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District outlines Summer School 2025: dates, sites and curriculum; staff say long-term outcome tracking is limited
Summary
RUSD presented its Summer School 2025 plan including June 24 start, 22 instructional days, elementary/middle session structure, high-school credit recovery via Ingenuity, and sites. Presenters said the district has not yet tracked long-term academic outcomes for summer participants.
Jennifer Barncard, director of extended learning for Racine Unified School District, presented the district’s Summer School 2025 plan, including dates, daily schedules, sites and curriculum.
Barncard said the program will observe Juneteenth (closed June 19), begin with a teacher work day on Monday, June 23 and start instruction on Tuesday, June 24. The program will not run July 3 and will conclude on July 31; Barncard said the schedule yields 22 instructional days. Elementary and middle sessions will run roughly 08:10–11:55 with four rotations (math daily, reading daily, plus specialists), and high school will run two 90-minute blocks (about 08:30–10:00 and 10:05–11:35) with lunch offered after the second block. Sites listed for elementary and middle included Durst, Agri Home and Starbuck(s), with additional elementary-only sites at Gifford, Julian Thomas and Knapp. High school sites include Park High School (CASE and Park programs), Gilmore (Horlick program while Horlick finishes construction) and Roehl (alternative learning).
On curriculum, Barncard said K–2 will run Lit Camp focused on fluency and comprehension; grades 3–5 will use HMH units 11–12 designed for summer delivery; elementary math will use Moving with Math Foundations; middle school math will use Foundations for Algebra; and high school credit recovery will use the Ingenuity system, with district staff working to align Ingenuity courses to RUSD scope and sequence for core subjects.
Board members asked how the district measures summer-school effectiveness over the long term. Barncard said the district historically conducted pre- and post-assessments in-class but has not flagged students in the data system for long-term tracking; staff noted a potential approach would be to compare spring MAP scores with fall MAP scores for summer attendees. Registration opens March 31; Barncard said counselors will help identify credit-deficient high school students for summer credit recovery and that there is currently no enrollment cap.
Several board members also raised fiscal concerns and asked whether summer school is required in the future if the district experiences fiscal distress; presenters said summer school is not statutorily required and that program continuation could be affected by budget constraints. Act 20 was mentioned in the meeting as creating additional reading-related requirements that take effect next year.
Why this matters: Summer programming affects student access to intervention, credit recovery and prevention of summer learning loss; the district’s stated lack of long-term outcome tracking may limit evaluation of program effectiveness.
