Summer school wraps up for the season

LAKE MILLS — Tuesday was the last day of summer school for the nearly 900 kids from elementary through high school that attended this summer.

Summer school coordinator Nate Grundahl said the summer school consistently has diverse offerings for students, and there were even more this year.

“It’s a program that offers a lot of enrichment and partnerships with the community,” Grundahl said.

Each day of summer school there were classes in the morning, with traditional options like math and reading, but also classes like cooking, lab and learn, and other enrichment courses.

Grundahl said they have partnered with many other community organizations to give kids the opportunity “to be connected to the community.” The parks department has helped them to offer fishing and swim lessons. Additionally, they partnered with the bowling alley so students could go bowling during the day.

The summer school program also offered optional camps in the afternoon. These included an FFA camp and, for the second year, a college writing camp, where students could work on college admissions essays. Grundahl said one of the goals of camps was to expose students to new things.

Grundahl named two new offerings for this year. First, they had their first drama bootcamp where students could learn about what happens behind a production. Many of the students who participated in the boot camp helped with the annual end of summer school production Monday night. This year it was Finding Nemo.

The other new offering was a partnership with Hendrick’s CareerTek. A few high school students went to Beloit to learn about food science.

Additionally, for the first time, they provided buses for students to and from school.

“That has worked out really well, getting some students that transportation would be difficult for them.”