FAQs

Summer Boost provides up to $2,000 per student in funding for schools to design and implement high-quality summer learning programs for rising 1st to 9th grade charter students (students completing kindergarten through 8th grades in spring 2024). In line with the existing body of research on effective summer programming, all Summer Boost programs must:

• Provide at least 20 days of summer academic instruction
• Provide both English Language Arts and math instruction
• Provide an average of three cumulative hours of high-quality English Language Arts and math instruction each day 
• Ensure a student-to-teacher ratio of no more than 25-to-1
• Administer pre- and post-assessments provided by Summer Boost (NOTE: The priority standards assessed for the program can be found on the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost Website)
• Conduct in-person instruction 

We know that a one-size-fits-all approach does not effectively meet the diverse needs of charter schools. Schools have flexibility to design programs with schedules that meet the needs of their students, teachers, and families. Additionally, schools can choose to opt in to the Summer Boost-provided Lavinia RISE curriculum or select their own curriculum, as outlined in the table below.

No. Summer Boost sites must be in-person and instruction must be delivered by the school directly, not outsourced to a third-party provider. This restriction is in place to preserve the quality and coherence of Summer Boost and to ensure collaboration is smooth. Please note that you are welcome to recruit educators from outside your school and to engage external partners to provide enrichment programming. Please reach out to us if you have any questions.

No, at this time, we are only allowing applications to serve 1/3 or fewer of your eligible students. Your eligible students include all students you serve in the Rising 1st – 9th grades. We also encourage the combining of funding sources to expand and strengthen your program if other resources are available to you.

Yes! We want you to serve the students who need the program the most based on your own knowledge of your student body. We encourage you to apply for the program size and grade levels that account for the needs of your students, the likely attendance levels of a summer program, and the bandwidth of your organization. Please note that Summer Boost serves rising 1st to 9th grade students only.

Yes! If you are applying on behalf of multiple school sites, whether as a charter network with multiple participating schools, or as a school that will partner with another school/s to deliver the program, you will be asked to outline the location(s) of your program and the specifics of your partnership within the application. 

One “lead applicant” should complete the application and serve as the sole grantee for the program.

We recommend that the Charter Management Organization applies for ALL sites interested in participating, rather than having school sites submit individual applications, unless there are significant differences in program design across school sites.

Summer Boost is focused on rising 1st to 9th grade students (students finishing kindergarten through 8th grade in spring 2024) and does not provide funding for rising kindergarteners or rising 10th-12th graders. The Lavinia RISE curriculum provides rising 9th graders with a deep, rigorous program reinforcing standards from 8th grade in preparation for a strong start to high school.

Summer Boost provides flexibility for you to design necessary supports for your students, and we ask you to describe how you plan to accommodate students with diverse needs in the application.

If you opt into Lavinia Group’s curriculum, the offerings are designed to support multilingual learners and students with Special Education needs in the following ways:

• Share tools and training to support multilingual learners through a partnership with World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA).
• Incorporate robust opportunities for group and partner discussion allowing students to practice their oral speaking skills.
• Offer phonics instruction that includes direct, explicit, sequential, and multisensory routines to support foundational reading skills.
• Give students access to information in various modalities, such as text, diagrams, etc. 
• Provide opportunities for students to learn and keep track of content-area vocabulary. 
• Teach students how to organize their thinking visually using notebooks and, where appropriate, additional graphic organizers.
• Include partner reading and read aloud work so students are able to hear models of fluent reading and discuss their ideas with classmates. 

During the pre-program training, Lavinia Group will provide asynchronous training on differentiated instruction to meet the needs of all students in one-on-one and small group settings. We encourage you to attend to learn strategies and best practices. Following the training and ongoing throughout the summer, we encourage you to reach out to Lavinia Group for support and guidance on supporting all learners.

Schools can apply for up to $2,000 per student, depending on the length of the program and whether the program is full- or half-day:

• $80/student per day for full-day (full-day programs are five or more hours per day)
• $55/student per day for half-day (half-day programs are less than five hours per day)

Your maximum grant total is determined by multiplying the student rate above by the estimated student enrollment in your application.

We will then ask you to provide an adjusted enrollment number a couple weeks ahead of your Summer Boost program start. Your final grant total will be updated to reflect that adjusted enrollment number.

