MANKATO — As August winds down, the Mankato Area Public School Board is looking back on all it accomplished this summer and beginning to look ahead at the challenges next summer may bring.
The board watched a presentation this week on how this year’s summer activities went.
“I think that what our leaders really highlighted well for our board and for the community is just how active our public school system is in the summer months,” Supt. Paul Peterson said. “The days of shutting down the school year at the end of May and then turn the lights on at the end of August to get ready again, those days are long gone.”
Those programs include offerings such as Camp Ignite, which focuses on STEM and social and emotional education, summer school, which helps students who fell behind last school year to catch up, and Adult Basic Education courses.
One item almost all of these programs celebrated was numbers trending in the right direction. Camp Ignite saw attendance increase by 13.5% over last year, summer school enrollment dropped by about 14.5%, and while ABE’s enrollment dropped by just eight people from last year, it saw 47 attendees pass their GED test compared to 45 in 2024.
“The whole summer programming that Mankato Schools does I think it’s the diamond in the rough,” Board Member Patrick Baker said at the meeting Monday. “It’s maybe something the community has limited awareness of that I wish they knew more about.”
Peterson attributes that rise to one thing: the dedicated staff who put on the programs.
“I think it all comes back to the passionate people who are responsible for creating quality learning environments,” he said. “People seek out quality, and when that is there, that’s when you’re going to see your numbers move in the right direction.”
Still, with all of these positives, there’s one thing Peterson is eyeing skeptically next year: funding.
Earlier this year, previously allocated congressional funds for after-school programs were halted by the U.S. Department of Education. Last month those funds were finally sent to school districts waiting for them, which Peterson called a relief, but noted there were worries during that period.
“What you’re doing is you’re serving kids and families, and so that was unhelpful to say the least, but there was a sense of relief when calmer heads prevailed and those dollars were released to public schools across the country,” he said.
Now those worries are being shifted to next year’s programming.
“We know that the federal legislation that was passed recently will impact school programs. There’s no way around that so what we’ll have to do over the next several months,” Peterson said. “(We’ll) figure out what can we continue to offer. What adjustments might we have to make … and then what sorts of things maybe are going to have to go away.”
Peterson said the district has plenty of time to figure out the answers to those questions. For now, he’s focusing on the good these programs have done for students this year.
“If you think about it in terms of being a learner, learning doesn’t shut off at the end of a traditional school year and then pop back on the day after Labor Day, especially when we think of our students, they are learning throughout their life,” he said. “Our ability to stay engaged with kids during those precious summer weeks was really important.”