What’s Right With Our Schools: Hillcrest Elementary Summer REACH Program

CHATTANOOGA, TN (WDEF) – A school year like none other will soon become a Summer like none other for many students in Hamilton County. To make up for lost learning, the Summer Reach program will double in length this year. The goal is to get everyone back on the same page this Fall, and it’s an ambitious example of “What’s Right with Our Schools”.

Dr. Kelley Weiss is the Director of Special Projects for the Hamilton County Department of Education.

She says, “We are at Hillcrest Elementary which is serving as our base camp for setting up for Summer REACH . So, Summer REACH this year is going to be a six week program instead of a three week program like we ran last year, and this year for these six weeks we have our first three weeks which are setting up students to finish up the year strong; going over standards that they may have been shaky on, through this year to really give them a solid base so that we can in July accelerate and give them a preview of what’s coming for this school year, and they can be really confident and secure and their learning. The state of Tennessee passed a learning Loss Bill that had students receiving after school and Summer learning. And so we are in response to that gearing up for a summer reach program that should serve around 5500 students.”

Weiss adds, ” We were very lucky we’ve been in school as much as we have, but we know that there has been some learning loss this year, in terms of not having all of that in school contact, but it also is in response to the learning loss bill that Tennessee passed. So we want to make sure that we are giving students every opportunity to be as well prepared and as knowledgeable as they can be. We have individual stuff for every kid. So we are, we have individual counters. And we have glue sticks, and pencils and base 10 sets, everything you could imagine; fraction sets of what my hands are resting on. We have everything for every kid so they have they are each individual learning supplies for the Summer. We are going to serve a group of K through 5 students, a group of 6 through 8 students and then our high schools in June will be doing credit recovery for those kids that may have not finished up all the credits that they needed this year. We are providing invitations to any student we feel would benefit from it. But we will open it up to every student in the district to sign up through Power School. They go into their parent portal under forms there is a summer reach form. They sign up their entry interest and we will be in touch.”