho school district, said summer school usually draws an average of 1,650 students, although at one point several years ago as many as 2,000 participated in Neosho.
Page said the district was still waiting to see how this year’s budget turned out before deciding on the makeup of this year’s sessions.
One of the legislative proposals, for example, would use a percentage of a school’s total enrollment in the month of January as the cap for state funding. For Neosho, that proposal would translate into a limit of 650 students total for summer school, he said.
“We don’t know what contingency to go to yet,” Page added.
Changes
The Carl Junction School District has already made changes to its summer school program, Superintendent Phil Cook said. The district will not be offering transportation this year, for example. It will offer only two weeks of summer school instead of four, and some of the activities that usually took place at the elementary school level — such as field trips to the zoo — will not be offered, either.
“That is not to say it’s not going to be fun,” he said.
Going from four weeks to two weeks will mean some students in credit recovery will only be able to recover up to a half credit as opposed to a full credit.
The program usually attracts between 1,300 and 1,400 students, and costs about $400,000, nearly all of which is paid for through state reimbursements.
If the state continues to provide some funding for summer school, the sessions will remain open to all students, Cook said. If the state were to completely withdraw funding, enrollment would have to be limited to students who need it for credit recovery, for example.
Rick Cook, the Seneca superintendent, said last year a total of 1,022 students attended summer school. The district has a total enrollment of about 1,600. The program cost about $300,000, entirely funded through state reimbursement, he said.
“We are going to have summer school here in some format,” he said of this year.
As for years ahead, Cook said Seneca and other districts will have to make choices. He expected Seneca will provide a “modest summer school” of some kind to at least afford some credit recovery opportunities for students, unless the state relaxes graduation requirements. Academic enrichment programs, meanwhile, will be unlikely.
“The main thing is you are just going to balance the budget at the end of the day,” he said.
Statewide attendance
Jim Morris, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said the department did not have numbers for how it costs the state each year for summer school programs.
“There is not a separate ‘line item’ in the state budget or in the Foundation Formula calculation that captures the cost of summer school. Average daily attendance in summer school is factored into each district's overall formula calculation,” he explained in an e-mail to the Globe.
He did say that statewide, a total of 331,815 students participated in summer school last fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2009.
