And while just 19 states now offer taxpayer-supported , which allow families to spend public funds on the school or program of their choice, the policy has a growing constituency: Nearly half of parents strongly support it. 

Meanwhile, the constituency for annual testing is withering, with just 29% of parents saying they strongly support it.

The new revelations come from the second edition of , conducted by the policy group 50CAN, which operates chapters in 12 states. It surveyed parents in 50 states and Washington, D.C., and found small but significant improvements across five key educational areas, including satisfaction with school quality and student mental health support.��

The findings paint a slightly different picture than the one we’re accustomed to seeing in accounts of crowding into school board meetings: 47% of parents now say they’re very satisfied with their child’s school, up from 45% in 2024. Satisfaction by low-income parents jumped five points, from 41% to 46%. 

Likewise, 41% are very satisfied with the kind of emotional and mental health support their children get at school, up four points from last year, with significant gains in critical transition grades such as sixth and ninth grade, both up about five percentage points. 

“Overall, my takeaway is we shouldn’t get distracted by all the headlines, all the crazy stuff going on in the world,” said Marc Porter Magee, 50CAN’s founder. “We have a very reasonable shot at making education better in ways that will meaningfully improve kids’ lives. We’re generally heading in the right direction.”

Among the findings: 

• Participation in tutoring rose from 19% to 24%, with the income gap nearly cut in half, from nine percentage points to five, but low-income families still struggle to get their kids tutoring, largely because of cost and transportation;
• 86% of parents now favor free tutoring, while 80% support free summer camps; 77% back open enrollment and universal ESAs;
• 49% of parents want their children to get a four-year degree, but only 38% believe it’ll happen, with college affordability a huge sticking point; 
• While more high-income children participated in summer camp, overall participation dropped two percentage points; among low-income kids, it dropped three points; kids from high-income families are now twice as likely to attend, 61% vs 27%.

On the summer camp statistics, Porter Magee said, “My takeaway from that is there’s still a need, and high-income families are really leaning into that. But low-income families are getting hit with affordability.”

Responding to the findings, Keri Rodrigues, president of the , said, “Parents are fighting for a school that works for their kid, but when higher-income families can buy tutoring and summer learning while everyone else gets waitlists and paperwork, that’s not choice, it’s rationing.”

She noted that the union’s polling shows that just 48% of public school parents say their child is “definitely academically prepared for next year”; 31% say schools didn’t even tell them what skills their child needs.

As for satisfaction with mental health support, a 2024 found that 65% give schools an “A” or “B,” but that 31% give schools a “C” or worse. 

She said her group’s findings on parents’ priorities are clear: “Make tutoring, mental health supports, and quality learning time universal and easy to access, especially for low-income families. If we’re serious about outcomes, we have to be serious about access.”

ESA support rising across political lines

Among the most significant findings, parents across the political spectrum are now increasingly interested in ESAs — 46% of Republicans, 49% of Democrats and 43% of Libertarians and Independents say they “strongly support” the idea, and among self-described members of the Green Party or , support climbs higher, to 57%. In most state-level debates on ESAs, political conservatives are their biggest supporters.

ESAs, as well as open-enrollment policies, which allows students to attend the public school of their choice, now command more support than charter schools, and by a wide margin: 46% to 36%.

Porter Magee said ESAs merit attention as an “anti-majoritarian” school choice policy that appeals to many different kinds of parents, for different reasons.

“If you’re on the far left, you probably don’t feel like your traditional public school and school district represents you and your values perfectly,” he said. “And it’s the same when you’re on the far right. A lot of times, the people who are most attached to traditional school districts are moderates — wealthy, suburban moderates. So it kind of does make sense.” 

Porter Magee said he knows of no other parent polls that break out political beliefs like this, suggesting that conservative policymakers who favor ESAs and other school choice proposals should consider “a strange-bedfellow strategy” that invites Green and DSA-aligned parents. “Maybe they are better allies on some of these issues than we think.”

