Sign up for summer school began March 1 and will be done solely online through Home Access this year. A new teaching technique will be used for the math classes, otherwise returning classes will be taught in the same manner as in previous years.

This year, Algebra I College Prep and Geometry College Prep will be taught as an assessment-based instead of skills-based. Students are able to do credit recovery for either semester or for a full-year class over the summer. Credit recovery classes allow students to make up missed credits from the traditional school year. Algebra I and Geometry are being taught as assessment-based, meaning students will only be graded on their performance on the assessments.

“There’s no homework. [The] work given will help you towards the assessment.  It’s very similar to a college model [class], and if you say you believe you can do well on assessments and not attend class, that’s a choice,” said Eric Hamilton, assistant principal of curriculum and instruction and the summer school coordinator. “We do not encourage it,” he added.

Algebra and Geometry are the only classes where attendance is not required. Otherwise, a student is allowed to miss up to two and half days before being dropped from summer school; being tardy to class is considered missing half-a-day because one day of instruction is covering a week’s worth of material, according to Hamilton.

Along with Algebra I and Geometry, English I, II, and III, are also offered for credit recovery. Transition classes and Study Skills classes are for enrichment, meaning no credit is given. Otherwise, summer school classes are mainly to advance in credits. In addition, students can take summer school to take a prerequisite class, such as Art Foundations.

Kristen LaJeunesse, art teacher, has taught Art Foundations in previous years over the summer. Offered to every grade, including incoming freshmen, Art Foundations is needed to advance in the art classes offered at the high school. If an incoming freshman student takes Art Foundations over summer, the student then can start off freshman year at a level one art class one semester, then take a studio level class the next, according to LaJeunesse.

“For certain students, [summer school] will get them ahead. Ideally, that’s what [the art teachers] want, for the students who want to get ahead in our program. It’s more beneficial,” LaJeunesse said. “There are ways to get ahead, but not all students do that.”

Hayley Johnson, junior and art program student, took Art Foundation prior to her freshman year to start early in the art program and was able to start art classes without using a semester for introduction, she says. Johnson also completed Consumer Education prior to junior year and is planning on taking Government this summer. Johnson says taking classes over the summer has overall been more successful for her.

“[The classes are] definitely a lot quicker, but I don’t think [any material] is skipped. It’s three and a half hours of one specific class, so overall, a lot of info is given to you,” Johnson said.

Summer school covers the same amount of material as the school semester does, Hamilton says.  Due to the requirement that courses align with the school year and maintain the expected level, Biology I and Physical Science are the only honors classes over the summer. Even though the material covered is the same, summer school is about six hours short of the 66 hours of instruction in a semester, according to Hamilton.

“We take a look at the courses we’re offering; we look at the numbers to justify if we should continue to run them [or] is there a demand from the student body,” Hamilton said. “Every year we see if we need to adjust what we are offering.”

The number of students attending summer school has tripled in the past eight years. In 2005, 137 students attended summer school. Last year, 439 students went to summer school over the two sessions, and the numbers continue to increase, Hamilton said.

“The numbers continue to rise and I think that’s because students are taking advantage of what’s being offered,” Hamilton said. “We have seen a shift in our focus of providing [classes] to allow students to get ahead.”

Broken into two sessions, summer school runs for 12 days—five hours a day with two fifteen minute breaks every hour and a half. Session I, running from Monday, June 16 through Thursday, July 3, is considered first semester, and session II, running from Monday, July 7 through Thursday, July 24 is considered second semester.