The first full week of summer school for public school students has gone off without a hitch.

About 450 students are attending at three area Vicksburg Warren School District buildings. The number is about 5 percent of the district’s enrollment.

At a glance

• Elementary: Beechwood Elementary School, 8 to 11 a.m. weekdays through June 30.

• Seventh and eighth grade: Vicksburg Junior High School, 7:30 to 11:35 a.m. through July 1.

• High school: Vicksburg High School, 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. through July 22.

Beechwood Elementary is hosting 43 students from around the district, Vicksburg Junior High about 165 and Vicksburg High School about 250.

As intended, remedial weeks included for the first time during the just-ended school year have lessened the demand for summer school.

“I definitely attribute it to the intercessions that we had during the school year,” said Jack Grogan, principal at Beechwood, where about 70 students attended summer school last year.

Vicksburg Junior High School principal Michael Winters agreed. “A lot of the students who needed that extra time and help were able to benefit from it,” he said of the intercession periods. Last year 300 to 325 junior high students needed summer school.

Six teachers are working at the four-week junior high summer session, covering classes in math, English, history and science. Two sessions run daily, the first from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. and the second from 9:35 to 11:35 a.m.

“It’s all right,” said one eighth-grader arriving at school Thursday for a science class, “besides having to get up early.” He said he got up at 6:30 for the session.

“It’s working out — for now,” said parent Racheal Hollowell, dropping her daughter off for science and English classes. Hollowell wished her daughter had taken advantage of intercession periods during the school year. “I think the intercession is a good thing, if only the kids would bring the letters home to their parents. She wouldn’t be here now if she had done the intercession.”

When the intercession schedule was adopted by the school board in December 2007, Superintendent Dr. James Price said it would head off excuses and problems traditionally associated with attending summer school — mostly finances and transportation — and that summer school would not be offered, at least for grades 7-11.

Also considered was a year-round schedule, which would have nine weeks on and two weeks off throughout the year. That plan was not adopted.

Hollowell said, given her own experience, the schools ought to try a different method of letting parents know their children need to attend the intercession periods during the school year. “Letters won’t work. They need to make phone calls to parents,” she said.

Both Winters and Cedric Magee, principal at neighboring Warren Central Junior High School, said for most of the year intercession-recommendation letters had been both given to students to take home and mailed directly to parents, so parents should have received one or both letters.

Both principals also said they thought they’d see greater participation in intercession classes next year. Those sessions are free, as opposed to the $95 per course that junior high summer school costs.

At Beechwood Elementary, four district teachers are handling classes in math and reading/language arts. The students are grouped into two primary classes — for first-, second- and third-graders — and upper elementary.

In a fifth- and sixth-grade reading class, Zabraida Flowers was drilling the students on parts of speech and complete sentences, and allowing the class to do one “Mad Lib” each day for a little fun skills reinforcement.

Next door, students were learning math. “It’s a challenge, having to cover so many different skills in four weeks,” said Latoya Minor, grades four, five and six math teacher. “The kids are adjusting pretty well. Summer school is a good thing for those that need one-on-one help.”

For parents, also, summer school can be a challenge. Jessica Griffin, parent of a third-grader, said it’s helping her daughter, but summer school is “an inconvenience — an expensive inconvenience.”

Griffin said she’s had to tell her daughter there won’t be soccer camp or dance lessons for a while because of both time and money constraints. Elementary-level summer school is $195.

“It is tough,” Griffin said. “I thought the whole idea of the intercession was to eliminate summer school but apparently that wasn’t the case.”

Griffin’s daughter attended the intercessions but still needed a little more work to be ready for fourth grade. “She’s done better here with this teacher,” Griffin said. “She’s in a small class and gets more individual attention.”

At Vicksburg High School students are taking classes in math and English, Principal Derrick Reed said. Most are from VHS and Warren Central High School, but some have enrolled from area private schools. Eleven teachers are covering the classes.

“It’s going great,” Reed said. “The kids are showing up and they are ready to work.”

Remediation is not the only reason for summer school. At the high-school level, some are enrolled in English courses so they can graduate early and start college in January, Reed said. “We try to provide that for them,” he said.

Reed said he was not sure what last year’s high school summer enrollment was, but that he did not think the numbers were much different.

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com