Your first grant payment will be 70% of the updated final grant total reflecting the adjusted enrollment number. Your second grant payment will take into account the actual number of students you served and be adjusted accordingly, as outlined below:

• If your average daily attendance is at least 70% of the adjusted enrollment, you will receive 100% of the adjusted grant funding.
• If your average daily attendance is less than 70%, you will receive 70% of the adjusted grant funding. In this case, you will not receive a second payment.

Data from summer 2023 show that 70% attendance at a Summer Boost program is an important threshold for students to realize significant, positive growth in English Language Arts and math. This payment structure is thus designed to encourage what works best for students! We encourage you to consider the importance of consistent attendance for student success as you recruit and enroll students for the program. 

Full guidance can be found in the Summer Boost Funding Model document.

Grant funds can be used to support virtually all aspects of a successful summer program, as long as expenses are reasonable and aligned with your program design. Expenses may include, but are not limited to: staff salaries and teacher bonuses, curriculum, supplies and materials, enrichment activities, facilities costs, transportation, meals, technology – and any other expenses you incur related specifically to summer learning as laid out in the budget template of your application. While we know attendance incentives can be valuable in encouraging consistent student attendance over the summer, gift cards are not allowable through Summer Boost funds. However, attendance incentives such as weekly or end-of-program celebrations, attendance recognition awards, supplies and educational materials for families and students, and field trips have all been deployed to maximize attendance in previous programs. If you have questions about specific expenses, we would encourage you to reach out to the Summer Boost team.

You will receive a grant agreement from our fiscal sponsor, 50CAN, in June (exact timing depends on the start of your Summer Boost program). We will ask you to provide an updated student enrollment number a couple weeks ahead of your Summer Boost program start, and your grant amount will be updated to reflect the adjusted enrollment number. This adjusted grant amount will be listed in your grant agreement, which will be sent at this point. Once we have your signed grant agreement, we will begin processing your first payment – 70% of the adjusted grant amount. We have designed the timeline so that you will likely receive your first payment around the start of your program, and the majority of first payments will be issued by mid-July.The balance of your grant will be paid out no later than mid-October, contingent on completion of all reporting requirements and an average daily attendance percentage of at least 70%, as described in the Summer Boost Funding Model document. We aim to disburse final payments earlier for grantees that complete all reporting requirements earlier.

Yes, we have provided a budget template and calculator – linked in the application – where you can determine the amount of funding for which you are eligible. You will be asked to provide a proposed budget and a narrative to support that budget.

The budget you submit should only include the funding provided by Summer Boost. If you are using additional funding sources to support your program, you will be able to note that in the budget narrative, but we are not asking for a budget related to those funds. Please note that the funding model has been designed to ensure enough funding to run a complete summer program. We encourage you to use additional funding sources if they are available to you, but you should not need other funding sources in order to implement a strong program. If you would like more information about how grantees have successfully allocated grant funds in the past, please feel free to reach out to your program officer.

Yes! You can view the application here. You will be prompted to make a copy so that you can draft your answers before entering them in the Google form.

No, the Google Form platform does not allow you to save and return to a draft application. We encourage you to complete the application in the downloadable version of the application (see previous question) and then copy and paste your responses in the Google Form once you are ready to submit.

Applications are due no later than 11:59pm ET on March 15, 2024.

We aim to notify all applicants of grant decisions by April 12, 2024. We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis and will notify schools of application decisions earlier than April 12 if feasible. We encourage you to apply as soon as you can submit a strong application.

Your daily schedule is up to you. Summer Boost requires at least three hours of English Language Arts and math instruction each day and you may want to add breaks or meal time (Note: the Lavinia RISE curriculum requires approximately three hours per day to complete so it aligns with this requirement). It is up to you to determine whether to add enrichment or other activities. Programs that are under five hours per day are considered “half-day” programs. Programs that are five or more hours per day are considered “full-day” programs. You can start and end your day at the time that works best for your staff and the families you serve. We strongly encourage you to consider the needs of your families, recognizing that a full-day schedule may work better for working parents and therefore support increased student attendance.

