ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. — We are in the home stretch of the school year, but some students and teachers are already planning for summer school.
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St. Lucie Public Schools will once again offer an expanded summer school program to help students make up for lost learning. And with that comes the need for more summer school teachers.
The district expects up to 6,000 students for summer school and needs more than 360 summer school teachers. That's compared to about 80 teachers during pre-pandemic summer school.
Teachers will earn an additional $7.20 an hour on top of their regular pay rate, plus about a $312.50 bonus if they don't miss a day of the five-week session.
Chief academic officer Dr. Helen Wild hopes the incentives will help bring teachers back into the classroom.
"They are tired. It's been a challenging year once again, so it is hard," Wild said. "But we did take their feedback. We are starting summer school early and ending it earlier so they have a little bit of a break before school starts and they can re-engerize for the new school year."
Wild said she's confident St. Lucie Public Schools will have enough teachers to staff the summer, and many have already signed up.
Families will get a letter in the next few weeks if their child is invited to summer school, which will run from June 13 to July 14.
"We are definitely still seeing the need," Wild said. "My concern is especially with the primary grades with the foundational skills in reading and math. They lost a lot of instructional time, especially if they didn't respond well to online learning. So we are still seeing the need to catch those students up. For our secondary students who might have been less successful online, they need to make up their credits as well."
The district is planning for an expanded summer school next year as well.