More broadly, he said, “We should not be writing off the left or the right when we’re trying to figure out the coalition that would actually pass these things.”

Kids who are ‘just not doing a lot’

The survey also broke out responses by about 1,000 parents who are K-12 teachers. It found that they’re significantly more likely to be very satisfied with their children’s school, and that their kids participate in summer programs, sports, community service, dual enrollment, and Advanced Placement/International Baccalaureate courses at higher rates. “They’re just more engaged,” Porter Magee said. “They’re getting more out of their time as students.”

Asked about their children’s grades, parents with kids who get mostly A’s reported that their children were more likely to do 30 minutes or more of homework, spend time with friends in person and read for fun — “all the things we want them to do,” Porter Magee said. D and F students were more likely to play video games, scroll on their phones and access social media, their parents say. 

They also drop out of sports at higher rates, he said. “They’re just not doing a lot.” 

The difference between how “A” and “D” students spend their time isn’t generally addressed in public policy, he said, “partially because we haven’t had the data, partially because we don’t know what to do about it. But I do think it’s an issue, and I think parents see it as an issue.” 

Overall, Porter Magee said, the main finding from the survey is one of slow, incremental progress for kids, whose parents now feel that they have greater access to different kinds of opportunities. But the fact that much of that progress is largely enjoyed by high- and middle-income parents, he said, is problematic.

“How would you create the public systems to make a more equal world, where all of those opportunities are available to everyone?” he said. “That’s what we’re trying to do, and [what] the survey is helping us track.”

Texas officials are to have weather alert systems, mandated emergency preparedness plans, and various communication methods to help children and their families feel safe when they return this summer. But one thing is still missing from the state plan that some camp leaders say would ensure complete safety at all camps — initiatives to address the mental health of those returning to a place of tragedy.

After the devastating July 4 Hill Country floods that killed at least 137 people, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, those who are expected to return to Texas camps this summer could be dealing with the fear of the water, extreme emotions during weather events, consistent nightmares, and more.

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“After the flooding, we were hearing from parents and schools that when there was just a simple rainstorm, many of their kids were very, very distressed,” said Julie Kaplow, a licensed clinical psychologist and executive vice president of .

One of the primary challenges in addressing the mental health needs of campers, staff and their families is that they are spread out across the state, only coming together during the summer. been poured into Texas Hill Country for flood victims, but for campers and their families who might live miles away, this does little to help.

Camp owners say this is why camps should be better prepared for their return. ��

“I am in 100% support of engaging in the physical safety, but I think it has distracted a little bit from the importance of focusing on other aspects of wellness,” , chief program officer at Centerpoint-based Camp Camp, said.

State lawmakers over the summer passed and requiring camps to address various safety measures including emergency preparedness plans and communication systems, but they gave no guidance to camps on how to serve the mental health needs of campers and staff.

, a Houston mother whose sons survived the flood at Camp Junta, three weeks after the during a committee hearing in Kerrville, that for her family the storm wasn’t over. She said her son scans every room for higher ground, checks the weather constantly and battles nightmares of water dripping from the ceiling, and she has been struggling to find the mental health resources to help him.

“I have asked the camp. I have asked FEMA. The answer is the same: ‘Sorry, we don’t know what to tell you. You are in Houston,’” Rabon said demanding that mental health care be a central, funded part of the state’s disaster response. “… I shouldn’t have to rely on a Facebook group of volunteers to find trauma care for my children.”

Sens. of Pleasanton and of Lubbock, who were��committee chair and vice chair of the flood investigation committee and authors and co-sponsors of SB 1 and HB 1, did not respond to interview requests about mental health resources. Gov.’s office forwarded questions about mental health resources for camps to Texas Health and Human Services, which did not provide information by the story’s publication.

Even before the flood, the mental wellness of campers and staff had been a growing concern for camp leaders. As youth mental health has declined and the country over the past six years, camp directors have reported multiple campers coming in with signs of anxiety and other mental illnesses, and staff — usually college students and young adults — with signs of depression and other more severe mental health problems.