We’ve included a full-day sample schedule below and indicated which activities are provided by the Lavinia RISE curriculum.

Programs that are under five hours per day are considered “half-day” programs. Programs that are five or more hours per day are considered “full-day” programs.

All programs must be a minimum of 20 days of instruction with a daily average of at least three hours of English Language Arts and math, but you have flexibility to design a program structure that makes sense for your school context. For example, some programs in the past have run from Monday-Thursday each week for five weeks. Please note you may add up to two assessment-only days with a primary focus on implementing the Summer Boost pre- and post-tests, but these should be above and beyond 20 instructional days.

The Lavinia RISE curriculum includes five days per week of instruction. Your school could choose to cover the curriculum in fewer days by making those days longer, but we recommend you consider the impact this might have on your students’ focus and interest.

We encourage you to apply and begin teacher recruitment with the caveat that you are awaiting approval on funding. You can recruit your own teachers and/or teachers from other schools to participate.

Teachers providing the English Language Arts and math academic instruction must be teachers that would be qualified to provide academic instruction at your school during the school year. We know that most charter schools have some flexibility related to licensure/certification so we do not have a blanket requirement but do require that you use the same bar you would use during the school year to determine whether someone is qualified to teach a specific grade and subject area. The staffing plan for enrichment is up to your discretion and there are no requirements for licensure or certification, as long as you have a strong rationale. We encourage you to consider partnering with other community organizations to provide the enrichment component. Please note that schools are responsible for screening personnel that will be working with students this summer.

Of note, prior high-performing Summer Boost grantees have attributed their success to recruiting strong, experienced teachers, especially those who previously served in Summer Boost; providing rigorous, structured curriculum; using data to inform instruction; thoughtfully staffing at the leadership level (e.g., a clear senior program leader); and on-site coaching so that teachers were supported in their work.

We recommend that you aim to recruit your most experienced and successful teachers for the summer program, and we ask you about your staff recruitment plans in the application. We built the funding model to allow generous compensation for teachers. Prior grantees have shared that staffing over the summer was (unexpectedly) not a challenge, in large part because they were able to offer competitive compensation through grant funds. 

We know that salaries and cost of living vary widely across geographies, and we encourage schools to think, if possible, about what would be a significant rate of pay for teachers in their context in order to attract the best talent. Previous successful programs in multiple geographies have offered $10,000 or more to their teachers to teach in Summer Boost, as one data point.

Yes! We encourage collaboration across schools to mitigate staffing or student recruitment challenges. Only one school/Charter Management Organization (CMO) should complete the application, but the lead applicant should provide details about the partnership in the application. Schools can also consider recruiting teachers from other schools or districts who may be interested in teaching in the summer.

Note: Each school participating in a combined Summer Boost program will be required to submit school-specific data reports for Summer Boost. Please feel free to reach out during the application phase to understand the specific requirements.

Yes, we encourage returning grantees to recruit students who participated in the program before and could benefit from it again this summer. Evidence from the existing research base on summer learning suggests that year-over-year participation can result in cumulative beneficial effects for students. 

Because attendance is key to success for students, you will be required to track and report attendance. We ask that you give your best efforts to engage families and students and encourage consistent attendance. In previous summers, schools found that initial meetings with families to set expectations, phone calls when students were absent, and incentives were valuable means for improving attendance. 

Additionally, student attendance will influence your total funding amount. We understand that you need to staff and provide materials based on enrollment, and we have factored this into the calculation as noted below. See the Summer Boost Funding Model document for more information.

•  If your average daily attendance is 70% or more of your adjusted enrollment (adjusted enrollment will be based on an enrollment check a couple weeks before the start of your program), you will receive 100% of your adjusted funding amount.
•  If your average daily attendance is less than 70%, you will receive 70% of your adjusted funding amount. In this case, you will not receive a second payment.

Data from summer 2023 show that 70% attendance at a Summer Boost program is an important threshold for students to realize significant, positive growth in English Language Arts and math. This payment structure is thus designed to encourage what works best for students! We encourage you to consider the importance of consistent attendance for student success as you recruit and enroll students for the program.

Schools are responsible for designing transportation plans that will meet the needs of students. The funding amount per student/per day in the budget calculator was developed to support transportation costs. We will ask you to describe your transportation plans in your application. We also encourage you to reach out to your local education agency to understand if there are any transportation options being provided over the summer that you can leverage.

