The Jamestown Public Schools District Board of Education appointed a new director of food services during its meeting Tuesday. Superintendent Bret Apthorpe also updated the board on a summer reading program that will provide transportation to its district students. P-J photos by Jordan W. Patterson

Jamestown Public Schools continues to strive toward ending the summer regression that students experience when away from the classroom over the summer months.

Commonly referred to as the summer slide or the summer backslide, the summer regression Jamestown is combating impacts students who are away from school over the summer and often find themselves losing progress they made the previous year.

Superintendent Bret Apthorpe updated the board about expanding its summer literacy program. Currently, there is a program that is in two of the Jamestown schools that focuses on literacy with elementary students. Apthorpe has mentioned before that he wanted to figure out a plan to provide transportation for students over the summer to attend a summer program that would provide literacy lessons.

Apthorpe announced Tuesday that through partnerships with the YMCA, YWCA and the Boys and Girls Club, the district is estimating it will provide transportation for 600-700 K-4 Jamestown students to a related summer program.

“We’ll be able to feed them and provide them with two hours of literacy,” Apthorpe said.

After the literacy portion of Apthorpe’s proposed program, the students will be turned over to one of the three organizations for social and emotional development. Under the umbrella of the bigger organizations, other groups will be pushing into the program to teach the elementary students as well. Apthorpe used the example of the Girl Scouts of America potentially participating in a week’s worth of instruction.

“There’s a long, long list of groups who signed up to provide experiences in the afternoon for these kids. On Fridays over the summer, the students in the program will be provided with a field trip to destinations like the Fenton History Museum and the Audubon Community Nature Center, Apthorpe said.

“I’m just really, really pleased with how that’s going,” Apthorpe said.