By all accounts, the two recent summer school programs at Ripon Unified were highly successful.
Nate Baroni and Kathy Diederich served as co-administrators at summer school for elementary school students – the theme was “Out of this World” held at Ripona Elementary School.
“It was a great summer back in June,” said Baroni, who is also principal at Ripona during the regular school year.
At Monday’s Ripon Unified school board meeting, he noted that the initial enrollment for the summer session was 561 students.
“Those are huge numbers for us,” Baroni said. “We had every class filled – there was a lot of participation.”
Helping out were 23 certificated teachers and 21 classified support staff members.
The program at Ripona offered general education, Spanish language, extended school year, music camp (band, strings, and drumline), and weekly enrichment assemblies.
One of the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math) assemblies featured the inflatable SkyDome Planetarium.
Music Camp consisted of five different programs – beginning and intermediate classes in band and strings – and the drumline, with students in the latter performing at the June school board meeting.
The numbers of students were down in the summer program at Ripon High.
“That’s a good thing,” said RHS Vice Principal Alicia Vasche, who served as the summer school administrator.
Most of the 61 students enrolled were there to make up grades or credits.
Of that, 234.2 credits were recovered via Gradpoint (a total of 45 courses) while 135 credits were recovered from direct instructions in English I, English II, and Health.
According to Vasche, summer school helped put 13 seniors get back on track towards graduation.
Five seniors were able to opt out for the upcoming school year due to credit recovery.
Her best news involved three students who not only managed to complete three courses in four weeks, but did so in record time.
“That was a summer school record,” Vasche noted.
In addition, 23 freshmen managed to get on track for their sophomore year, completing the summer classes in English I or Health.
