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Summer Dreamers program aims to bridge gap of summer
While youngsters, bundled up in coats, ran about Thursday afternoon on the playground at Pittsburgh Faison K-5 in Homewood, the grown-ups were inside the school learning. The subject: the district’s Summer Dreamers program, in which 1,800 children in kindergarten through seventh grade will spend five to six weeks learning and having fun in sessions that are part school, part summer camp. Armed with $1.5 million in funding from The Wallace Foundation, The Grable Foundation and The Heinz Endowments, school officials intend for the program to help children from low-income families, who might have a tendency to fall behind during the summer, bridge the gap between school years. The Rand Corp. and The Wallace Foundation are studying the 3-year-old program as part of an effort that could result in similar summer school sessions across the country. Four other urban school districts — Dallas, Boston, Jacksonville, Fla., and Rochester, N.Y. — are involved in the study.