After parent and teacher complaints, Wake says it will resume summer learning program
Wake County school leaders are pledging to resume a summer learning program for year-round and modified-calendar students and to pay staff for all the time they’ve agreed to work.
Parents and teachers have been complaining since Wake County announced last week that it was “pausing” the learning program because it didn’t have enough staff. School administrators told a school board committee on Monday that they’ll restart the program as soon as possible and they’ll honor the contracts of employees who can still work in the program.
“It is our intent to complete the remaining hours of instruction for our modified and our year-round students.” said Edward McFarland, Wake’s chief academic advancement officer. “It may not happen on the same original timeline, but it is our intent to make sure that happens prior to the end of the school year. We will pay staff for the hours they’ve worked and will work.”
The exact restart date for the program wasn’t announced Monday.
Schools deal with staff shortages
North Carolina school districts were required last summer to offer a new six-week summer learning program to help at-risk students dealing with learning loss.
Traditional-calendar students completed the program over the summer, but Wake’s year-round and modified-calendar schools are continuing the program into the fall semester. The pause came as thousand of students still had weeks left to go.
Wake cited staffing shortages, saying it’s having a hard time just trying to get enough people to work during regular school days. School districts across the state are dealing with staffing shortages, particularly among bus drivers.
“We’ve got to really surgically go into schools that are struggling with the vacancies and figure out how we can support them,” McFarland said.
Drew Cook, Wake’s assistant superintendent for academics, said half of the 45 year-round and modified-calendar schools said they had staffing issues continuing the program as scheduled.
Pause causes ‘angst’
The decision to pause the program upset families who wanted their children to get the same opportunity to complete the program as traditional-calendar students.
McFarland said they made the announcement about the pause last week to give families advance notice.
“There’s a narrative, I think, that we’ve canceled summer learning,” McFarland said. “That’s not true at all. We wanted to make sure that we could provide a consistent, excellent program with the integrity that it was meant to provide to students.”
But school board members said the news had understandably left families and employees worried.
“When things get shut down without warning that causes angst,” said board member Jim Martin. “Whether it’s reassignment, whether it’s whatever it is, if we don’t give a runway for a decision, we get the angst that we’ve got right now.”
Reassuring employees they’ll get paid
The pause had also upset employees who were worried that they could lose thousands of dollars promised to them when they signed a contract to work the summer program.
Wake offered $45 an hour to teachers and $20 an hour to non-certified staff, plus an attendance bonus of up to $1,200 deepening on how many of the weeks they worked. Some teachers were also eligible for a state-mandated $1,200 signing bonus.
Teachers will still get the signing bonus. But the year-round employees will only get the remaining hours of pay and the full $1,200 attendance bonus if the program resumes.
Superintendent Cathy Moore reassured employees that contracts will be honored. She said teachers may have different students, or students from different schools, when the program resumes.
“Staff that are available and remain available will be able to complete the contracted hours that we had with them with the intent of completing the summer program with students,” Moore said.
Results of summer program
Also on Monday, school officials presented data on the students who attended the summer program.
Wake invited more than 35,000 students but only around 15,000 attended. State lawmakers required districts to offer the program but students didn’t have to go.
Most of the students who attended were at-risk of academic failure. Most left the program still scoring being below grade level.
But administrators pointed to data showing how some students saw gains — 134 students made up enough credits to graduate over the summer. Wake also got mostly positive responses from a survey of parents.
“The summer learning program in isolation is not sufficient by itself to provide a significant and positive change for the students that need it,” said Cook, the assistant superintendent. “Rather, it remains part of a broader system of support for our students.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2021 at 5:24 PM.
