In Partnership with 74

LAUSD planning summer school for special ed, struggling students

Vanessa Romo | March 31, 2015



Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.

LAUSD special ed

LAUSD special ed students (Credit: Galatzan Gazette)

With more than two months remain before the end school year, LA Unified officials are making summer school plans for special education students and students who have failed at least one mandatory class for graduation.

It is the second straight year the district is offering struggling students the opportunity to catch-up on subjects after years of budgetary cuts that practically obliterated summer school.

The credit recovery program is open to all 9 through 12th grade students who have received a D or F grade in an A through G course. From June 15 through July 17 students can attend up to two 2 1/2-hour block classes to learn in five weeks what they should have grasped over a semester.

Special education students will have access to the Extended School Year courses from June 22 to July 17, five days fewer than the credit recovery program.

Teachers were required to submit the names of eligible summer school students through MISIS by March 27, and they’re supposed use the system to determine the courses students need based on the Ds and Fs. It is unclear if the deadline was met by all schools.

MISIS was first piloted by the district during last year’s summer school enrollment. It was then that the systems myriad database problems first came to light.

Unlike classes that are available throughout the regular school calendar, credit recovery courses have much stricter class size limitations: an academic class is capped at 25, and physical education is limited to 45.

Seventy-nine campuses will offer classes ranging in subjects from freshman English composition to world history to algebra.

The program is funded by a combination of Title I and Beyond the Bell Credit Recovery funds. Enrichment summer school courses will be added at a later date, paid for with Local Control Funding Formula dollars.

Although the budget for the program is unknown, last year the district spent $21.5 million to support 37,000 high school students who needed to recover credits to fulfill graduation requirements.

Read Next