ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County Public Schools officials say they are seeing tens of thousands more students than what they normally see in summer school programs this year. 

What You Need To Know

  • School official says many summer school students were doing hybrid learning

  • ‘Students who were learning from home were struggling,’ says official

  • Officials expanded summer school from four to five days a week to help students

Like many parents, Orange County mom Tiffany Rogers says the pandemic impacted her son’s learning. 

“They were considering, actually keeping him back,” she said. 

But she was happy to discover he would be able to attend his school, Summerlake Elementary School, during the summer too. 

“So this is really kind of a bridge between the school years to help keep him going and not have any regression,” Rogers said. 

But her 7-year-old son is far from being the only one doing summer school this year. 

“The numbers are quite incredible,” said Dr. Maria Vasquez, deputy superintendent for Orange County Public Schools. 

She says normally school officials see about 10,000 students enrolled in summer school. 

But this year, they have 48,000 enrolled. 

Many of whom, she says were utilizing OCPS’ hybrid online learning model during the pandemic.

“Students who were learning from home were struggling, and not making the progress we would’ve liked to see,” Vasquez said. 

So to help all these students get back on track, officials expanded summer school from four to five days a week. And instead of just in June, the program will run from June to the end of July. 

That works well for working parents like Rogers, who says the pandemic has also made it hard to find a summer camp. 

“Some of them are still closed because they didn’t know what they were going to do with COVID,” Rogers said. 

But with as many students enrolled as they already have, Vasquez says they know many more should be here. 

“We continue to make calls, because there are still some students that we invited that did not commit to come and we want to reach out and let them know that it’s not too late to send their children,” she said. 

Rogers hopes the summer program will help her son in more ways than one. 

“That he has more confidence going into second grade, that it’s just not as big of a gap,” she said. 

Vasquez said if you want to get your child into the district’s summer acceleration program, just contact your child’s school to get them signed up.