FARMINGTON — Dozens of students in Regional School Unit 9 participated in the extended-year program this summer and were able to recover courses and meet academic goals to prepare for the new school year.

The first day for students in kindergarten through grade nine is Monday, Aug. 31, and the upperclassmen will join them on Sept. 2.

Teachers returned on Thursday.

Assistant Superintendent Leanne Condon gave the school board an overview Tuesday of the program that served 174 students.

The program was cut back this year during budget talks. It ran for four weeks, four days per week for three hours each day.

Students go to the extended-year program with standards that they have not met and those are broken down into learning goals, Condon said after the meeting. “So one standard may have three different learning goals, so they would need to master each learning goal in order to master that standard. What’s really great about our (program) is that it is truly a proficiency-based system for grades four on up.”

Generally, in grades two and three, students are working more on skills for reading, writing and math to get to learning goals, she said.

At Mt. Blue Campus, 57 students in grades nine through 12 attended and recovered 70 courses, she said.

Twelve students attended the program in grade two and 27 academic goals were met. Eleven students attended in grade three and the number of academic goals had not yet been determined.

At the grade four level, 14 students attended and met 42 academic goals. Eleven students in grade five met 47 academic goals and 14 students in grade six met 92 goals, she said.

Fifty-five students in the seventh and eighth grades met 45 academic goals.

Condon also announced that Vicky Cohen, a math specialist at the Mallett School in Farmington, created a website, mathatmallett.weebly.com, for parents and students at the school. The website features a number of different math exercises that students can do in kindergarten and first and second grades.

In other educational matters, Spanish will be the only foreign language offered at the Mt. Blue Middle School in Farmington this year.

Superintendent Tom Ward noted the change in his recommendations to the board.

“I want to make the board aware that once again we are struggling with trying to find a certified French teacher for the middle school,” he wrote. “We have consulted with Lisa Dalrymple, our World Language Department head, and the recommendation of the department is to only offer Spanish at the middle school for this coming year. We are very fortunate that we are able to hire a qualified Spanish teacher.”

Spanish will be offered as part of the allied arts rotation as an exploratory program, middle school Principal Gary Oswald said Wednesday.

dperry@sunmediagroup.net