This has led organizations like the , in collaboration with the and supported by the , to create a six-hour mental wellness training program called to teach staff how to listen and regulate their emotions. This skill can be used for campers and themselves.

, whose six-year term on the state’s Youth Camp Program Advisory Committee ended in August, said he and several others had been advocating for the state’s camp licensing board to consider adding higher-level training requirements for staff to address mental health concerns. He said a work group had been created around the topic and was supposed to convene after the summer camp season ended, but the July 4 flood put those plans on hold — right when it was needed most.

“While the physical safety of our camp community is what’s on everyone’s top of mind right now after the events of July, we have to look at the entire person’s safety, and that includes mental wellness,” Briery said.

Weather-related trauma

When news about the tragedy at Camp Mystic reached in Leakey, it was like the world had been turned upside down. Laity staff members mourned the deaths as if they were their own while they answered the anxiety-riddled questions of their young campers. The portion of the East Frio River that butts up against them — a source of joy for so many of them before it was shuttered for the rest of the summer — became a grim reminder of the tragedy that unfolded just 36 miles away.

“When I think of the summer, it is split into two parts. Pre-flood and post-flood, because everything felt so different. There was this heaviness afterwards,” said Blayze Sykes, the camp supervisor for Laity Lodge.

Over the past decade, Texas has faced numerous natural disasters, including , the , the , and, most recently, the catastrophic .

Kaplow said each year, more Texas children are becoming survivors of natural disasters, creating a generation of .

A found that as many as 50% of children report post-traumatic stress symptoms after experiencing a disaster, such as recurring thoughts about the disaster, hypervigilance, or difficulty sleeping or concentrating. also often experience symptoms of .

of the Greater Houston area from 2019 to 2023 found that successive weather disasters and events had an effect on emergency department visits for depression and anxiety. It found distinct seasonal patterns, with specific periods, consistently showing higher demand for mental health services.

Weather-related mental illness can be complex to diagnose in children at first glance because their actions mirror ADHD symptoms, Kaplow said. Children affected with weather-related trauma may be hypervigilant, which might appear as though they are easily distracted.

Other signs can range from a student exhausted at their desk in the classroom to obvious signs of crying or becoming aggressive toward other peers.

“It’s not enough to intervene in the immediate aftermath. We want to make sure people recognize that this will be a long-term effort to help kids heal,” said Kaplow.

Gov. Greg Abbott launched a free statewide counseling service for those affected by the floods, the , but camp directors say more can be done.

Experts say one of the best ways policymakers can support children affected by disasters is to increase access to mental health services, including .

While camp can’t be the replacement for professional mental health treatment, have found that well-structured mental health programs at camps can counter struggles regarding depression, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, and difficulty forming positive peer relationships in young people.

“The time is now. Suppose there were ever a time to give attention to mental well-being at camp, to create an environment where it thrives. In that case, it’s now,” said Cary Hendricks, executive director of Laity Lodge Camping Programs.

One approach to integrating mental health into camps

Families seeking to disconnect their children from technology have long turned to summer camps to help them immerse in nature. Mental health experts the benefits of nature-focused camps for children’s emotional well-being.

But, what happens when the outdoors becomes the reason for grief?

“We know, and frankly, take it for granted that so many camps are in the outdoors and therefore have that kind of restorative benefit for campers and staff. The events of July 4 reminded us that those elements are also hazardous and destructive,” said , the senior director of innovation and learning for the American Camp Association.

Camps across Texas are wrestling with trying to maintain the summer-camp feel of the past for campers and staff who are now very aware of the dangers that surround them.

“I know we have already had campers signed up who have experienced very traumatic things, so that is where we are focused on. What can we do?” said Meg Clark, owner of Camp Waldemar.

