City’s public summer school kicks off with 100,000 kids
New York City’s public summer school has kicked off on Tuesday with more than 100,000 kids.
The camp program entitled ‘Summer Rising’ struggles with some of the same logistical snags that hampered the program last year.
Mayor Adams pledged to expand the “Summer Rising” program by 10,000 additional kids and eliminate some of the planning stumbles that frustrated school administrators in the program’s inaugural year.
However, city principals union head Mark Cannizzaro said that while this year’s rollout cleared the “low bar” the city set in 2021, school administrators are still “running into many snafus that are a result of poor planning on the DOE’s part.”
Cannizzaro charged that the Department of Education waited until the last minute to iron out some key details by sending an email with critical first-day information on the Sunday of the holiday weekend.
“There was some important info in that email, and they cannot have expected people to read it” by the time kids showed up Tuesday morning, Cannizzaro said.
Former Mayor de Blasio launched the ambitious “Summer Rising” program last summer with the aid of federal stimulus money as a way to help kids catch up academically and socially from pandemic disruptions and ease the transition back to full-time, in-person learning.
Mayor Adams, who has emphasized summer youth programming as part of his efforts to reduce crime, expanded the program and hours this year.
Spots were open to kids in public, charter and private schools and were snapped up in a hurry, leaving some families locked out.
The Education Department didn’t specify how many of the kids who registered actually showed up on Tuesday, but said those who haven’t shown up by the second week could be unenrolled.
