More Boise-area students enrolled in summer school this year. Is pandemic the cause?

Sugey Madrigal, 15, said she’d always done fairly well in school. Then, the pandemic hit. She was trying to learn online, but without a classroom to go to, she struggled to concentrate, she said.

“It was just a lot more difficult to focus at home, because we have a different environment at home,” she told the Idaho Statesman.

She is now in summer school in the Nampa School District, working to understand the concepts in person, where she’s been able to learn better. It’s going well so far, she said. It’s a lot easier being in a classroom and having a teacher to approach in person.

Thousands of other middle and high school students in the region are enrolled in summer school this year across the Boise area.

According to data provided to the Statesman, some districts have seen increases in certain in-person summer school options they are offering this year, while other programs have seen similar enrollment numbers as previous years. For example, in Nampa and West Ada’s middle school summer programs, student enrollment is higher this year than in previous years before the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, where some districts — such as Boise and West Ada — have seen the largest jumps in summer school enrollment is actually in their programs being offered online.

Students enrolled in those programs can use the online courses in a number of ways, including to recover credits, but also to get ahead or open up their schedules so they can take additional courses during the school year.

For that reason, it’s hard to say why enrollment is up so much this year, said Char Jackson, chief communication officer for the West Ada School District.

“I don’t know that we can attribute the increase this summer to one thing,” she said in an email. “After such a chaotic year, it could be attributed to a multitude of factors.”

After dealing with a challenging year of navigating the ins and outs of online learning and hybrid schedules, districts are working to recover from the pandemic while also providing extra flexibility with their summer options — through online and in-person programs — to serve more students.

But on top of that, this summer also came with a new challenge of its own for some districts: a shortage of teachers.

Summer school by the numbers

In the West Ada School District, the number of high school students enrolled in the summer school program is up to nearly 1,000, from the just over 600 students who attended in 2019, when the classes were in person, according to numbers provided by Jackson.

West Ada is using an online platform to offer summer courses for high school students who can complete credits, get ahead or complete their senior projects, she said.

The middle school program in the district is an “intervention program” that’s done in person for students who need to retrieve lost credit and need additional help. This year, more than 180 students are enrolled in that program. In previous years, the district saw closer to 135 to 145 students, said LaJohnna Honey, the head secretary for the district’s middle school summer program.

In the Boise School District, the number of students enrolled in the traditional secondary summer school program, which is also online, was at more than 1,300 students for the first semester, up from just over 800 in 2019, according to the most recent data provided by Dan Hollar, public affairs administrator with the Boise School District.

The traditional secondary program, for students in grades 7 to 12, is done through the online FuelEd platform with a district-assigned teacher who helps “guide them through the curriculum,” said Mark Jones, administrator of student programs with the Boise School District. There are two semesters, and the district is offering about 25 courses for online summer school. High school students can take up to four credits to go toward graduation requirements, the district said on its website.

The district also has alternative junior high and high school summer programs — which are for eligible at-risk students — to help with credit recovery and additional support. Those programs are in-person and have not seen significant changes in enrollment numbers compared to 2019.

“When you look at data historically, our numbers are not all that much different,” Jones said, “other than the increase in the FuelEd.”

In Nampa, where summer school for high school students is offered in person for credit recovery, the enrollment numbers will continue to grow throughout the summer as students complete their courses and new students enter. According to the preliminary data, high school enrollment is down in the district this year compared to 2019.

But it’s hard to say exactly how enrollment has changed until later in the year, given how that program works, said Stefanie Duby, an administrator for the Nampa summer school program.

The district also offers an intervention program for middle school, where enrollment is up. In 2019, about 275 middle school students were enrolled in the summer school program. This year, about 360 students were enrolled, according to data provided by Kathleen Tuck, director of communications and community relations with the Nampa School District.

Why is enrollment up in some areas?

It’s hard to tell exactly how the pandemic impacted the number of students who signed up for summer school this year, multiple officials said.

For the online offerings, the flexibility those courses offer likely contributed to the uptick, said Stacey Roth, administrator of student programs with the Boise School District. Some students have other summer obligations, and the online programs give them the option to sign on when they are able to and complete the coursework.

“We’ve always done it face to face (in the past),” Roth said. “So it might be that some kids can do that and work … it’s hard to know this first year.”

