WICHITA, Kansas — One thing the world learned during the pandemic is that school kids lose pace when Zoom replaces the classroom.
“There has been some academic slide,” said Andi Giesen, assistant superintendent for learning services at the Wichita district. “On a previous trajectory, we would have expected students to be maybe a little farther along with their learning.”
Enter summer school.
In the past, a relatively small fraction of students needed to spend the dog days catching up with their classmates. Come fall 2021, a far larger number of students across Kansas will enter their next grade without the skills they should have picked up last year.
Consequently, a record number of Kansas kids plan to attend summer school.
But even more schoolchildren who need to catch up won’t go. Many students, families and teachers say they need a break after a crazy year of pandemic starts and stops, and they bowed out of summer school.
“It’s been a really incredibly hard year,” said Kari Ritter, a Topeka teacher and coordinator of the district’s summer programs. “I think parents are ready to give their children a break. We’re definitely seeing that.”
NOT LONG after Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly sent kids home from school more than a year ago, educators and politicians started talking about learning loss.
Congress approved three COVID-19 relief packages that will send about $130 billion directly to K-12 schools — money districts can spend to reopen safely and help kids who have fallen behind. Kansas will get about $1.3 billion over three years.
Still, significant numbers of families weary from tending school-age children during a year-plus pandemic don’t appear eager to rush to school this summer.
Wichita, the state’s largest school district, sent about 21,500 invitations to its summer programs for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Despite incentives such as free breakfast, lunch and transportation, only 4,600 — about one in five — enrolled.
“But I think this is every single year: You’re going to invite a bunch of students, whether it’s a COVID year or not, and you’re still probably only going to get half of them to come,” said Amanda Kingrey, assistant superintendent of secondary schools in Wichita. “So I think we fulfilled that (goal). ”
Teachers weren’t quick to sign up either. The Topeka school district offered teachers more than double the regular rate for summer school this year — money they have onhand from the first round of federal aid — and still had a hard time finding takers.
Other parents said they’re taking advantage of summer school offerings to get their kids back into a routine and interacting with teachers and peers.
“When they were at home for a period of time . . . they definitely were not learning as much as they were in school,” said Kristin Marlett, a Wichita mother of two.
