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The hallways at Self-Development Academy in Mesa in July are abuzz. While many students across Arizona are enjoying their annual vacation, some remain in the classroom, meticulously forming handfuls of toothpicks into pyramids while others make their own traditional tunics.
Meanwhile, 25 miles away at the Lincoln Family Downtown YMCA, kids are lining up for buses en route to Chase Field for a Diamondbacks game.
Across Arizona this summer, students are learning in a variety of new ways. The pedagogy has changed, but the educational purposes are familiar and, leaders say, critical to catch students up to fill social and learning gaps the pandemic may have created.
Gov. Doug Ducey's AZ On Track Summer Camp program, announced in March, awarded 150 organizations grant contracts to offer free summer camp sessions and allocated more than $100 million from American Rescue Plan funds toward it.
The participating organizations, which include school districts, charter schools and youth institutions such as the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Clubs, offered 800 camp sessions at roughly 680 campsites. So far, about 100,000, or roughly 6.2% of Arizona schoolchildren, have participated in the program.
Whether children were into music, sports, science or history, camps were tailored to all kinds of different interests.
Fashion lovers explored different careers and aspects of the fashion industry at the Garment League's Fashion Industry Youth Camp.
Young musicians delved into songwriting and musical instruments at the Phoenix Boys Choir's Music Camp, and those with a passion for theater learned about storytelling and puppetry at the Great Arizona Puppet Theater.
The camps were required to offer an academic component covering one of the following topics: math, civics, literacy and building attitudes and behaviors that supported learning. Another option for this component could also be credit recovery for those students who needed to bump up their grades or those who dropped out. But the programs also had to include engaging activities meant to entertain and build social and emotional skills.
Most camps started their sessions in June, and most will conclude them in the first week of August.
'Making free child care available to all this summer'
Lisa Graham Keegan, chairperson of the program and a former Arizona schools superintendent, said the governor’s goal was to focus on Arizona’s most vulnerable students, who are at risk of learning loss and disengagement after the pandemic.
The Governor’s Office also required that camps provide food and transportation for students.
The YMCA, which has traditionally offered summer camps every year to mostly families that can afford their programs, was able to serve 3,600 kids every week this summer throughout its locations statewide.
Jenna Cooper, the organization's vice president of government and community relations, said access to these programs has been difficult for some families. "What this grant did when the governor came out and said he was going to dedicate $100 million to camp programs ... he effectively said he was making free child care available to all this summer."
The organization partnered with the Valley of the Sun United Way to create a curriculum around math and literacy through games and arts for pre-K through 12th-grade students. Their camp sessions also included swim classes, sports and e-sports activities and field trips.
Self-Development Academy, a charter school with one location in Phoenix and another in Mesa, offered camp sessions that focused on the great civilizations connected with the Silk Road.
The program taught students math, reading, music, arts and other skills while connecting each subject with one another. While learning about Egypt, for example, kids not only learned about the history of the pyramids but also the math, engineering, arts and cultural components behind them.
Vernetta Madsen, Self-Development Academy Mesa campus director, said teachers wanted to expand the kids' understanding of the world by covering texts and subjects they don't get to learn about daily while school is in session.
Cooper and Madsen said their hope is that the kids who went through the summer camps will have gained academic, emotional and social skills that will make them more prepared to go back to school this fall.
How the money was distributed
The Governor's Office set three different funding formulas for the camps, depending on the student-teacher ratio and how much the programs offered.
Camps that had a student-teacher ratio of 15 students or fewer per teacher received $50, or $25, per student per day depending on whether they offered a whole day, or seven hours, of activities, or a half-day, or 3.5 hours.
Camps that had one teacher per 16 to 20 students received $40, or $20, per student per day, depending on whether they offered six or three hours of activities. Camps with 21 to 35 students per teacher received $30 per student per day.
Since this grant program was funded by American Rescue Plan dollars and Ducey is leaving office at the end of the year, it's unclear if it will continue next year.
Keegan said the Governor's Office has asked the schools and the participating organizations to collect data on the success of the initiative to share that with the Legislature and the next governor so that the program lives on.
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