After a year of online learning, students are also likely more comfortable with the online platform, she said.

“Pre-COVID, the idea of an online class might have been more intimidating for some, where now, they’ve done it,” she said.

Jackson also mentioned the flexibility, which allows students to take courses on their own schedules.

“Because our program is online, not in-person, with tutoring sessions, students have the flexibility to take courses that meet their time frame so they could continue with their summer job and take courses or continue vacation plans and complete a course,” Jackson said in an email. “Prior to online, students could only miss two days of instruction or they couldn’t gain credits.”

On the high school level, the districts didn’t provide data on whether the uptick had to do with more students needing to complete credits than in the past after failing courses, or if it was more a reflection of students taking advantage of an online platform to get ahead or open up their schedule.

But for West Ada’s middle school program, the increase in enrollment this summer is a reflection of more students struggling over the past year to pass their classes, said Monica McDonald, who teaches science at Lowell Scott Middle School and has taught summer school for more than a decade.

“I think students felt very frustrated and overwhelmed (during the school year),” McDonald said. “A lot of it was beyond the learning. They were having home struggles. We had a lot of social-emotional needs that were not necessarily being met.”

Some families were worried about food or where they were going to live, she said.

“That kind of stress, that’s overwhelming to begin with, and then they don’t have their normal support systems of their teachers and the students,” she said. “I think it really impacted not only their ability to learn, but sometimes their willingness to learn.”

Olivia Orr, 14, a student in the summer school program in West Ada, said she was living in a house with nine people.

When classes went remote, it was hard to make herself go to class, she said. She didn’t have a desk or table to work from. She didn’t show up, she said, so she wasn’t able to pass her classes. This is her first time in summer school.

What’s motivating her? “I don’t want to get held back, so I know I have to go,” she said.

In Nampa, the middle school program is designed to be an intervention program to fill in learning gaps and give students the extra supports they need to succeed the following year, said Greg Heideman, principal at Lone Star Middle School in Nampa. There are likely a variety of reasons for the increase in students this year, he said.

“We had so many different variables for this year, some students struggled with online, some students struggled going back face to face,” he said. “It definitely was a difficult year for students.”

Some students are recommended to attend the summer school program, he said. Not every student who is recommended for the program chooses to go, though, Heideman said. Some families opt out.

Heideman said he also had some parents reach out this year who felt their kids needed the additional summer program.

Duby said she also saw some parents and kids who wanted to be back in school after the challenges of the last year.

“There is definitely a need for kids who have failed courses,” she said. “There’s also the desire for kids and by parents to have them continue in school because of the time that was missed from our in-person schooling this past year.”

For those who might have needed additional help and weren’t able to attend the summer program, districts said they will have to be flexible going into the next year.

“When the kids come back in the fall … we will have systems in place to make sure those kids get the classes and the support that they need,” Roth said.

The struggle to find teachers

The Nampa School District is also trying to grapple with a shortage of teachers this summer. The struggle to find enough teachers has meant the district hasn’t been able to offer some of the courses students need.

“There’s the major need for a break by our teachers,” Duby said. “It’s been a long year, and they need that break first of all, so we understand the why of the struggle to hire staff.”

In the Boise School District, Jones said he also heard of some challenges hiring teachers for certain summer school programs, such as with the district’s elementary programs. With the traditional secondary program, the district said it had some issues finding math teachers, but overall, it wasn’t difficult to fill the spots.

“It was a concern to find enough teachers because you had just, really, teachers that were tired,” Jones said.

In Nampa, there are some courses the district hasn’t been able to offer at all, and others where the district couldn’t offer more than one section.

There are teachers from other districts who are teaching in Nampa this summer, along with teachers who traditionally teach different grade levels, Duby said.

Going into the next year, the shortage of teachers means the district will have to figure out other ways for those students who might not have been able to get their credits over the summer to make up those classes and meet their graduation requirements.

“I think, more than ever, we’re aware of the need for flexibility,” Duby said, “and if there’s a silver lining in what the pandemic has brought us, we now have different ways to teach kids than we had in the past.”

Becca Savransky covers education for the Idaho Statesman in partnership with Report for America. The position is partly funded through community support. Click here to donate.