BUSD summer school smooth, despite cutbacks

BARSTOW • Despite cutbacks in the Barstow Unified School District, summer school is, overall, functioning smoothly, according to Scott Godfrey, summer school director and new principal of Barstow High School.

Summer school began this week and for the first time, the district centralized summer classes for junior high and high school students at Barstow High School’s campus. They also opted to not provide students bus transportation as a cost-cutting measure. The board of trustees approved scaling back on summer school this year as a budget cutting move in February, which also included eliminating summer school programs for elementary school students.

According to Godfrey, there are about 525 high school students taking summer school this year, which is 200 fewer students than last summer.

Godfrey attributed the drop in numbers to new credit recovery programs that allow students to retake failed classes during the regular school year.

For 17-year-old Mariah Moya, not having bus transportation meant that her family needed to plan out a system for getting her to school this summer. Moya, who will be in 12th grade in the fall, took the bus when she attended summer school as a ninth-grader, from her home in Grandview. This summer, her parents give her rides. She also coordinates a carpool with Rebecca Ramirez, 15, and two junior high students living nearby.

Summer school math teacher Jim Horner said that fortunately, the  transportation hasn’t caused students to be tardy any more than usual.

He thinks cutting back on buses is a practical way for the district to save money.

“Buses are super expensive,” Horner said.

While students in grades seven through 12 are housed on the same campus, they rarely come in contact with each other, said Godfrey.

While high school classes are taught in the rows of classrooms, all the junior high classes are held in the science building, on the other side of campus.

Tyler Menie, a rising eighth-grader taking a math class over the summer, said they are totally separate.

“We never see them,” Menie said.

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(760) 256-4122 or elee@desertdispatch.com