The Summer Boost pre- and post-tests are standards-aligned assessments following the standards map for both English Language Arts and math. To understand how the assessments align with your state standards, visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website.

The assessments are a combination of multiple choice and open-response questions. Students will take these assessments via the Edcite platform at the beginning and end of the summer program. The Edcite platform will be provided to all schools, and training on administering and scoring the assessment will be provided. Pen and paper assessments are also available, but please note data will then need to be inputted into Edcite.

This data will help the funders of Summer Boost understand what impact the program had for students. Because the assessments will be mapped to state standards, the data will also help schools understand how their students are doing and where they might focus with interventions after the summer program.

The Summer Boost pre- and post-assessments, developed by the Lavinia Group, are required for all participants, regardless of whether you use the Lavinia RISE curriculum or select your own curriculum. If you would like to administer additional assessments, that is at your discretion.

Training materials – including videos and resources – on assessment implementation and scoring will be made available online for participating sites to access at any time. All sites will also be able to attend optional office hours with representatives from Edcite, the assessment platform. Additionally, assessment implementation and scoring guidance will be covered during the Lavinia Group’s pre-program professional development week and this portion of the professional development will be made available to all Summer Boost grantees – including those that are not using the Lavinia RISE curriculum.

The assessments are untimed, but we estimate about 40-60 minutes for English Language Arts and 40-60 minutes for math – a total of up to two hours for the pre-tests and up to two hours for the post-tests. We encourage schools to offer the math and English Language Arts pre-tests on day one of the program and the math and English Language Arts post-tests on the second to last day of the program. However, there is flexibility around the logistics of this, and the tests could be administered over the course of two days if the site prefers (one day for English Language Arts and one day for math). We do not recommend administering assessments on the final day in order to allow time for teachers to score and enter the data for the assessments.

Summer Boost does not provide or endorse any specific enrichment programs. However, we strongly encourage sites to consider offering enrichment, as prior grantees have reported that enrichment programming helped motivate student attendance and increase student engagement. We encourage sites to consider all options for enrichment, including recruiting teachers with specialized content areas to teach courses and/or partnering with local organizations to help offer students and families full-day programming. Grantees are encouraged to include costs for enrichment providers, staffing, etc. as necessary in their program budgets. Summer Boost provides more funding for full-day than half-day programs to help cover these costs (please reference the calculator in the application budget template for more information).

The English Language Arts and math academic component of the program needs to be an average of at least three hours per day across all instructional days of programming. Beyond that, schools have flexibility to determine the extent and types of enrichment programming provided.

At the conclusion of the program, schools will be required to share information including but not limited to:

1. A narrative report and financial report describing how you used the funds in support of your program as well as key successes, challenges, and lessons learned. 
2. A report for each individual Summer Boost site describing the program characteristics of that site.
3. A data report sharing student-level Summer Boost student attendance, as well as demographic information and assessment results school-wide.

All templates as well as detailed instructions will be provided. Schools must submit all attendance and demographic data, as well as narrative, financial, and site reports within two weeks of their last day of Summer Boost programming. Additional details will be provided in the grant agreement for selected schools and by our program team throughout the summer.

The learnings from Summer Boost will support understanding of what works in summer learning programs, especially as many students across the country continue to recover from the impact of COVID-19. To maximize the potential benefit for educators everywhere, we ask that participating schools provide student data, including summer data and authorization to access data from existing test providers (e.g., i-Ready or NWEA) to an independent researcher. No students, school staff, or schools will be identified in any public reports, and schools will receive reports with their individual schools’ pre/post results from the program. 

Summer Boost has established processes that ensure secure transfer of student-level data, also known as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Compliance with secure data transfer instructions is required to ensure the safety and privacy of students and schools. Data collection templates and submission assistance will be provided throughout the process. More information about the program evaluation and requested data will be shared in the grant agreements, and we will also ask you to sign a data sharing agreement.

Visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website or email them at summer.learning@laviniagroup.org.

Yes! We will work with Lavinia Group to identify the charter schools with whom they are already working and absorb those costs into the grant structure so you will no longer incur those costs for summer.

