No break for spring break

POST FALLS – No more teachers, no more books.

For Post Falls elementary students, the end of this school year really will be the end of the school year.

Summer school is no more.

At Seltice Elementary School, nearly 60 students who would have been pegged for summer school instead are attending spring break school. Other elementary schools in the district are doing after-school programs this spring in lieu of summer school.

Seltice reading specialist Jennifer Olsen said Seltice elementary opted for spring break school because it seemed students were suffering a “learning loss” during the weeklong break in spring.

The vacation falls shortly before students take the Idaho Standards Achievement Test and the Idaho Reading Indicator.

Students attending spring break school were tested beforehand. So were a group of students who are spending spring break playing.

“The hope is that kids who participated in spring break school will be able to maintain, or show growth,” Olsen said.

Spring break school is seven days – a total of 40 hours.

Students are grouped by reading ability, not by age or grade.

On the first day of spring break school, a first-grader told Olsen, “I like learning now.”

Kids get free breakfast and lunch, and the privilege of playing on the “big kids’ playground.”

“Lots of these kids don’t get to be head of the class,” Olsen said. “This gives them that opportunity.”

Small groups of students – 12 to 15 – rotate through four classes: Reading fluency, writing, phonics and grammar.

Kay Hall, a retired Seltice teacher, returned to teach the writing class.

“Kids that hardly write sentences, she’s getting stories out of them right off the bat,” Olsen said.

Best friends and first-graders Kimmie Gilmore and Alexis Collins started writing stories about cats after Hall helped them brainstorm.

“We learned how to do writing and we learned how to do reading,” Kimmie said.

Spring break at school is fun, she said.

Alexis said she was having a good time, too.

“I’m learning how to write,” she said. “I learned a lot about cats.”

District Business Manager Sid Armstrong said the district tried summer school for elementary students and the program was a success.

“We thought we could get a little more bang for our buck stretching it out throughout the year,” Armstrong said.