Pearson said the CampWell program, a six hour skills-based training course on building resilience, teaches staffers and campers how to regulate their emotions, like fear and anxiety, using methods such as breathing exercises, activities, conversation, and other non-medical means.��

Camps who go through CampWell training try to create a safe, supported and connected environment among staff who can then model and teach relevant skills to campers. This in-person program evaluates a camp’s culture, including its training and screening processes and programs, to ensure it promotes mental and physical well-being.

Fifteen camps in Texas began implementing the CampWell program earlier this year. Little did these camp directors know how necessary this training would be for staff later that summer, when the flood required them not only to deal with their own emotions but also to address the emotions of hundreds of young campers who had a slew of questions about what happened. Those who went through the training said it helped them by teaching them emotional regulation techniques like breathing exercises and confidence building.

Sykes said in the months after the flood, the CampWell program has helped Laity’s staff build their own community of support.

“Looking back at it, the greatest resource we had was each other,” Sykes, staff manager at Laity Bird Lodge campgrounds, said.

Hendricks said lawmakers have the opportunity to lay the foundation for a better future for youth mental health, and it should start with youth summer camps.

“The same way that the state requires us to do proper lifeguard training and food services, what if mental health were equally as important, and what if camps were required to do some mental well-being training? We would love to see that future,” he said.

For 24/7 mental health support in English or Spanish, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s����at��800-662-4357. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the����by calling or texting 988.

This first appeared on .

Located along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, Texas, the all-girls Christian camp hosting presidents’ daughters and for its .

Now, a year shy of their centennial, the institution is at the center of tragedy.

On , flooding across Texas Hill Country more than half  of the campgrounds that span over 700 acres, claiming the of at least 27 campers and counselors. Across six counties, the death toll reached 120, with at least another 160 as of publication.

While the camp had all recent safety inspections, questions remain about whether more could have been done to protect campers and staff ahead of the tragedy.

The collection of images below offers a glimpse into the devastation at Camp Mystic, the heroic rescue efforts of the community and the legacy of the camp.

Camp Mystic Legacy in Archives

U.S. Sen Chris Murphy visited  Friday to announce newly proposed federal legislation that would invest billions of dollars into free summer programs for kids across the country.

The Hartford camp, which bills itself as the largest and oldest free summer day camp in the country, serves hundreds of children each year. It would be among those that could benefit should the  were to become law.

The measure proposes the creation of two grant programs that would be funded by $4 billion of federal money over the course of four years.

Murphy said that if passed, Connecticut could see about $10 million in funding each year from the legislation. 

“The bill will have two different grant programs, one that will go directly to camps and camps can apply directly to the federal government for dollars to help expand the slots that they have for low-income families,” Murphy said. “The second grant would go directly to states … which they could use in any way they saw fit.”

Murphy called the proposed bill “absolutely critical,” especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic where schools saw high levels of , mental health  and disruptions to socialization.

“Outside experiences, adventure experiences, summer experiences, where you get to improve and enhance your socialization skills, where you get to have your mind opened to new possibilities, new hobbies, new interests — it’s necessary. It’s life changing and often it’s life saving,” Murphy said. “It’s a tough time to be a kid. It’s a tough time to be a parent. So, we have to make sure that when our kids leave school for the summer, they don’t lose access to learning and socialization.”

Murphy was joined by Gov. Ned Lamont at the news conference, who gathered a group of Camp Courant children and asked if they loved their camp and whether “camps like this should be available to everyone.”

The children erupted in screams and nodded their heads.

“What I love about Senator Murphy is that he takes the very best ideas from Connecticut — what we’ve done on gun safety, what we’re doing in our summer learning camps — and makes sure it’s available across this state and hopefully across this country,” Lamont said.

This was originally published in .

Finley couldn’t get the level to end.

“We just now created our ‘end object,’” he narrated over Zoom to the class, explaining that if a player’s avatar, working its way through the maze, collides with this invisible digital item, it should prompt the computer to display a “You Win” message, end the level, and send the player on to the next one.

