Dr. David Hopson
As I write this article, our students only have two half-days of school left and are looking forward to their summer break. The words “School’s Out” are generally spoken with glee as our students depart school for the months of July and August. Despite getting out so late in June, our students still have two full months of summer vacation and do not return to school until the day after Labor Day this year. As we look at these two months off for students, research shows that many students lose much of what they’ve learned in the prior 10 months unless they continue to use and apply academic skills to their activities over the summer. Students, and their families, often do a wide range of things over the summer including vacations, work, sports, and leisure activities. To keep students on a constant academic pathway, experts say that families should encourage students to read; engage students in conversations about the world around them (current events, nature/science); find ways to use mathematical applications (i.e. through cooking, keeping stats during a sports game, or even managing an allowance); have students use and sharpen their writing skills (correspondence, personal journal, etc.); learn and use appropriate computer skills; and generally challenge students to expand the application of their knowledge and skills to the world around us. By applying academic experiences to the ‘real’ world, we help maintain those skills, make education relevant, and encourage the understanding that learning is a lifelong pursuit.
Many individuals mistakenly believe that everyone in a school district enjoys a long summer break; in truth, very few employees get these two months off. Even our teachers, who no longer have to teach every day, have a different set of activities moving from teaching to learning (additional college courses, professional development, internships, etc.) as well as reflecting on the past year and planning how to improve their lessons in the coming year. School and district administrators finally have the time to devote to completing the many reports, schedules, and other requirements placed upon them from the state and federal governments as well as preparing for the start of another school year. Our business office doesn’t ever seem to slow down and the end of one fiscal year means preparing for the annual audit, preparing to start spending from a new budget (even more difficult when we don’t have the towns’ approval by the end of June), and taking care of the ongoing requirements of meeting the fiscal responsibilities across the district. Of course, keeping a technologically advanced district up to date and running efficiently means our technical staff are busy updating servers, networks, telephone systems, and the myriad other items that are part and parcel of a modern school complex.
Summer may be the busiest time of year for our custodial and maintenance staffs, especially in a year like this where the summer vacation is so short. From the annual deep cleaning of each section of the building to routine maintenance items and from the special maintenance projects to the bigger contracted repair/replacement projects, the staff responsible for these items seem to be going beyond full speed all summer long.
The bottom line is that summer is not a respite from work but merely a change in working environments with a different set of pressures, a different expectation of tasks to be completed, and a different time line with a deadline of having everything ready to go by the time teachers return in late August. I can say with confidence that our staff will complete their tasks in an efficient and timely manner so that we will be ready to go this fall.
I hope that all of our students, families, citizens, and staff have a safe, enjoyable, and productive summer.
