Ramon Molina, a fifth grader at Michael D. Fox Elementary School in Hartford’s South End, sat with his partner for a science lesson Thursday morning, testing the solubility of different household compounds, like sugar, salt and baking soda.
The 9-year-old said it was a little strange to return to the building for summer school after spending the past year and a half or so learning from home, but mostly he felt “happy and excited to be back,” and he’s optimistic about the coming school year.
“I can finally see my teachers,” he added.
In an effort to address unfinished learning and lost socialization over the past year as the coronavirus forced students into online learning, many Connecticut school districts invested heavily in expanding summer school programs. Hartford Public Schools budgeted about $4 million in federal coronavirus relief aid toward full-day summer learning programs throughout the month of July. From 8:15 a.m. until lunch time, students participated in reading, writing, math and science lessons. Then, elementary and middle school students could participate in extracurricular and physical activities until pickup at 4 p.m.
At the start of last school year, Principal Kevin Geissler said about 60% of Fox’s 566 students opted to learn online only. Each marking period, the school gave parents the option to switch to in-person learning, and by the end of the school year, more than half of students were learning from the school building.
“From September to June, we had students in this building every single day,” he said. “Now was that anything like pre-COVID? Absolutely not.”
Programs like Hartford’s are seeking to make up for what educators fear is staggering learning loss among students due to the pandemic’s disruption of routine classroom learning. Even before COVID-19, 45% of Connecticut students were not reading at grade level. Experts fear the state’s achievement gap has only grown as urban school districts generally had a larger amount of families opting for online-only learning and thousands of those students were either chronically absent or did not log on to class at all for long stretches, setting them even further back than their suburban peers.
Research released last week by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company found by the end of the 2021 school year students were an average of five months behind in math and four months behind in reading. Students in low-income schools or those where a majority of students were Black or Hispanic fared even worse.
Tracey Ruggles, Ramon’s teacher at Fox, said many of her summer school students had opted into online-only classes last year, and they’re currently in the process of getting used to a pandemic-era classroom environment.
As in other schools, Fox students and staff follow state health and safety protocols on wearing masks and limiting physical closeness. Still, Geissler said being in person allowed teachers to provide a greater level of interaction than they were able to remotely. A key goal of the summer program was to provide a welcoming environment for kids to reconnect with their classmates and teachers, Geissler said, in addition to providing targeted learning opportunities for any interested families. On average, about 115 students attended each week, he said.
Ruggles, who taught second grade remotely last year, said generally speaking, the children in her class who are more outgoing had an easier time engaging in online-only learning than those who are shy. Of her 20 students, she never saw five of the children’s faces during the school year because of the way remote learning was set up.
“One of the things I could tell students needed was that human, peer interaction,” she said. So, when planning her summer school lessons, she included scheduled breaks for kids to socialize, in addition to the math, science and English-language arts classes.
Speaking about learning loss and unfinished learning, Ruggles said she felt it was important for teachers to “meet [children] where they’re at” in September and adjust planned curriculum accordingly.
“If we hit the ground running … and we don’t make a connection and acknowledge that they’ve had this gap from socialization, it’s going to be hard to get them going,” she said.
LaToya Adgers, who has worked with the elementary school for seven years as a coordinator for The Village for Families & Children — a Hartford-based organization that provides behavioral health treatment and support services — said having students together in the same physical space this summer “has done wonders” for the mental health of children who’ve been dealing with isolation for extended periods of time. After academic classes and lunch, children at Fox had the option to participate in activities such as yoga, martial arts, cooking classes and projects with local Girl Scouts.
Still, Adgers said she believes social-emotional, mental health and other types of supports will continue to play an important role in meeting students’ and families’ needs throughout the coming school year.
“We are still in that transition of getting back to what we consider to be normal,” she said.
Daisy McColley enrolled her daughter in Fox’s summer school because she saw it was a good opportunity for the third grader to receive additional help with her reading skills, as well as reliable adult supervision during McColley’s working hours.
Before the district reopened for in-person classes, McColley said that as a single parent, she struggled at times to find another responsible adult who could monitor the girl’s learning while she was working, although her teenage son did his best to help out as much as possible. When school buildings did reopen, McColley said her daughter benefitted from the closer guidance teachers could provide in person.
Compared to the beginning of the summer, McColley said her daughter has made academic progress, and going forward, it would be helpful for schools to continue offering additional learning opportunities, like afterschool programs focusing on particular subject areas.
“I feel like that would work out for a lot of students and parents that need extra help,” she said. “As a parent, we have so much to do at home. Of course we want to sit and help our kids … but sometimes, it’s impossible.”
According to an updated three-year strategic plan announced by the school district in May, Hartford Public Schools is expecting to invest in more learning and enrichment opportunities before and after the regular school day, as well during school breaks.
Amanda Blanco can be reached at ablanco@courant.com.
