Monday, June 13, 2005

Newton sees bright future as summer school begins
By Megan Means, Tribune staff writer

Columbia Public Schools launched its second Summer Adventure program this morning, and the leader of private education firm Newton Learning said the program isn’t in jeopardy, despite recent legislative changes.

About 5,600 students signed up this year, Assistant Superintendent Cheryl Cozette said. That’s fewer than last year’s first-day count but close to the number of students who stayed enrolled for the entire 2004 session.

This is the second year the district has hired Newton Learning to operate a summer program that’s free and open to all students. The program offers gift cards worth up to $100 for students with near-perfect or perfect attendance. The goal is to boost average attendance figures to generate more state education funding. The school district pocketed more than $2 million after paying local staff and Newton’s fees for the 2004 program.

Larrie Reynolds, the company’s president, said part of Columbia’s enrollment difference stems from the low-key recruiting plan favored by school district leaders. He said last year’s pitch to students put more emphasis on fun electives offered in the afternoon.

"In order to get high numbers of students to come to a learning program of any kind, … you have to appeal to both the adult audience and the student audience," Reynolds said.

Cozette said she’s not sure enrollment would have been different with other marketing tactics. "That’s hard to determine," she said. "This year, our emphasis has been a little more realistic, on the academic portion of what we’re doing rather than on the elective portion. We thought it was important for students and parents to know that we were planning on teaching the math and the language arts and that the curriculum was going to be highly correlated with what we do in the school year."

Columbia teachers and administrators played a bigger role in designing the 2005 program. They rewrote parts of the core curriculum, rearranged building assignments to group students by age and paid closer attention to bus routes in response to last year’s complaints. Families will receive instructions on how to donate students’ awards to charity if they object to the gift cards.

Students this year also could choose a half-day program that costs about $80 per session and offers elective classes only. Cozette said that 128 students signed up for the first session and that 228 will attend the second.

The future of Newton’s summer school business was in question during the latest legislative session, which included a bill to end extra funding for summer schools operated by outside firms, as well as an overhaul of the education funding formula. The summer school proposal stalled, but a new state aid formula passed in May.

Reynolds said Missouri remains one of the best states for summer school funding, even with the changes. Last year, the company worked for fewer than 70 districts, but this year it has more than 65,000 students enrolled in 90 school districts.

The new funding formula contains less generous bonuses for summer school enrollment, but it will be phased in over seven years. For example, in 2007, school districts will receive 85 percent of their state aid based on their revenue from the old formula.

"You’re probably going to see total reduction of somewhere between 3 to 7 percent off of the summer program," Reynolds said, referring to next year’s funding picture. "The school district can do much better than break even, even paying for services like the ones that Newton Learning provides. I would say it’s full speed ahead, at least for the next year and a few years after that."