Montville — Saint Bernard’s isn’t offering your typical summer school.

As Headmaster Don Macrino said, the school’s summer programming is not meant as a credit recovery endeavor, but rather as enrichment for students whose academic experience has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It's also open to students from other high schools.  

“A lot of summer schools traditionally are for students who failed a course during the year and are trying to make up the credit during the summer,” Macrino said. “Our program is very different than that. It’s for those students who are motivated to continue to exercise their intellect because they’ve not been able to do it fully during the school year if they chose to be hybrid or all online. The kids who are really academically inclined feel that maybe they’ve slipped behind a little bit, and they want to enrich their experiences. This is a great opportunity for them. There’s a thirst among kids to get involved in a summer program that has its basis in academics.” 

The parts of school that make it special and make certain students socialize, such as sports, clubs, field trips, and in the case of Saint Bernard, Catholic Mass, have been impacted, Macrino said. The summer program is meant to address that issue. 

“All the activities kids get formally involved in ceased. Summer camps were closed, they couldn’t go to an amusement park or really any place with larger numbers of people gathering,” Macrino said. “Last year it was virtual. This year we’re very conscious of safety and social distancing, and we feel as though we can offer an alternative to the summer activities that are unable to take place.”

Holly Cyr, director of school counseling and the director of the summer program, said last summer was the first real departure from how the school ran its summer classes. In previous years, Saint Bernard offered a couple of summer classes, but last summer the school added classes knowing that students had to go home in March and finish the school year out remotely.

“We had a great response,” Cyr said. “This year we’ve expanded more and have 21 classes that can be taken in-person or virtually. Students can make their own hybrid approach to these classes if they like. The biggest change is this year, we’re trying to expand to other students in the area.” 

The school’s retooled summer program is now open to area students who don’t attend Saint Bernard. Cyr said more than 100 Saint Bernard students signed up for last year’s program, and the school expects more students this year. 

Of the 21 courses being offered, there are five categories — full-credit, half-credit, enrichment, AP Music Theory Prep Enrichment and SAT enrichment. Classes for credit mandate final exams. There are 11 half-credit classes, including Entrepreneurship Essentials, Topics in 20th Century American History, Number Theory, Economics, and astronomy, and one full-credit course, New Perspectives in a Modern Global Society.

The latter full-credit course “examines modern society, politics and culture, emphasizing the connection between these spheres rather than their academic separateness,” according to the course catalog. Being for a full credit, it’s also the most expensive and time-intensive class, with students taking three two-hour classes a week for six weeks. 

Half-credit courses cost $250 and can be taken for either five days straight of five-and-a-half hour classes or three weeks of three-days-a-week, two-hour classes. The two-hour enrichment programs run for six sessions. The two-hour SAT enrichment classes run three days a week for four weeks.

Macrino and Cyr said the non-credit classes have been popular because they focus on skills such as writing the college essay, studying and Spanish, for example. There’s even a journalism course taught by a former journalist turned-teacher.

 “There’s a real fear that a gap has been created as a result of the online learning and all that’s gone on since March of 2020,” Macrino said. “I think both parents and some students are fearful they’ve lost a bit of ground, so they go after these courses to kind of fill in the gaps, and they’ve been designed to do just that.” 

Cyr pointed out that many of the course offerings are geared toward students preparing for college, such as the SAT prep or college essay classes. She said as a school counselor, she was encouraged when students came in and they already had their college essay in final draft form. 

“We found last year that students took classes that represent areas of interest they may want to pursue in college,” Cyr said. 

Saint Bernard has a large international student population. Cyr said the summer program classes are open to them as well, whether they’re in the area or not.  

At the moment, 22 students are taking remote classes from mainland China, Macrino said. Some of these students have never set foot in Saint Bernard. Others had to return to China for the pandemic and have not been back to school in-person. The school has worked to accommodate these students, whom Macrino credits for making a difficult situation, with differing time zones, feasible due to their hard work and flexibility. 

While students will have the opportunity for credit recovery after the school year on an individual basis — the classic idea of summer school — Cyr wants people to know that Saint Bernard’s summer school is more like summer camp. 

“I think some people are like, ‘My kid’s doing fine, they don’t need summer school,’” she said. “We want people to know that this program is different.” 

s.spinella@theday.com