The Columbia Public School District is reconsidering the way it runs its summer school program once a change in a state law goes into effect July 1. KBIA's Lisa Hoscheidt has more.
The Columbia Public School District is looking into offering its own summer school program as soon as next summer. The district has employed private education firm EdisonLearning to run its summer school program for the past six summers. Even though the district has seen attendance rates increase since hiring EdisonLearning, now that the state will no longer be able to fine school districts that see a drop in summer school attendance rates, attendance will no longer be the district's big concern.
Right now Chief Operations Officer Nick Boren is in charge of coordinating a cost/benefit analysis in order to weigh out all of the district's options. He says there are several things that EdisonLearning provides that the school will have to consider including transportation, secretaries who coordinate the entire summer program, and $100 gift cards for attendance. Boren says the district is concerned about how much of an incentive the $100 gift cards are for the students to come to school, because he says the district will not be able to provide those. Tom Rose is the Vice President of the Columbia Board of Education. He says the school board will be reviewing Boren's analysis.
"The board will certainly be looking at the costs of the summer school program as it is now and what it might end up being and what would be involved with going back to just running that program ourselves versus paying an outside agency to handle that for us."
Boren says he is in the process of putting together the analysis and will have it finished within a few weeks. Rose says they will be making evaluations right away so that if the district does decide to provide summer school itself there will be plenty of time to prepare for it.
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