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“So far, it still isn’t working,” Finley said cheerfully, alternately checking lines of code and clicking on objects populating the screen. Perhaps it was the code they’d written together, or something else. “So we need to figure out what’s going on here.”

While millions of kids play video games, few get a peek inside the detail-driven and frequently maddening process of creating games. But this summer, as educators puzzle over how to help students catch up on months of disrupted learning due to COVID-19, many are pushing to teach key STEM concepts via game design.

The idea has obvious advantages, supporters say: Kids already love games and spend hours playing and discussing them, so they’re highly motivated to learn the required material. And cracking games’ code open — whether to examine how it works, design new levels or create entirely new games — enables them to do math, logic, and design work they don’t often get in school.

“I like to say we’re giving kids the tools that they need to lead successful lives in the digital age — and preparing them for the coming of the metaverse,” said Ed Fleming, founder of a long-running based in Philadelphia. The metaverse, a term coined by science-fiction novelist Neal Stephenson, refers to an all-encompassing 3-D digital space that resembles those of today’s massive multiplayer games.

Fleming remembers where he was when he first understood the gravity of COVID-19. While attending an educational trade show in Philadelphia in February 2020, a colleague mentioned that the virus had just forced schools in Japan to close. “I told my colleagues, ‘This is going to come to the United States. We have to prepare for this coming summer.’”

He began preparing to move his camp sessions online, where they remain, for the second summer in a row. Sessions run from $169.99 to $249.99 but Fleming offers about 100 scholarships each year to low-income campers.

It may seem ironic that some educators see the solution to online learning loss as more online learning, but both Fleming and his students say the experience is different. Game design and other technology-related topics, they say, translate well to online spaces like Zoom.

Savana Wanex, a rising eighth-grader and “a big gamer” in Orlando, Fla., said the camp’s online classes were actually an improvement over those of her private middle school.

“I was actually surprised at how much better it was than taking school online,” she said. Since most of the classwork is in game design and related fields, “you can team up with other people in games and work side-by-side with them, kind of like you’re close to them.”

She attended school almost entirely in-person last year, spending only a few weeks of class time online due to a short-term quarantine after a classmate tested positive for the virus. But Savana admitted, “Digital school is very hard.” The larger difficulty, she said, lay in wearing masks all day and maintaining six feet of social distance between herself and others.

“It’s just been a really weird year because you haven’t really been able to do those big group projects — you can’t really get together.”

Now in its 19th year, Fleming’s camp actually goes beyond simple maze games like the one that Nathan Finley and his students puzzled over. Aimed at students as young as second graders and as old as high school seniors, it offers lessons in computer coding and game design, but also in the visual arts and digital video, as well as more esoteric topics such as the Physics of Amusement Parks — all subjects required to build a complete and satisfying 3-D game.

The camp also invites students to create original content using advanced software routinely used by professional game designers, making the experience “a great introduction to computer science,” said longtime game design teacher Steve Isaacs. “There’s the art piece, the sound engineering piece. It’s such a cross-curricular area. And again, kids love games, so why not capitalize on their agency in that area?”

Recent statistics from the Entertainment Software Association, the trade organization for the video game industry, suggest that gaming among young people, even as other entertainment forms such as streaming movies and social media abound. About three-fourths of people under 18 play video games weekly — though the average player is 31 years old — and nearly half of gamers are female.

Fleming started the camp in 2003, with about 200 students — only one of them a girl, he noted. Now girls comprise about 40 percent of his 1,300 campers. In fact, two recent sessions — one focused on the building game Roblox and another on digital fashion design — were attended only by girls.

Not just consuming but creating

A lifelong gamer, Fleming can trace the growth of his camp to his grad student days teaching e-commerce at Penn State University Great Valley, a remote campus west of Philadelphia. When the dot.com bubble burst, the university found itself with six classrooms of computers, but no students.

Fleming suggested bringing younger students onto campus to design games and applications.

