Council Rock reports higher summer-academy registration, outlines costs for continuation

Council Rock School District officials told the Education Committee Thursday that the district's 2025 summer academy drew 537 registrations, up from 321 the previous year, and highlighted a mix of academic-review programs and new offerings for incoming kindergarten and secondary students.

"We had a really amazing and successful, 2025 summer academy program. We had 537 students registered, next to the 321 that we had registered last year," said Michael Catalano, one of the program presenters. "We had a 78% attendance rate this year." Catalano said the academy employed 93 staff members.

District officials described Ready, Set, Grow, a new series of sessions for children entering full-day kindergarten. Kathleen Manning said parent feedback on that strand was strongly positive: 94% of surveyed parents said they were satisfied or very satisfied; 90% said their child felt more confident starting kindergarten; 94% reported improvement in early academic and social skills; and 100% said their child seemed excited to start full-day kindergarten.

The program also continued standard grade-level review classes in English and math, added study-skills and executive-function instruction for middle-grade bridge programs, and piloted credit-recovery for secondary students through a virtual model supervised by a district teacher. District presenters said seven secondary students registered for the credit-recovery option; those who attended fully were likely to complete the required coursework.

Committee members asked for quantitative growth data; staff said they conduct universal screenings at the start and end of the academy and cited sample gains in early-literacy measures (nonsense-word fluency +15%; oral reading accuracy +11%; oral reading fluency +17%) and said they would share detailed results with the board and committee.

Funding and future planning featured in the discussion. Superintendent Katie Sanko and staff said the district paid for summer academy after expiring ESSER funds were no longer available. Dr. Fanko provided cost figures later in the meeting: $330,330.14 for 2025 versus $227,855.23 in 2024. Administrators told the committee they will consider program dates, transportation needs and budget placement if the district is to continue the program beyond this year.

Committee members recommended earlier public notice of session dates, more transportation options and detailed, grade-by-grade outcome reporting to help with outreach and future marketing.

A follow-on administrative step noted during the meeting: staff will include summer-academy funding and program design in budget planning for next year; any long-term continuation will require explicit budget allocation and likely board approval.