The Mancos United Mancos Summer Hub is returning for its third year to provide a safe place for Mancos students during the summer. Last year, the summer hub sold out in just over an hour. To prevent this from happening again, interest forms will remain open until Monday, March 31. After the deadline, a lottery system will be used.
This year, the program costs $83 per day per student, but a scholarship fund is available. The hub also offers sliding scale pricing, allowing parents and guardians to pay what they can afford. Sponsorships are $333 for one week or $83 per day. Corporate sponsorships are also available, and businesses can sponsor one or multiple children for the summer. It costs about $2,000 to send a student to the summer hub for the entire summer.
“We have a huge scholarship fund due to the generosity of the community, including lots of extended family and friends from out of town,” Mancos United Executive Director Katie McClure said.
The summer hub is available for children and their families who “live, learn and work in Mancos.” It was created in 2023 to provide a safe, educational space for children during the summer, especially after the suicide of two students over consecutive summers a few years ago.
Before the start of the summer hub in 2023, members of Mancos United heard multiple concerns from parents and guardians about what their children would do while they worked through the summer.
“One of the things we learned while listening to the community is that summers are really hard,” McClure told The Journal at the start of the hub.
Initially, a grant from the Colorado Department of Education funded the program, but McClure and Mancos United continued without it.
The hub was created for students who are incoming kindergarten through eighth grade. The program offers options from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., but parents can choose the hours that work best for them and their children.
The hub also encourages parents to enroll children with behavioral challenges.
“We not only allow, but we encourage and really try to bring in the kids who have behavioral challenges,” McClure said in 2024. “We know that those are the families that are probably struggling the most, so we have staff to accommodate that and to make sure those kids are supported.”
The themes for this year’s program are engineering (June 9-12), creativity (June 16-19), life skills (June 23-26), STEM (July 7-10), air and fire (July 14-17), and water and earth (July 21-24). There will be no hub from June 30 through July 3.
Data presented by the Mancos school district last year showed that children who attended 20 days or more of the hub did better academically than their peers. During fall testing, students who participated in the summer hub scored 10 percentage points higher on their tests than the general school population.
In reading, summer hub students had an average reading percentile of 58.4, while non-summer hub students scored 47.7. The reading RIT score for summer hub students was 179.5, compared with 173.6 for other students. The math percentiles for summer hub students were 55.6, compared with 46.8. The math RIT score was 180.5 for summer hub students and 176.2 for others.
Parents and caregivers also reported that their stress levels declined by 95% when their students were involved in the summer hub, and 88% said it allowed them to work and “earn essential income.” Additionally, teacher-certified staff can earn income during the summer.
Interest forms are available and donations are accepted at Mancos United’s website at www.mancosunited.org/.
