CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – With schools out on their summer break, both parents and educators are faced with the difficult task of keeping kids engaged academically so they won’t lose a large percentage of the material they studied in the previous academic year.

Some parents are focused on summer camps that offer both physical and academic programs, but there are some who cannot afford those options and, due to their work schedules, their children are left under the supervision of a relative or friend. In those instances, learning isn’t necessarily the focus.

Price Thomas, the Executive Director of City of Promise, a Charlottesville nonprofit that supports local kids through tutoring, mentorship and a host of other programs, said the summer is definitely a major concern when it comes to retaining academic skills.

“Kids spend the majority of their time out of school and the largest chunk of that is the summer, this ten- or eleven-week block where kids are out of school all day every day,” he said. “And so, it’s really important that we’re thoughtful on how we fill that time. Not only with pro social sort of community based exploratory activities, because we want kids to be kids. We want kids to experience camps and the pool and being outside and all that good stuff, but environment matters.

“Are they doing that in places that are safe around people that are conducive to their growth and are we also capitalizing on the momentum that people worked really hard to build throughout the school year, so that when they show up in August, they show up having not backslid?  There have been years when good news was you stayed where you were from June to August.”

Learning loss and falling literacy rates have been a major concern for both parents and educators ever since the pandemic, and both groups are trying to find ways to keep children not only on grade level during the summer but also laying a foundation that will allow them to hit the ground running when school resumes.

However, the inherent challenges of socio-economic barriers, disengaged parents in certain instances, and other challenges still lead to large numbers of kids not taking advantage of the opportunity to strengthen themselves academically over the summer.

As an organization, City of Promise is attempting to do their part by offering services to Charlottesville City School students in their summer programs. Thomas outlined the importance of those endeavors.

“Summer school is incredibly important,” he said. “I think sometimes we throw these things out and negate the fact that they are hard and they are complicated and they are people-intensive and they are labor-intensive. Multiple things can be true, we can say ‘Look, it’s hard to put together a comprehensive program for a lot of kids that covers the ground they need whether its education or transportation and food and extra-curriculars.’ Yes, it’s also worth it.”

Thomas went on to describe the tutoring program through City of Promises that serves approximately 20 kids from the city, but acknowledged the fact there is a far greater need when it comes to this issue.

“Summer school starts next week,” he said. “I know the city is also running a summer school program and so these models are largely similar. They have a curriculum piece in the morning then they have an exploratory piece in the afternoon where kids will go to the YMCA, they’ll go to the pool, they can go to all of our wonderful nonprofit partners to also have some wonderful out of school one-time experiences.”

Thomas also said he believes many see summer school as a punishment for kids, when really, many activities and programs kids do during the summer could be labeled as summer school.

“When we say it, it has a pejorative ring to it. ‘Oh, you gotta go to summer school.’ It’s used almost as a punishment and I think sometimes the vernacular puts us in a space where we go, ‘Well, we don’t want to punish kids for not being on grade level. We want to support them.’ But what we miss is that even the kids who are on or above grade level, they’re going to summer school.  We just label it something different, right?

He went on to say that kids doing work like reading and writing at home or going to educational camps could all be considered a type of summer school.

“We just label it a little bit differently which makes us feel a little better about the fact that it feels less like we are forcing academics on them than something that is just endemic to their environment,” Thomas said.

So, with a focus on equitable access to education and large amounts of academic regression, especially among elementary students, the perennial question comes up — why not keep kids in school year-round to provide more consistent instruction?

Thomas has heard that argument but suggested there is not enough pragmatism to overcome the political rhetoric around changing the system.

“I know Charlottesville City Schools flirted with it years and years ago because one of my sisters was involved with it,” he said. “I think there is a lot of research academically that would back the case that year-round school is good.  Now what I think is interesting and know to be true, and I think we all know to be true, is that the politicization of something like education might put up a huge barrier to that. If you’re a family that vacations in the summer, what of that? Are you for it because there’s a correlation that those aren’t necessarily the kids that want to be in school and they’re doing fine academically? So, do you bifurcate it so that the year-rounders are only those kids who are behind and what does that mean? And what are the optics of that and the political ramifications of that?”

Thomas said he’s interested in how to “mix-and-match sort of best-case scenario, data-based, well-researched outcomes with reality, with what we can actually do, with what we can actually get done.”

“I think the city has picked up the mantle in a big way to say, ‘Hey we’re going to start to build this summer school thing and we’re gonna build it out of the school,'” he said. “I think it’s really smart when we say ‘Hey, we’re gonna hire teachers over the summer and we’re gonna pay them to continue the continuity for our kids to highlight things that we think are important. That is literacy. That is math.’ But there is also the truth that kids deserve to be kids, and they should be involved in all of the great extension activities that exist in town.”

While it is not likely that Charlottesville or Albemarle will move to a year-round model within the next five years, Thomas acknowledged the need to coordinate the support services to keep kids on a track of academic progress with the resources that are currently available.

“We have proved the point that consistent momentum from school year to out of school time to summer works,” he said. “All the kids that we have in our tutoring have made progress in literacy. Our absences are down 75%. Our tardies are down. It works, but we have to do it consistently and its consistency over time that I think will show the growth that we’re looking for.”

With the large amount of resources going toward education in our community, there are many who hope that consistency will produce better outcomes, but as Thomas alluded to, only time will tell.