As the school year winds down, many families will need to plan summer learning for their students.

The Tamaqua Area School District determined at its board meeting on Tuesday that it won’t cost a dime for its students to attend summer school in 2021.

“It’s normally paid for by the student or family of the student,” Tamaqua Superintendent Ray Kinder said. “In this situation, it’s going to be paid for by the school district using ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund) funds.”

There will also be course length and requirement changes.

Kinder said that most of, if not all of the district’s summer classes will be in person.

“A big difference is mainly the number of hours,” Kinder said. “Depending on the length of the course ­- it’s been as much as 50 hours and as few as 25. We decided that 40 hours should be enough to get us where we need to be.”

Kinder said in the past there has been a 50% minimum grade requirement on the students’ behalf in order to be eligible for summer school.

“But we’ll be waiving that,” Kinder said. “Considering the circumstances, we want to have the opportunity to at least offer it to everyone.

“Normally, we only concentrate on the major subjects. That’s kind of what it is in elementary and middle school. In high school, we’re looking at graduating requirements. We could, in theory, have someone offering health and phys ed over the summer, or other application courses required for graduation.”

ESSER funds

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Education website, “the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act was enacted Dec. 27, 2020, and includes an additional $53.4 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, ESSER II Fund.

ESSER II Fund awards were awarded to states based on the proportion of funding each state received under Part A of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended, in fiscal year 2020. Pennsylvania’s ESSER II allocation is $2.22 billion.

Tamaqua Business Manager Connie Ligenza said that the district could be eligible to receive $1,714,498 in ESSER II money, which must be used by Sept. 2023.

A lot can be done with the money, but it can’t be used for everything.

Tamaqua discussed using ESSER II money on items such as summer school, bleachers, gym floors, phone systems, cameras, a health room assistant, school resource officers, Chromebooks and more.

“Just to point out, none of this has been submitted yet (to the PDE),” Ligenza said. “We are in the discussion and planning stage administratively with individuals here, as well as our building administrators. Again, this is ESSER II and then we have ESSER III.”

Ligenza shared with the board that a sum of $3,843,904 ESSER III money could be available to the district in the future. This is a separate allotment of money and it must be used by September 2024.

“Because we’re using our cafeterias, gymnasiums and auditoriums in different ways, we can fix some of those things in there, because we are using them in that way,” Kinder said.

“This grant isn’t even available yet. … This is based off our conversations of part of what we do, we obviously have to come for almost all of these things for approval.”

More information regarding allocation of ESSER money for each Pennsylvania school district is available on the department of education’s website.

“This grant process is a lot more extensive than what we’ve been through with some of the smaller grants that we’ve been able to obtain,” Dr. Stephen Toth said.