Fee cuts summer school enrollment

BATAVIA -- The good news for the Batavia School District's summer school program is that elementary school students who participated in 2008 raised their reading scores by an average 3 percentile points and their math scores by an average 4 percentile points on standardized tests.

The bad news, said summer school Principal Tim Moore, is that fewer at-risk students participated in 2009 because the district dropped its tuition waiver for non-enrichment classes. Officials said 233 students took the free Learning Links classes in 2008 that produced last year's gains in the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) test; only 75 took the for-pay remedial classes that replaced Learning Links this past summer. The district charged $65 per class for summer school, except for English Language Learners, which was funded by grant money. The number of ELL students remained stable -- 44 in 2008 and 43 in 2009.

"One of the budget cuts we made last spring was to the summer school program. It was a very hard cut to make," said Associate Superintendent Jan Wright.

Enrichment summer school enrollment also dropped in 2009, from 446 elementary and middle school students in 2008 to 373 students last summer.