Yes! The application process will ask you to share more about your curriculum and the standards it targets. We want to support high-quality work in all forms and we have seen grantees employ their own customized approach to summer programming with great success.

As far as Lavinia Group’s offerings, Summer Boost will provide the Lavinia RISE curriculum and professional development for FREE to any sites that choose to use it (NOTE: Schools will have to purchase student materials such as student books and math manipulatives; all materials beyond the Lavinia RISE curriculum are NOT free). Lavinia RISE has been selected because the curriculum has successfully led to student growth in multiple cities across the country. Because of this, if you do not have a curriculum already in place, we strongly encourage you to use the provided Lavinia RISE curriculum.

ALL participating schools will be required to take the Summer Boost pre- and post-tests to help us understand student growth this summer (provided at no cost to participating schools). ALL programs must be a minimum of 20 days of instruction, in addition to up to two days focused only on assessment.

Yes! Below are a few of the new and responsive updates to the program this year:

• A differentiated Teacher Training Week pathway for returning Summer Boost teachers focused on strategically using pre-assessment data to drive instruction this summer. 
• A new English Language Arts phonics assessment for students in Rising 1st and 2nd Grade to capture more accurate data on foundational reading skills. 
• Updated non-fiction texts (all texts will be centralized in the Lavinia Group curriculum).
• A dedicated professional development training in partnership with World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) designed to strengthen summer support for multilingual learners.
• A 2-hour leader training before the start of Teacher Training Week and an optional leader cohort that meets weekly for leaders to build relationships, share best practices, and collectively problem-solve any challenges they encounter throughout the summer program.

Also, please note the 2024 material list is the same as last summer so schools can reuse any texts and materials from the Summer Boost 2023 Program. For more information, visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website.

Yes, Lavinia Group will join our informational Webinars to share more about their curriculum, and you can see samples of the curriculum on the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website. If you want to ask Lavinia Group questions directly, email Summer.Learning@laviniagroup.org.

The costs of Lavinia RISE materials should be factored into the budget you submit to Summer Boost (Classes of 15 students should budget between $13-$39 per student for these materials, and classes of 25 students should budget between $10-$28 per student for these materials, depending on the grade; see the budget template in the application for more details). The curriculum and professional development will be provided at no cost to you, but the accompanying supplies are the grantee’s responsibility. This includes costs to print the curriculum if your school prefers to do so instead of accessing it digitally throughout the summer. 

Note: The 2024 material list is the same as last summer so schools can reuse any texts and materials from the Summer Boost 2023 Program.

To see the comprehensive material list, please visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website.

No. If choosing to engage in the Lavinia RISE curriculum, it is expected that the whole program will be implemented in accordance with the training and materials provided by Lavinia Group. We believe this adherence is important to retain the quality of the program. You are welcome to supplement the Lavinia RISE curriculum with enrichment and other activities.

For more information, visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website.

Yes, the Lavinia RISE curriculum is meant to provide a high-quality academic component. Adding any additional support, programming, or resources is a decision you are empowered to make.

Key components include:

• Insight Humanities™ Book Studies (45 minutes daily): This curriculum rapidly develops students’ critical thinking skills, passion for reading, and ability to analyze any book they encounter. Students read, analyze, discuss, and write about highly engaging, multicultural literature by award-winning authors.
• Close Reading for Meaning™ (45 minutes daily): Students will learn to independently access and understand complex text through a three-day cycle of reading for the main idea, craft and structure, and mastery. The curriculum includes texts and aligned lesson plans.  
• Systematic Phonics and Shared Poem (45 minutes daily): Designed so teachers can personalize instruction and target existing gaps, this curriculum includes direct, explicit, and multisensory routines and materials teachers can use throughout the summer and into the school year. 
• Math for Meaning™ Story Problems (45 minutes daily): Students develop the confidence and precision necessary to tackle any mathematical task independently while building their mastery of grade-level standards. This curriculum engages students in solving on and above grade level problems through hands-on learning and rich mathematical discourse. 
• Math Routines (30 minutes daily): The RISE Math Routines Curriculum is designed to build students’ mathematical fluency and conceptual understanding through targeted, discussion-based routines. Students build automaticity with operations and concepts while keeping the “why” behind strategies front and center.
  

