A new summer reader program will be voted on at the June 27 Lehighton school board meeting. A recommendation will be made to approve the Middle School Summer Reader Pilot Program for all seventh-grade students.

“In the past we did a summer reading program,” middle school Principal Stephen Ebbert said. “Every student would get the exact same book. Our goal for summer reading was that students would read throughout the summer. We want to prevent the loss of reading skills throughout the summer months. What we found was that we would issue the book the week prior to the last day of school. Students would go home, read the book, answer the questions, and turn it in before the last day of school. That rather defeated our goals of having them read over the summer.”

The program will employ four staff members to collect, review students’ work, and provide feedback on students’ work. Total hours for the program will not exceed 35 hours total among the four staff members. The total cost for the program will be $1,400, which will be paid for with ARP-ESSER funds.

The pilot program would focus only on students going from seventh to eighth grade, as a start. Students will have three options: Complete a digital log, complete a daily journal on each day of reading for 10 days, or pick two out of six possible projects to be turned in online.

The school library has 400 digital books available for students to read as well as the traditional paper books.