By Taylor Boyd
Between 250 and 300 Patrick County students started summer school on Monday, June 7.
Patrick County Schools Superintendent Dean Gilbert said the summer session will be held Mondays through Thursdays, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Classes will end July 1.
Gilbert attributes the increased popularity of the summer program to several factors.
“It’s up because we just used to have a central location like at Stuart Elementary (School). Our numbers got really low, so we stopped having it, and we didn’t do door to door transportation,” he said.
This year, the school system is using federal relief funds to offer door to door transportation.
“So, the number compared to the last time we had summer school is up, which it should be considering what we had to do this year,” Gilbert said of the pandemic related issues.
While the summer session will address all of the learning losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gilbert said classes will be focused on mathematics and reading.
Although the division hasn’t offered summer school in recent years, “we’ll probably be looking at” continuing it, Gilbert said. “As long as we have relief money to pay for it, we’ll be looking at doing it until we can make sure we’re on top of the learning loss due to the closure.”
He anticipates it will be available again next summer but said school officials will wait to see how the 2021-2022 school year progresses.
Also taken into account will be “how the students catch up and where we are, once we return to five-days in August,” Gilbert said, and added assessment data will be used before making a formal decision about summer school next year.
For now, I’m looking forward to getting them in and starting to address some of the needs that have cropped up due to the pandemic,” Gilbert said. “It’s been a couple of weeks we’ve been out of school now.”
