CB Summer School is back in session

It’s not as bad as it sounds

There aren’t many people who would wish for a return to the days of summer school. It’s the one institution no one seemed to miss ever since budget cutbacks a few years ago caused the Gunnison Watershed School District to scrap its summer programs.
 “When I started as principal at Gunnison Middle School a dozen years ago, I had a summer school budget line item that was between $20,000 and $25,000 every year,” superintendent Doug Tredway told the school board Monday, January 27. “Summer school in my time was more punitive. If you didn’t pass a class you would have to go to summer school.”

That was until Tredway saw the furlough as an opportunity to do something different to keep kids engaged in learning and expand a tight school calendar into the summer months.
With a one-time $200,000 grant from the federal government’s Secure Rural Schools Act, Tredway proposed a Summer Experience at the school board meeting Monday night that would let teachers be creative in their lessons and give students a chance to round out their education.
And unlike their parents’ summer school, participation in this program will be completely voluntary.
“We have an opportunity with this one-time money to do something unique, something totally out of the box. It’s an opportunity for us to be a little bit progressive and set up programs for our students, whether they’re in preschool or 12th grade and everywhere in between,” Tredway told the board. “Set up classes that could last for a day or they could last for six weeks.”
The proposal was one of several major changes Tredway introduced at the meeting, including a reinforcement of the administrative structure of Crested Butte Community and Lake Elementary schools. And like the administrative changes, Tredway told the board the Summer Experience would be a chance to do what needed to be done to let students get the maximum benefit from their education.
“One of my biggest concerns as a superintendent that I see in staff and students both: With our calendar, we know we have 171 days to meet our needs, with increasing mandates from the federal and state government and the local government as well. Most of those mandates are good things,” Tredway said. “But it puts an unbearable pressure on staff and students. The testing, the core curriculum, the focused time in the classroom, really leaves little time to be innovative and creative.”
With the $200,000, Tredway wants to put out a request for proposals from the staff for summer school programs and see what they come up with.
For the board, he envisioned physical education and science classes able to “take advantage of the natural environment and get outside,” he said.
“It could be outdoor ed. It could be experiential-based. It could be a technology camp. I know some students who could really benefit from a technology camp and I know of some people who go to other towns to do that,” Tredway continued. “That’s something we could offer as a community.”
Art, music and drama. Math and reading clubs. Language arts programs. Tredway sees a STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Math] lab sitting unused in Crested Butte during the summer months that could be put to use by students unable to access the lab any other time.
There could even be opportunities for students to get real world experience in the community that could be translated into school credit, or at least put on a resume.
“Ask our people, ‘What could you do? How could you serve our student population?’ and pay them a salary to do that,” Tredway said. “It could give our students time to experiment and try new things outside of the calendar. I think we really could offer a unique experience.”
But unlike the administrative changes, which will be budgeted and partly paid for by growth in student enrollment, the Summer Experience would be an experiment with money that would otherwise get swallowed up in the general fund.
Crested Butte representative to the board Marilyn Krill, who seemed otherwise supportive of the proposal, wondered about the longevity of a program paid for with one-time money.
“If it’s successful on any level, I would think that we’d want to reproduce it the following summer,” Krill said. “So does that $200,000, or whatever it ends up being, become a regular line item or are we going to need to fundraise for it?”
Tredway said the summer program was part of the conversation he’s been having with the Mill Levy Override Committee that is exploring a tax increase as a possible way of funding programs at the public schools.
“This is something we can go to the community and point to as something different, something outside the box. It would take a different funding source, but it’s offering something. It wouldn’t be offering to do business as usual,” Tredway said. “If we were to get to that point where we were ready to ask for a mill levy, this would be front and center—this is something we can do that isn’t just business as usual. We are adding value for our students and really for the community.”
Board member Bill Powell pointed out that there are already a host of professional teachers in the district who are using things like YouTube tutorials to extend the lessons and make class time more productive.
“So I think the concept is an extension of what some of our teachers are already trying to do, find more time for students. I think having a modular approach to it—some short modules, some long modules—and let the teachers who want to be creative and come up with new ideas about how to teach the students better,” Powell said. “I think the $200,000 you want to set aside for this will be money well spent.”
The board voted unanimously to make the $200,000 in one-time money available for a Summer Experience, coming to the valley this year. The funding source for next year is yet to be determined.