CUSD talks about what makes its summer program special
Equal parts summer school and summer camp, staff and teachers of the Castaic Union School District created a unique summer school program for district students this past summer.
The overall summer program, which ran from June 24 to July 19, consisted of two different programs for students: the extended school year, or ESY, service designed to support students with a disability as part of their individualized education program, or IEP; and the impact summer program, or ISP, which is designed to support students eligible for intervention, and remedial instruction based on iReady data.
The ESY program was open to preschool through eighth grade, and ISP was available for kids first through eighth grade.
However, while the summer school was held on a campus, according to Jacky Vasquez, director of preschools for the district, it was not a normal type of learning.
“We had goals for them,” said Vasquez. “We had academic activities but we had events for them as well.”
Across both programs there were a total of 175 kids, and teachers and staff led them through spirit days, waterplay days and gave them incentives to attend school by giving students with perfectly weekly attendance popsicles on Fridays.
“The biggest message that we wanted to send out to not just the kids, but the parents too, that learning is fun,” said Vasquez. “As long as the staff is motivated and wanting to do it, that’s going to be shown to the kids, too.”
Vasquez said next year the plan was to create a single summer program that would integrate both ESY and ISP children together.
“We’re trying to stop those boundaries, and stop the division between, ‘Oh, well that’s ESY, that’s extended school year because that’s the special ed portion of summer school,’” said Vasquez. “We really want to make it ‘summer school,’ because in the end the special education students are general education first.”
Officials said Thursday the focus of the services provided to the student as part of an ESY program are generally not upon learning new skills or "catching up" to grade level, but rather to provide practice to maintain previously acquired or learned skills.
In total, students completed 706 reading lessons over 272 hours and 15 minutes of instruction and 707 math lessons over 302 hours and 35 minutes.
“We are so proud of our dedicated staff for providing extended learning opportunities during the summer for our students who need additional support,” said CUSD board President Stacy Dobbs. “Many students not only showed academic growth, they also built friendships with students from other schools. These small-group, targeted intervention programs focused on meeting the needs of individual students, which is one thing we are known for here in Castaic.”