On a recent July morning, a group of third and fourth graders was engaged in an intense game of knockout on the basketball court behind Leland and Gray Middle and High School in Townshend. As players focused on their shots, their peers cheered them on loudly.
The kids are among the 100 students enrolled in the West River Education District’s summer program. Later in the week the group would head into Brattleboro to swim, and travel to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Jamie Dansereau, the program’s director, said there is increasing recognition that schools should offer enrichment activities during the summer.
“Whether it’s post-COVID, or because of COVID, we still need to do strong social, emotional building with our students in order for them to be successful, not only just in after-school, but also in the classroom as well,” he said.
The pandemic not only underscored the need for such programs — it also brought significant federal funding for them. But with that money now gone, and with growing uncertainty about other federal funding, Vermont schools are being forced to get more resourceful to keep their programs alive.
Whether it’s post-Covid, or because of Covid, we still need to do strong social, emotional building with our students in order for them to be successful.Jamie Dansereau, West River Education District
The state does not have any requirements around summer school, and so each district that offers summer programming does it a little differently. Some lean heavily on academics, while others hardly offer any traditional instruction at all.
Some include money in their local budget to cover expenses, and others rely on state and federal grants. Some charge parents who can pay, while others offer the programming free to all families.
And in some parts of the state, districts partner with their town recreation department, or a nearby nonprofit group to make the summer program happen.
During the pandemic, Vermont schools received $31 million in COVID relief funding, which a number of districts used to set up, or expand, summer programs.
The Agency of Education did not track how many programs were started with the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, fund, but Emanuel Betz, who manages the state’s federal after-school and summer program fund, said districts across the state were able to start summer programs.
“One of the allowable uses of those pandemic-era funds was for after-school and summer,” Betz said. “So there definitely was a large uptick in using those funds. We don’t know how much, but certainly a lot.”
That pot of money, however, ran out at the beginning of this year, leaving districts to cobble together other sources of funding — or in some cases scale back or even shut down their programs.
Districts are confronting uncertainty about other federal funding sources, too. Earlier this summer, the Trump administration unexpectedly withheld, and then ultimately released, billions in school funding nationwide. In Vermont, that included about $6.5 million in already budgeted summer school and after-school dollars.
Demand always outstrips supply in this area.Emanuel Betz, Vermont Agency of Education
The West River district is among a handful that have benefited from a new fund state lawmakers established in 2023, which sets aside proceeds from the cannabis sales tax for summer school and after-school programs.
This year, the Act 78 fund provided about $10 million to eight school districts and two nonprofits.
That helped make up for some of the lost federal funding, but the grant program was only able to fund less than half of the requests that districts submitted.
“Demand always outstrips supply in this area,” Betz said. “It always has and it probably always will.”
That’s the case in Grand Isle, where the district was forced to close its program this year.
“When the pandemic happened, we had access to those federal funds,” said Grand Isle Supervisory Union superintendent Lisa Ruud. “So now you’ve got four years where things have been paid for and they just can’t absorb it; the local budgets can’t absorb an afterschool program, or a summer program within our budget.”
Ruud said the district’s COVID money ran out just as communities were facing unprecedented tax spikes due to high education costs.
And she said when the budget needed to be trimmed, summer programming was one of the first things to go, even though it caused disappointment among parents and staff.
Ruud said she wasn’t sure what her district would be able to afford next summer.
“There was disappointment, and there was also a frustration that people feel like they’re taxpayers and they feel like they should get something from their money,” Ruud said. “I think it was like a sad, frustrated acceptance that things just keep getting worse.”