The program started out teaching students the basics of tools like the since-discontinued Macromedia Flash from Adobe. It now routinely puts students through the paces of working in Unreal Engine, the software used to create Fortnite.

“I grew up with Atari joysticks,” Fleming said. “And now the kids are growing up having the monolith in their hand and access to everything you could ever imagine.” He held up a glass-slab mobile phone to illustrate his point. “We just give them the tools to actually make that monolith do things that they want it to do.”

Dave Kramer, who has taught at the camp, and whose 13-year-old son Aiden attends it, said creating media, not just consuming it, was a huge motivation. The boy was eager to attend once he understood that “you can be the person making those videos or making those games … instead of you just watching someone playing someone’s game. That really did intrigue him.”

But after a year of remote schooling, he was reluctant to place the boy into a summer program built around Zoom sessions and computer programming. “My concern was too much screen time,” he said. “And how we worked that out was once you got off of school or camp, then there was no other screen time pretty much for the rest of the day, except for earned time.”

He said the program has “actually worked out very, very well” for Aiden, who loves video games, movies, and YouTube videos. “He loves Fortnite, he loves Minecraft — you know, typical 13 year old.”

A creative “sandbox” leads the way

Epic Games, creators of the wildly popular Fortnite series, actually built the first version of Unreal Engine in 1998, and it has since become highly influential in game design circles.

Epic Games’ Isaacs, himself a former special education and technology teacher, transitioned into the game design world from K-12 education. He and his wife, also a teacher, opened a computer training and gaming center that offered afterschool and summer programs. Eventually he persuaded his New Jersey school district to let him offer game design to middle schoolers in Basking Ridge, N.J., west of Newark.

Isaacs wrote the curriculum and built a program that offered not just game design but digital storytelling, and focused on iterative design, a process used in many areas that emphasizes improving on previous versions of a product.

“My feeling was (that) I was providing an opportunity for kids to find their passion,” he said. “There are so many different roles in the game design industry. I think it’s neat for kids to start to understand that there are different options that they can pursue.”

In 2018, Epic Games a “sandbox” version of Fortnite that allows players to modify the game’s features and create their own “islands,” mini-games, and other assets.

Isaacs, a serial education entrepreneur who has also produced content for , a massive Minecraft “fan experience,” saw an opportunity for educators. Last year, after more than two decades in the classroom, he retired and now is part of a that trains teachers on how to use Fortnite and its underlying engine for learning.

Fleming’s camp is using the Epic curriculum, even as the founder himself worries about what the Delta variant of COVID-19 holds for students in the fall.

“I definitely feel for this generation of kids,” he said. “I’ve tried to provide a platform for them to connect and engage and have fun while also learning.”

Thora Hicks, a rising eighth-grader in Pennsylvania, said she and a fellow camper at a previous session of Fleming’s camp became close friends playing and experimenting with the adventure “sandbox” game Terraria. “And we’re still friends online to this day.”

Hicks, who admitted she’s “really interested in YouTube horror stuff,” said people unfamiliar with virtual worlds like Roblox and Minecraft may not know the platforms make it easy to explore interests and make friends. “I mean, there’s more stuff to do than IRL [in real life]. It’s kind of like an enhancement of the real world — you’re allowed to have fun and to meet new people and just have a good, fun time with people from all over the world. And it’s an easier way to find people with the same interests as you.”

Kramer, whose son Aiden attends the camp, said Fleming’s program works because his instructors are leveraging kids’ love of games and “showing them that there’s math and science in there, along with art and storytelling and creative writing — all these aspects that they might struggle with in school, they’re now finding that avenue to get them interested in all of those things.”

Summer is a time for students to explore personal interests, and for an expected 100,000 students, free STEM bootcamps will provide a chance to expand their understanding of everything from calculus to chemistry, biology to algebra.

