Silver Valley aims to restore summer school for K-12

Students of all grade levels in Silver Valley Unified School District may get summer school back this year, after the district scaled back on its offerings last summer due to budget woes.

SVUSD’s Board of Trustees will be voting Tuesday on restoring the district’s summer programs back to kindergarten through grade 12, after cutting back to summer school for only high-schoolers and special education students. According to district officials, it will cost $245,000 to reinstate district-wide summer classes.

Summer school offerings in June 2009 significantly shrunk from what the district offered previously, with no summer school remediation for K-8 students, high school classes cut from 24 days to 20 days, and only one summer school site for both valley and fort students at Yermo School. Speech services, however, were held at Fort Irwin, noted Mike Sullivan, principal of Fort Irwin Middle School and last year’s summer school principal.

About 80 to 100 students total attended summer school last year, he said.

Sullivan noted that having summer school on post will likely ease the minds of many fort parents — especially those with younger children. “A lot of parents don’t want to put little kids on buses” for long periods of time, he said.

While still pending board approval, the district is looking at holding summer school at three locations — at Tiefort View Intermediate School at Fort Irwin, and at Yermo School for grades K-8 and at Silver Valley High School for grades 9-12, according to Jill Kemock, SVUSD director of business services.

The district plans to continue offering summer school transportation and the option to buy lunches, or get free and reduced meals, this summer, Kemock said.

“The district recognizes the value of summer school to children to get them up to grade level,” said Kemock.

She noted, however, that the district is only requesting restoring the Summer 2010 session, because the condition of SVUSD’s budget in the future is still “very up in the air.”

The meeting will be held in the SVUSD board room at 7 p.m. tonight at 35320 Daggett-Yermo Road, Yermo.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4122 or elee@desertdispatch.com