By creating strong community partnerships, “Summer My Way” could soon be coming your way.

This summer camp program that began as a partnership between the Niles-Buchanan YMCA, the Niles Community Schools and others continues to grow and be a tremendous asset to area students. In addition to hosting 300 students in Niles this year the program will be expanded to include 60 students at Brandywine as a trial.

We would like to see this program expanded to include more Brandywine students and similar concepts implemented in all our communities including Buchanan, Dowagiac, Edwardsburg and Cassopolis.

It won’t be easy, but the rewards would far outweigh the costs.

While it may be impossible for the YMCA to serve this many students each summer, we are confident that each community has a variety organizations that could step up to partner with their respective schools to bring this type of opportunity to more students.

Educators are quick to point out how important summer education and activities are to the overall development of our youth. The statistics back up those beliefs.

According to the National Summer Learning Association, students face significant harm if not maintaining an educational and active summer. Findings include:

> All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research spanning 100 years shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of the summer.

> Most students lose about two months of grade level equivalency in mathematical computation skills over the summer months. Low-income students also lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains.

> More than half of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. As a result, low-income youth are less likely to graduate from high school or enter college.

> Children lose more than academic knowledge over the summer. Most children — particularly children at high risk of obesity — gain weight more rapidly when they are out of school during summer break.

Summer My Way offers a great blueprint for a program with proven success stories in Niles. Now it is up to the individual communities to build off of this approach for their own students.

 

Opinions expressed are those of the editorial board consisting of Publisher Michael Caldwell and editors Ambrosia Neldon, Craig Haupert, Ted Yoakum and Scott Novak.