Minooka Elementary 201 announces summer school plans

Gardening, hip-hop dance, painting and Yu-Gi-Oh! are among the course offerings available in the months ahead as officials in Minooka Community Consolidated School District 201 aim to broaden summer school programming.

At a meeting April 21, Jill Forkel, Minooka 201’s summer school coordinator, provided the school board with an overview of what is in store in the upcoming warm weathered months.

Minooka 201 is breaking up its summer school program into one of four buckets: course recovery, Camp Minooka, summer enrichment and Minooka Bridge.

Course recovery and Camp Minooka have a common thread, with both initiatives zeroed in on such core curricular areas as reading and math.

Course recovery has a more intensive focus, geared primarily toward students in grades 5 to 8 who have not met course credit criteria within the parameters of the regular school year. Camp Minooka also focuses on the core subject areas, though it is tailored in a more casual environment for students to stay abreast of skills and concepts in-between school years.

This year, Minooka 201 is ramping up its enrichment offerings, encouraging students to take two offerings, rather than the one slot available a year ago. Fourteen different courses – some not previously offered in Minooka 201 – are on the docket this summer.

“Last year’s offerings were a little bit different than this year’s,” Forkel, who also serves as assistant principal at Walnut Trails Elementary School, said. To date, she indicated fishing has been the most popular offering of this year’s mix, based on sign-ups.

While student interest plays an important part in determining summer enrichment offerings, Forkel said other logistical issues also play into the equation – most notably, teacher availability.

“It really is dependent on what staff is willing and wants to teach and share with students,” Forkel said.

The last of the four summer school programs, Minooka Bridge, is online-only and tailored to help students transition from one grade level to the next. This year, Minooka 201 is adding supports to assist multilingual newcomers in acquiring language skills.

Minooka 201’s summer offerings kick off in late May and will continue, in different phases, through the end of July.

In other business April 21, the Minooka 201 school board:

Discussed enrollment projections for the upcoming 2025-26 school year. The district-wide figure will play an important role in planning the upcoming fiscal year budget and determining building-specific needs.

Superintendent Rachel Kinder said preliminary figures indicate Minooka 201’s district-wide enrollment this fall should hover about 4,300 students.

“We’re pretty stable right now, and looking at the cohorts … we’re going to see a little bit of a natural dip because that outgoing 8th grade class is a larger class, and some of our smaller classes are rolling up,” Kinder said.

The incoming kindergarten classes are “the wild card,” Kinder said. As of the board meeting, 79 students had been signed up for kindergarten this fall, with more enrollees anticipated in the months ahead.

In the long view, Kinder said Minooka 201 is monitoring what is taking place at each of the municipalities within the district’s footprint.

“We are working closely with the villages in the new development,” she said. “We’re monitoring it very closely. We could have another gradual climb, based on that residential development.”

-Recognized veteran board member Jim Satorius for his decades of service to Minooka 201. Satorius, who is stepping down, has been on the district’s school board for 32 years; within that time frame, he has been the board president for 21 years.

-Approved the hiring of Julia Lowry as assistant principal at Minooka Intermediate School for the upcoming school year. Kinder described Lowry as a “seasoned educator and leader.” Lowry grew up in the area.