Senate approves Governor Lee’s plan to make highly effective summer learning camps permanent
In January of 2021, Governor Bill Lee called a special session to address the historic loss of student learning caused by COVID-19 pandemic.The Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act was among the legislation passed by the Tennessee General Assembly during the special session. It required districts to offer additional resources to combat learning loss including full-time tutoring teams, after school camps, learning loss bridge camps, and summer learning camps.Those learning camps were initially designed to only be for the summers of 2021 and 2022 but individual school districts, including Elizabethton City Schools, reported noticeable improvements.“Our ELA (English Language Arts) outperformed pre-COVID data, so we have closed that gap and gone above. Our students have really worked hard, our teachers have worked hard to close that gap and to really push it beyond,” said Elizabethton City Schools Assistant Director Dr. Myra Newman. “In ‘22 we had some of the best ELA scores that we’ve had in our district.”Statewide, students improved in both English language arts (ELA) and math scores and that impact led Governor Lee’s administration to propose legislation requiring districts to make learning camps available year-round for “at-risk” students in grades K-3 and create learning loss bridge camps for 9th graders.“This is one of those true success stories,” said Franklin Senator Jack Johnson who’s sponsoring the legislation in the Senate. “The governor called us into special session to take immediate and decisive action relative to the learning loss that our kids had experienced due to the COVID pandemic. We know we had some districts that were all remote learning, some were hybrid, but our students suffered as a result of that, so we have seen tremendous progress as a result of these learning camps.”Senator Johnson said the Governor’s Administration has appropriated roughly $30 million to fund the learning camps.The full Senate unanimously approved the legislation Monday night. It still needs approval in the state House.