For the second straight summer, is offering free summer bootcamp courses as a way to combat pandemic learning loss. The eight-week video-based online classes are geared toward middle and high school students, using a web-based virtual learning platform. There are 20 courses, offering access to some of the company’s more than 1 million short-form educational videos — created with input from over 1,000 educators — covering STEM courses as well as SAT and ACT test prep.

When students sign up for the free courses, they are placed into cohorts with other students. “They key to the learning process,” co-founder Nhon Ma says, “is the content created through educators and a sense of community with the students.” Students can interact with others in the same bootcamp via the online Discord server, ideally helping one another answer questions and discuss the content. Each week, students get a sequence of videos aligned to the curriculum, designed to be watched at their own time and pace. At the end of the week, quizzes track students’ understanding, and at the end of eight weeks, participants can earn a certificate of accomplishment for completing the course.

The rolling course offerings start every week, and Ma says students are encouraged to take multiple classes through the summer. Last summer, 30,000 students participated, and he’s expecting around 100,000 this year.

“We give encouragement and support and the resources students need for their grades and confidence to improve greatly,” Ma says. “There is a positive benefit that happens for the students and their community.”

The free summer program also serves as an introduction to Numerade and the $9.99-per-month subscription fee to access its entire library of content.

Founders Ma and Alex Lee, both from south central Los Angeles, started working together eight years ago, after scholarship opportunities allowed Ma to attend and graduate from Columbia University. He then worked in finance and served as a product lead for programmatic ad design at Google. It was there that Ma decided he wanted to instead focus on closing gaps in educational opportunities.

After first creating an online tutoring platform, the pair learned that students were routinely going back into recorded tutoring sessions to replay them multiple times. “What is foundational for the learning process, especially for STEM, is repetition,” Ma says. “Students need to get the reps in as much as they can, and in a safe space where they are not judged.” That insight led to Numerade, which launched in 2019, allowing students 24-7 access to the short-form video resources.

The free summer bootcamps started in 2020, and, “with learning loss accumulated, we felt a huge responsibility to help students close any learning gap as much as possible and get ahead,” Ma says.

The desire to build an interest in STEM led the company to focus videos on children as young as middle school. “If students don’t get the reinforcement and support they need in middle school, often they drop out of STEM entirely,” Ma says. “What we want is to make sure students have the confidence to continue on their journey.”

For the summer bootcamps, courses cover physics, math, chemistry and biology. Chemistry 101 offers an introduction to reactions, aqueous solutions, thermochemistry, electronic structure, the Periodic Table, chemical bonding and gases. Chemistry 102 covers liquids, solids, solutions, kinetics, chemical equilibrium, acids and bases, aqueous equilibria, thermodynamics, electrochemistry and nuclear chemistry.

The biology summer camp features understanding of cellular respiration and fermentation, the cell cycle and cellular reproduction, photosynthesis, cell signaling, gene expression and viruses.

The Physics 101 Mechanics course studies motion, energy, forces and momentum while Physics 102 Electricity and Magnetism creates a virtual lab to understand temperature, heat, electricity and magnetism. A Physics 103 course puts a focus on differing waves, whether mechanical, sound or light, and quantum mechanics.

Math courses range from algebra to precalculus and geometry to calculus, the most popular. The summer programs also include test prep for both the SAT and ACT.

For so long, educators and youth advocates have dreaded summer slide, the deterioration of skills over summer, when children without access to enriching activities fall further behind their peers. This is the year to change that. The pandemic is widening the racial equity gap for children of all socio-economic backgrounds — it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the traditional school year and have academic enrichment this summer that can close this persistent divide.

Picture this: With all the disruption of this COVID-plagued school year, students could get another several weeks of learning, probably outside, in camp-like settings, where they could creatively work on math, science, writing, reading and the arts, get meals and snacks every day and engage in physical activity. It’s the right time and the right solution for bridging the gap, particularly for Black and Latino students.

