By Megan Kelley

Review Writer

As the end of the school year approaches, Lake Orion Community Schools is preparing the plans for this year’s summer school program.

This information was presented to the Board of Education by Kerri Anderson, Director of Curriculum at LOCS, during their April 28 regular meeting.

One notable change in the program this year is that most of the traditional summer school fees have been waived. High school recovery, high school recovery summer school, middle school summer school program and special education Camp Soar are all included in the programs with waived fees. All credit forward programs/courses will have fees attached.

Elementary

This year, the summer school program at the Elementary level is invitation only, with invites being sent out to 413 elementary school students throughout the district.

“We invited over 400 students. It’s by invitation only this year. Currently, we have 226 students enrolled and then we just invited an additional 152 students,” Anderson said. “Our focus is on ELA (English Language Arts) and Math.”

The program is expected to run from July 12 to Aug. 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Depending on the number of students enrolled, the program will take place at either Carpenter Elementary, Orion Oaks Elementary or both with transportation being provided in-district.

According to Anderson, LOCS can “house” 400 students in their elementary summer school program and is hoping to get around 300 enrollees.

Additionally, the district is preparing to run a book club for students grades first through fifth. However, there is a small fee attached to this program to cover the cost of books.

The district currently has 160 students signed up to participate.

“These students will meet one time a week with a LOCS teacher and those teachers are different than the teachers who are teaching summer school. They’ll discuss the book for about a half an hour and they’ll meet each week for four weeks after July 4,” said Anderson.

Students in grades first through third will receive four books and students in fourth and fifth grade will receive two books. Students will get to keep the books as well.

“We’re excited about that, 160 we thought was a really good turnout. We figured that was kind of our way, for parents who wanted some kind of enrichment, is what they could do to keep them reading,” said Anderson.

Along similar lines, LOCS is encouraging reading in the lower grades by providing students in grades kindergarten to third with books of the student’s choice for them to take home over the summer.

“We did this last spring, we purchased books that kids were able to pick up because we knew kids needed to get books in their hands after we were shut down,” Anderson said. “So, we decided that we were going to go ahead and invest in this again and all students will receive – K through 3, seven to eight books to take home for the summer and they’re their books to keep. This is kind of a really good investment for us, and it’ll be at their level. Those levels at grades one and two sometimes are really hard for parents to find a the library so this will take care of that.”

Middle School

Summer school at the middle school level is also being treated as invite only with 123 students being recommended to attend and 25 being required to attend.

The program, like the elementary level, is free for students with transportation provided and will focus on ELA and math skills.

It is expected to run out of Scripps Middle School from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., July 12 to Aug. 12, Monday through Thursday.

High School

High school students have two summer school options: credit recovery and credit forward.

Credit recovery is for students who are repeating a course because they did not pass it. This will be done through Edgenuity and is free for all students.

Students will complete their work independently and teacher’s will have weekly office hours for support that can be done virtually or in-person at Scripps Middle School.

The credit recovery program will run from June 21 to Aug. 17.

Credit forward is for students who are taking a course to get ahead and, unlike the others, is a fee-based program.

“This is going to continue to be fee-based because this is for those students who want to get ahead. These are the kids who want to take classes so that it opens up other classes in their schedule for in-person,” Anderson said.

Like the credit recovery program, course work will be completed independently but teachers will be available online or at Scripps Middle School

These courses will also be held on Edgenuity from June 21 to Aug. 7.

Special Education

The Pine Tree Center will be running a categorial program that will run as half-days for four days of the week for seven weeks and will also be running an academic program geared toward LRC K-6 students and will run as half-days for three days of the week for six weeks.

Transportation will also be provided.

Other offerings

LOCS is also offering other options for enrichment that can be found on the district website at lakeorionschools.org/departments/enrichment-services.