This GLR Learning Tuesdays session continues CGLR series of sessions exploring state and district spending from the $190 billion Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) federal fund with this session investigating the $22 billion set-aside in support of comprehensive after-school and summer enrichment and the ways in which state departments of education and school districts are partnering with expert OST programs to reach more students to maximize this time outside of the classroom to accelerate learning. Reflecting on the long-held understanding that the summer months need to include diverse learning opportunities to avoid the “summer slide,”

Brodrick Clarke of the National Summer Learning Association expresses the importance of investing in summer learning as a strategy for equitable learning loss recovery:

[Without summer learning,] young people would not have this opportunity to connect, to continue to master language, to engage with mathematics, to engage with STEM and STEAM concepts. [Instead, the learning] faucet would just turn off and kids would be idle for 3 or 4 months, and in the case of COVID, like years. And what happens when you come back from that? So summer is an important time and place for learning recovery, as it has been for 30 years.

In this session, Clarke engages in discussion with moderator John Gomperts of CGLR and Jen Rinehart of the Afterschool Alliance about the evidence and the impact of OST and summer programs, the ever-increasing demand for these programs, and the trends in state and district investments in this strategy over the past two years. We also hear from a panel of state and local nonprofit leaders who are partnering with SEAs and districts and receiving investments in their successful OST learning programs, allowing them to reach many more students to advance equitable learning acceleration. A district administrator and their program partner, Spring Forward from Illinois, discuss how they have been able to multiply the number of students engaged and the impact they have seen. Kathy Ruggeberg, Ph.D., of the Rock Island-Milan School District in Illinois emphasizes how her district’s partnership gives many more students access to unique learning opportunities that go beyond the classroom.

We have over 30 different community partners that come in and there are a lot of things that school time [can’t fit in,] but with the Spring Forward partnership after school and in the summer, our kids are provided additional opportunities that they may not otherwise have. It is at no cost to our families and we are able to serve over 600 students.