What’s it like to be at the school when everyone else is on summer vacation? For Steve Jeretina, summer school principal, “the speed with which everything takes place” is the biggest difference between summer school and the regular school year.

Summer school runs Monday-Thursday, 7:30-12:30, but Jeretina gets to the school at 7:00 to check in on all the teachers, and greet students as they come in the door. Next, after the teachers submit attendance, he checks who is absent, and will likely call their parents. It’s important for students not to miss summer school because each day of summer school is equivalent to about a week of material during the regular school year. 

“You do roughly 180 days during the school year versus 12 days in the summer,” Jeretina said. “A lot more is compacted into a single day rather than the regular school year, so it’s really a priority to make sure that every day is functioning as well as it possibly can for teachers, for students, and for parents.”

To make that happen, lots of communication is crucial, according to Jeretina. Especially since most students take summer school to get ahead or are retaking the class for a better grade, it’s important that every student is successful.

“If we’re in [summer school] for three weeks in June and three weeks in July, and somebody’s struggling, we want to catch that right away and be in touch with them to help them out as much as we can,” Jeretina said.

Some students may struggle because the speed of summer school can be a big adjustment for students used to a 180 day school year.

Olivia Vanegas, sophomore, said that her Consumer Ed class was very quick and it took her a long time to adjust, but “the class was actually pretty fun once I got the hang of it and wasn’t that hard.”

To make sure students are keeping up, Jeretina keeps an eye on every student’s grade. And towards the end of summer school he spends time looking at registration numbers and gathering “information that will ultimately be part of the report that I’ll be presenting to the board of education in the fall.”  

During the regular school year, Jeretina is the social studies department chair, but he took the summer school principal job three years ago because he thought it would be a good experience. 

Summer school information is available in January, and registration opens up around spring break. Vanegas would definitely recommend summer school to any student trying to get ahead. 

“If there’s classes you need to take and they are available in the summer definitely take them to get them out of the way,” Vanegas said.