Program helps stem ‘summer slide’ in reading
Cypress-Fairbanks ISD loans WiFi, laptops to students for e-books, programs, games
Fourth-grader Oscar Huerta Cruz’s summer began with excitement about free hot dogs.
The hot dogs, though, were just a small part of a recent festival at the Tanner Road Mobile Home Park where Oscar lives. The event kicked off a new internet-based iConnect initiative from Cypress-Fairbanks ISD.
The program was implemented in cooperation with Layer 3 Communications, a company that installed and directed a WiFi access point less than a mile from the community.
The district then loaned CFISD students living in the park such as Oscar and his ninth-grade sister, Diana Huerta Cruz, a laptop for use over the summer — and beyond. This will allow them to access district programs to play educational games and read e-books.
Beyond the educational games and internet access, CFISD Associate Superintendent Linda Macias said, the heart of this initiative is to stop the “summer slide.”
“Kids leave school at a specific reading level, but they go home and there’s not much learning that takes place during the summer for economically disadvantaged students. So they regress some. This is an opportunity to work toward eliminating the summer slide, not just reduce it,” Macias said.
Students attending Kirk Ele-
mentary, Truitt Middle and Cypress Ridge High schools, which are the campuses zoned for the mobile home park, were eligible to receive devices to connect to the internet. The district gave out 30 to 40 devices per school, which meant about one per household.
The district also provided information about how to care for the devices, how to use the programs and how parents can stay up to date about their child’s education via online portals.
While Oscar likes to use the laptop to play games about math and science, Diana is using it to look toward her future career.
“I’ve been reading about photography careers and jobs that are related to photography, like industrial designer, graphic designer and fashion designer,” Diana said. “I also like cosmetology and want to have a cosmetology license, so I’ve been looking for different schools.”
To Diana’s mother, Irene Cruz, this is the best part of the initiative.
“I like that they have the computer here, and I like the idea that they are projecting themselves to the future,” Irene said.
She also said that she expects this will help Oscar and Diana to keep practicing what they learned over the school year so they’re prepared to continue in the fall.
For kids like Oscar and Diana who didn’t have a reliable connection before this, internet access can make a big difference in how they learn and retain information.
Maria Trejo, the district’s director for special populations, said Diana is now able to practice reading at home through digital software offered by the district — which she wasn’t able to do without the laptop.
“It wasn’t just about access; it was also about the device. That’s the key here. We gave them both,” Trejo said.
While Macias said the district doesn’t yet have statistics that delve into how the kids are using the devices specifically, she is confident that students are using the connection for educational purposes.
In order to combat non-educational use, CFISD Chief Technology Officer Frankie Jackson said, all devices loaned out to students have the same firewalls and blocking filters as oncampus devices.