It’s also a long-needed solution for working parents. Many have struggled to keep their jobs and paychecks during the last year. So, come summer, if students go to vigorous, engaging programs to catch up or continue learning, then their parents can work with less worry about their children. That valuable extra time can make up for what was missed amid the frenzy of on-again, off-again remote learning, hybrid classrooms and in-person disruptions. With about 20 percent of Boston public school students not even logging into school, there is a large population that would benefit from more structured time.

My organization, YMCA of Greater Boston, along with our partner groups — Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), The BASE and Latinos for Education — have a model for this and believe it could be the beginning of a much-needed reimagining of education in Boston.

We actually came together before the pandemic, encouraged by local philanthropists to take a “moonshot” approach to more equitable education in the city by forging a collaboration between nonprofits and the school district. But when the pandemic struck, our Community Learning Collaborative had a chance for a test run.

Each collaborative partner is guided by a leader of color who has demonstrated a longstanding commitment to education, youth development and community engagement. We share our talents, expertise and resources to provide comprehensive and equitable learning opportunities for low-income students and families in Boston.

We are currently running 12 equity pods, organized by age and grade level, with 125 students spending the day with an educator in a community-based setting within walking distance of home. Each location is equipped with high-speed Internet, laptop computers for those who don’t have them and headsets so students can focus on their classwork with their Boston Public School teachers. We know from students, parents, teachers and even grandparents that young people are excelling and thriving. Now, we want to keep going and take the lessons we are learning into summer with fun, academically enriching programs at facilities run by the YMCA, The Base and IBA.

We are seeing the impact of high-quality academic support, social-emotional development, health and wellness, recreation, arts, movement and food in a fun and engaging environment. Students, parents and teachers report that they like the pods and students are excelling, keeping up with their schoolwork and enjoying learning. Smaller settings with individualized attention are working to meet students’ needs. Our whole-child approach includes culturally appropriate curricula, taught and supported by leaders and teachers of color, which contributes to positive self-identities for children of color. Students see themselves and their experiences reflected by the caring adults around them. We are also combating food insecurity and hunger by providing healthy and nutritious meals and snacks.

To gather data, we have brought in Bellwether Education Partners survey students, parents and teachers, so we have a complete analysis of how our pods are working and what we can learn from them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated disparities experienced by low-income Black and Latino children. These inequities often result from limited access to academic, enrichment and out-of-school opportunities available to children of wealthier households. As a result, Black and Latino children are less likely to graduate from high school, attend college, secure gainful employment and accumulate wealth — all outcomes that can be mitigated with equitable access to educational opportunities. Children’s potential is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.

We are reimagining public education in Boston. Our resolve is fueled by the fierce urgency of now and knowing that if society fails to educate all of its children, then it has failed all of its children.

James Morton is president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Boston. Community Learning Collaborative leaders Amanda Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of Latinos for Education; Robert Lewis, president and founder of The BASE; and Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, executive director of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, also contributed to this essay.

Texas will provide state-licensed summer camps with COVID-19 rapid tests in an effort to prevent potential outbreaks, Gov. said in a Tuesday.

Last summer, most summer camps were shuttered across the country because of the pandemic.

The tests will be voluntary for both staff and campers. Summer camp organizers need to to participate.

“As normalcy returns to Texas, we must remain vigilant against the spread of COVID-19 by identifying positive cases and mitigating any potential outbreaks,” Abbott said in the statement. “I encourage qualifying summer camps to apply for this program so that we can continue to keep Texans safe.”

This comes after Texas ended most of its coronavirus-related restrictions earlier this month.

Texas has a series of revised this month for summer camp operators, including social distancing rules, prohibiting parent or guardian visits except to pick up or drop off a child and separating campers and staff into smaller cohorts that do not mix for the duration of the camp. Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says .

Staff members or campers who test positive should be immediately isolated and then removed from the camp, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Parents are told to pick up their children within eight hours if they become infected.

Many parents across Texas rely on summer camps — some which operate daytime hours and not overnight — for child care while school is out for summer break.

Reese Oxner is a breaking news reporter at , the only member-supported, digital-first, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.