Ticking Down to End of Summer School
By Becky Orr, Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
Jul. 19–CHEYENNE — Summer school is winding down for upwards of 1,100 students in Laramie County School District 1.
The program started June 16 and will end after classes on Tuesday.
The program is for pre-kindergarten children through students in the 12th grade.
The focus at the elementary level is to help children with skills in math, reading and writing.
At the junior high and high school levels, teachers help students recover credits where they didn’t succeed in the regular school year. They also can improve their grades.
Each student has an individual learning plan.
Junior high and high school students also can take a physical education 3 /health 3 class. If they complete it successfully, they won’t have to take the class during the school year.
Money for summer school comes from a $1.5 million Bridges grant from the state Legislature. The grant money also will pay for before- and after-school programs to help students, said Irene Story, assistant director of instruction for LCSD1. Summer school is one of the job’s responsibilities.
Teachers are highly qualified, she said, and teach in the subject for which they are trained.
Class sizes are small, with about 10 students in elementary classes and 15 students at secondary levels. Paraprofessionals in pre-kindergarten classes bring the ratio of teacher to students to about 1 to 5.
Classes meet at Lebhart, Alta Vista, Sunrise and Freedom elementary schools and Johnson and Carey junior highs.
Special activities with parents are planned on Mondays at Lebhart Elementary for pre-kindergarten students.
Last Monday, for example, Miss Frontier Kari Ward and Lady-in-Waiting Kimberly Kuhn visited the school.
Sixth-graders who attend summer school at Carey Junior High are in a Jump Start program. They need some additional instruction in one or all of math, writing or reading.
The program helps them get ready for junior high. For example, they move to different classrooms for their subjects.
They also get used to taking longer block classes, which they will have in junior high, said teacher Jane Brutsman.
The program combines different subjects. On Tuesday, the students tested water at Crow Creek and also wrote about it.
In Brutsman’s class, students write in their journals. They also work on the style of writing that is required for the statewide achievement test.
The students write narrative works and share them with the rest of the class.
Brutsman said she has noticed a definite improvement in their writing.
One student learned to focus in on only one topic in his writing. “He really just ran with it,” she said, and his writing has improved significantly.
Students work hard in her class, she said. “They’ve been phenomenal in wanting to learn and wanting to improve.”
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