Lights On after school program in full swing

The Lights On Afterschool program through the Hot Springs County School District just finished an excellent 2017-2018 year and are already in full swing for another successful year.

According to program coordinator Elisa Daniels, 266 children were enrolled in the programs at the schools last year with 238 of those coming on a regular, sometimes daily, basis.

There were 109 in the Ralph Witters Elementary (RWE) program, 97 at the middle school, 17 at the high school (robotics) and even 15 little ones in the Pre-K program.

When it came to family nights, 962 parents, grandparents, siblings and other family were engaged in the program.

The registration numbers so far this year aren’t as high in most cases because things are just getting going and Daniels knows as schedules change throughout the year they will pick up more students.

One that has really blossomed, however, is at the high school where there are now 24 students registered for robotics, meaning they will have two teams this year for competition.

The program has gone online this year, too, allowing registration to be done from home, cutting down on the paper use, but also making it more convenient for parents. All of the information for Lights On has been emailed, sent by text, added to Facebook and is even on the school’s website.

RWE will continue with their regular programs, including the very popular Thursday clubs.

Tutoring will begin on Oct. 1 with the help of various staff, three days a week. Heather Herring is the site coordinator at RWE and Daniels says she is focused on bringing great academic content to the daily activities.

Academic opportunity will continue at the middle school as well this year along with clubs the students can do every day. They choose two or three clubs and stick with them until that club is finished, and then they can choose another.

The offerings are amazing with Destination Imagination, First Lego League, cooking, jazz band, art and lots more. Julia Scott is the coordinator at the middle school and has listened to what kinds of things the kids really want as far as their clubs are concerned.

In addition to the robotics club, at the high school students over 16 are eligible to take a CNA course through Central Wyoming College and Eric Kay has started teaching guitar lessons, too.

Part of the requirements for the grants Lights On receive is to show an improvement in proficiency in various core subjects from the fall to the spring. Those include math and reading/language arts.

They also need to see improvements in school attendance, classroom participation and homework completion. An increase in engagement in the program by family members is also tracked along with student’s overall attitude towards learning.

Its difficult to track things like a kid’s attitude, but the hard and fast numbers for math and reading are undeniable.

At RWE, math scores jumped from 67 percent proficiency to 79 percent and reading went from 64 percent to 72 percent proficiency.

The middle school saw huge increases with math starting at 45.5 percent proficiency to 68 percent and reading bounding higher as well, from 51.75 percent proficiency to 81.3 percent.

Even the high school showed vast improvement, going from 35.9 percent proficiency in math to 80.2 percent (based on classroom grades) and from 56 percent to 80 percent in reading.

Lights On continued the fun and learning into the summer with summer school and summer camp for six weeks.

RWE students not only made Wyoming Animal Informational Cards as part of their lessons, they created a Friendship Bracelet making business which they then displayed and sold at the Second Friday ArtStroll downtown.

The focus for the first three weeks was on cultures and the last three weeks on pollinators and even had a “Bees” week featuring a guest speaker who brought along a hive that students could really examine.

For summer school, there were 26 participants with a daily average attendance of 21. Summer camp had 78 participants with an average of 53 attending each day.

Growth in math for RWE during summer school was 12 percent.

Fourteen students participated in summer school for the middle school with an average daily attendance of 11. Their math growth during the six weeks was 9 percent.

Middle schoolers’ summer camp was full of science, art, outdoor adventure and dinosaur bones. They, too, had several speakers throughout the camp and even took 20 students camping in Grand Teton National Park.

There were 31 participants in the summer camp from the middle school with an average daily attendance of 18.

Middle school and high school students also had some musical opportunities over the summer with help from music director Drew Brown.

Brown had 16 middle school participants and 12 high school musicians meeting once a week for six weeks to get a jump on this year’s program.

Everyone is invited to a special Nationa Lights On Afterschool celebration with a fundraiser and dinner on Oct. 25 in the State Park from 6-8 p.m. The theme is “Glow-A-Thon” for the evening.