Summer fun has teamed up with education as the Oakdale Joint Unified School District presents its Expanded Learning Program for the second year.
“Summer Camp was solely a fee-based program, available to all students in the district,” Armida Colon, Director of State and Federal Programs, said of ELP. “Effective last year, summer 2023, we no longer charge for the program and it’s still accessible to all students across the district.”
Since the change to no cost, the director shared the program has doubled in enrollment from 95 to 110 students for the former six-week program to now well into the 200’s.
“It is a brand-new program, in that we have funding from the state now,” she said.
Colon further shared in 2021, the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP) rolled out to districts across the state. The program provides funding for enhancing after school programs or building after school programs if a district didn’t have one. Additionally, it requires that summer programming be offered with up to 30 days of service and 30 days of intersession days.
“When the funding rolled out, perhaps the biggest shocker was the fact that it’s now funded and it’s going to be free to our students,” Colon stated. “Additionally, it meant we had to grow.”
With a template already set from the long-standing Summer Camp program, adjustments were made to accommodate the nine-hour per day offering requirement, as well as tailoring activities to serve a student group double in size from the previous years.
“The program must be open from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., that’s our nine-hour day,” Colon shared.
The time frame doesn’t require there be scheduled activities for the full nine hours but must be accessible to families during that time. Breakfast is served for students at 8 a.m. and scheduled programming ends around 2:30 p.m. Additionally students have the opportunity to utilize the bus, which departs daily at 3 p.m.
This year’s OJUSD ELP for elementary age students is being hosted at Fair Oaks Elementary school.
“What ELOP did was not only offer this free program, but it also established some enrollment requirements,” Colon noted, sharing that priority enrollment is given to students eligible for free or reduced lunches, English learners and foster and homeless youth.
“They have priority enrollment,” she said. “Once that need has been met then we can invite other students to the program. The demand has been incredibly high.”
With waitlists in the first year, as well as this year, they are diligent in checking the attendance of students in the program and following up if there seems to be a loss of interest. This provides further opportunity for other students.
“On a weekly basis we will be assessing attendance to ensure we can pull some of the kids from the waitlist,” she stated. “Our waitlist is over 200 students.”
With so many students wanting to attend, Colon said they can only accommodate a certain number.
“Our max capacity is driven by staff,” she said of the program size. “So the number of staff that we have. There’s several factors that we have to consider with staffing.”
One of those factors is if there are substitutes available. This year, they are slightly over staffed to allow for the lack of subs as well as fill in to allow for staff lunch breaks.
While the previous Summer Camp program has served as a useful template, the increased size has made certain activities no longer available, like Friday field trips to the Plunge, yet has allowed for larger opportunities and activities like assemblies and interactive shows each Monday and Friday.
“It’s all funded. It’s fun for the kids,” Colon said of the program adjustments. “We try and find assemblies that the kids can be involved in.”
“With the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program what we’re required to do is also make connections with our community,” she continued. “To bring in people from the community or take students out into the community to afford them other opportunities.”
Due to district size, she shared it’s easier to bring people in for activities. This has included woodworking, non-contact martial arts, a gardening activity, yoga with sensory story time, volleyball skills, pottery and painting.
“So, we’re bringing in the community to offer students some experiences during the Community Partner hours,” she said.
In addition to the assemblies, the district has resourced vendors that offers kits which include everything a student might need to build science-based projects. That gives them an opportunity to explore the STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, Math – world for a two-hour block of time.
Registration for the program opens in mid-April of each school year.
“Families have the flexibility to register for all six weeks or register for only a few weeks,” Colon explained. “But at minimum they have to participate three days a week.”
