INDIANAPOLIS — The pandemic hit schools and their students especially hard.
Many of them are still struggling to catch up.
The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township has revised its Jump Start summer school program, enrolling more kids who need more help than in previous years.
This year, more than twice as many children are expected to be in summer school. They need help catching up and making up classwork that they missed during the regular school year.
"It will absolutely be more rigorous for more children," said Troy Knoderer, the district's chief academic officer.
Knoderer said the pandemic's impact has affected students of all ages.
"The transition from in-person to virtual to in-person to virtual to in-person to virtual has been challenging for many of our students and has resulted in incomplete learning," Knoderer said.
In a typical year, elementary students who need the most help are targeted for summer school. Classes are held in one school building.
This year, every student can enroll in full-day classes held in every elementary school and the class curriculum will be more rigorous than usual.
"Science technology, math, a humanities block where there is language arts, social studies, culture," he said of the classes being offered.
High school classes will focus on helping students complete courses they started but didn't finish.
"For our high school students, it is all about staying on track for graduation and being able to demonstrate the skills needed to earn the credit and a diploma," Knoderer explained.
Enrollment is still open. The elementary program includes lunch and after-school daycare.
According to Knoderer, the Jump Start program is a good start but many students will need more than a summer program to catch up. The school district is already planning after-school tutoring sessions in the fall and another bigger, more rigorous summer school for next year.
Some students will need more than a year to recover from a pandemic plagued school year that no one could have foreseen.