In 2018 RESCHOOL Colorado launched the Blueprint4SummerCO (B4SCO) website, an online resource that aggregates summer activities available around Metropolitan Denver into a comprehensive searchable database. The RESCHOOL team aimed to both surface summer programming throughout the community and provide families with a tool that would simplify their search efforts.
This brief provides an assessment of lessons learned in the first two years since the launch of the B4SCO website. We examined the 2018 and 2019 website data to understand two things: the extent to which the RESCHOOL team met its goals for B4SCO, and what the programming provided on the platform reveals about the landscape of summer programming in the Denver area.
Key findings include:
- B4SCO presents a wealth of enrichment opportunities that parents readily explore.
- Despite an expansion of sessions captured by B4SCO, access to summer learning for all children remains a concern.
- Available summer learning does not fully cover the time students are out of school.
- Summer programming hourly costs equal the region’s minimum wage, forcing hard tradeoffs for families.
