SAIL’s summer programs make waves: 700 kids attend Detroit Lakes School District’s new day camps

That’s a huge number of children compared to the roughly 150 who typically attend SAIL’s summer programs. The large increase is due to four unique new day camps the district offered this summer for children in Kindergarten to Grade 8. Focused on art, technology, reading, math and nature, the camps were made possible with special funding from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, or GEERF.

GEERF was created under the CARES Act, by the US Department of Education, to provide state governors with emergency aid grants related to COVID-19 for school districts and other educational entities. The funding is intended to support the transition of students to school after the pandemic.

“With this GEERF funding, the Detroit Lakes Public School District was able to provide expanded services to all students, including transportation,” said Peter Lundin, district director of targeted services, in an email to the Tribune. . The result, he added, was a “BIG jump” in the number of participating students.

Summer School and Targeted Services are long-standing, extended-year programs in Detroit Lakes, Lundin said; About five years ago, the name of these programs for the K-8 classes was changed to SAIL.

Expanded GEERF-funded programming offered this summer – all in the form of day camps that run Monday through Thursday – includes Art Adventures, SAILing into Summer, Tech Time, and Learning Outdoors in the Outdoors at Tamarac.

In late July, SAIL students from the Detroit Lakes Boys and Girls Club explored the catapults to determine how to change the path distance. They also experimented with the effects of throwing objects of different weights and materials. The SAIL program is offered to K-5 children at the Club, in partnership with Detroit Lakes Public Schools. The Club works directly with district teachers on math, reading and STEM skills throughout the summer. (From the Detroit Lakes Public Schools Facebook page)

Art Adventures, which took place twice in June, was aimed at K-8 students interested in art. Students made tie-dye shirts, decorated Ecumen Yard with sidewalk chalk, painted and hid rocks in town as part of the DL Rocks Facebook project, and made paintings, sculptures and mosaics in the classroom. , as well as other creative creations.

The reading and math camp, SAILing into Summer, was offered once in late June and will be offered again in mid-August. Aimed at students from Kindergarten to Grade 5, it focuses on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).

In Tech Time, which took place in July, students in Grades 3-8 explored video and photo production in the morning and coding in the afternoon. They made their own videos and photographs using a green screen, so they could edit them against fun backgrounds.

And this week and again next week, two outdoor learning camps in Tamarac, aimed at students in Kindergarten through eighth grade who want to learn more about nature. These camps take place at the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, with students bused by the school district.

In Tech Time in mid-July, students used a green screen to create videos and photographs with fun backgrounds. (From the Detroit Lakes Public Schools Facebook page)

The camps were made possible in large part by the work of Lundin and his administrative assistant, Jeanette Shornack, SAIL program coordinator Rhonda Fode, and the many teachers from Detroit Lakes who ran the programs.

“This summer has been a fabulous example of the level of professionalism, caring and creativity of the teachers in Detroit Lakes,” said Lundin.