For more information, visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website.

The RISE 2024 curriculum and materials will be available to all educators in early May. Leaders and teachers will access the curriculum, professional development, and all accompanying resources through the RISE Summer School Platform.

You will receive access to the curriculum as a downloadable PDF by grade-level on the RISE Summer School Platform. The materials will be labeled by the grade students will enter this fall. For example, students entering 3rd grade in the fall of 2024 will use the curriculum materials labeled “Rising 3rd Grade.” Schools can choose to print and organize these materials by day, week, or all in one batch for the summer session.

RISE Summer School is designed to accelerate student learning by ensuring all students are exposed to rich grade-level content and provided with responsive support when necessary. The summer curriculum and professional development courses are explicitly designed to help teachers utilize appropriate scaffolds and differentiation techniques in response to student data.

The curriculum allows students access to both word recognition and language comprehension strategies. Through the Phonics curriculum, students will receive explicit demonstration and practice in foundational reading skills. Through the Insight Humanities™ and Close Reading for Meaning™ curriculum, students will apply background knowledge, gain vocabulary, and make inferential meaning from various texts in multiple genres.

All Lavinia Group school sites will receive a data tracker that they can leverage to keep track of student reading data and math data each week. Teachers will be provided with rubrics and training on collecting, scoring, and analyzing formative data throughout the summer.

This same tracker provides school leaders access to a comprehensive dashboard that summarizes student progress toward growth goals and overall standards mastery for their specific school. With this dynamic tracker, school leaders can evaluate data across classes and grades and week-to-week throughout the program.

The focus of teacher training week is to develop an aligned vision for summer school instruction and to ensure teachers have ample opportunity to plan and practice the first few lessons of their summer curriculum. These immersive and interactive trainings provide teachers with a program overview and professional development on each core component: Systematic Phonics (rising 1st-2nd), Close Reading for Meaning™, Insight Humanities™ Novel Study, Math for Meaning™ Story Problems, and Math Routines. Lavinia Group will also offer sessions on supporting multilingual learners this summer and administering and scoring the pre- and post-assessment. Throughout the training, teachers will be encouraged to discuss, debate, and ask and answer questions about content and instructional practices. 

Whether new or returning this summer, educators will have 4 hours of asynchronous pre-work and 2-3 days of live virtual sessions facilitated by Lavinia Group coaches. We recommend budgeting 20 total hours per teacher for pre-program professional development.

In addition to the Teacher Training Week, Lavinia Group will also provide teachers with continuous professional development throughout the summer program. Teachers can complete a weekly asynchronous professional development module and attend a live virtual Professional Learning Community (PLC) meeting facilitated by a Lavinia Group coach. These meetings will focus on intellectual preparation and student work-study, providing teachers with professional development specific to their content and grade level. They will also allow teachers to ask questions about the curriculum and receive coaching on differentiating lessons in response to student data. Since content meetings occur on alternate days, teachers who teach math and English can choose to attend all meetings or one meeting each week for each content area.

These sessions are optional but highly encouraged. We recommend budgeting 8 total hours per teacher if you plan to have your teachers attend the weekly professional development meetings.

Leader Training will take place in a 2-hour session before the start of Teacher Training Week. Leaders will receive a comprehensive overview of the Lavinia RISE program and learn strategies to support teachers in executing a high-impact summer program that accelerates student learning. Leaders will gain best practices for summer instructional management and will receive tools and resources to rapidly develop teacher practice this summer.

In summer 2024, we will launch summer leader cohorts to support all Summer Boost grantees, both Lavinia Group and non-Lavinia Group schools, in providing high-impact and meaningful summer programs for students. This new initiative aims to create a community of practice for summer leaders to build leadership skills, share best practices, and collectively problem-solve any challenges leaders commonly encounter throughout the summer. These virtual meetings will occur weekly throughout the summer and will be facilitated by a Lavinia Group coach. Each meeting will have a predetermined topic aligned to the summer schedule. For example, in week 1 we will discuss how to analyze and action plan in response to pre-assessment data. For more specific information on the structure and content of professional development, visit the Lavinia RISE Summer Boost website.