Children can lose three months of reading and math skills over the summer.

The Kentucky Department of Education offers summer boosts to one of many programs that help kids with reading during the summer months.

It has already begun.

And yesterday, Representative James Tipton and incoming Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher read to kids at Bourbon Central Elementary School to emphasize the importance of literacy and the program.

Typically, when students go back to school and they do any sort of screening testing at the beginning of a year, you would see that the impact of this summer.

So typically there's going to be it's going to go down from their last assessment at the end of the previous grade into the next school year.

So the purpose of summer based is that we're providing students, families and communities with their supports so that they can keep that learning top of mind so that they're able to start this school year better equipped to approach the the new grade level, learning that they'll encounter over the course of that academic year.

Summer boost allows us to partner with the food service providers who are already doing good work during the summer for students and families.

And so when students and families arrive, whether or not they are there to get the food service or if they're participating in their summer programing, they have access to free books that they can utilize for what we're hoping will be about 20 minutes at home each day.

They also will receive math games.

So just some fun things that they can do with their maybe their siblings, with their parents at home just to keep learning and growing over the course of their summer vacation.

Between 8000.

Feet, we think about Kentucky's multi-tiered system of support.

It really is about serving and providing supports for the whole child.

So that is an attempt to both provide support for those nutritional needs.

You know, if those basic needs really must be met in order for us to make the most gains in terms of our learning environment.

So with that partnership, it really is sort of the most fundamental things that that students and families would need from the district over the course of a summer.

We have done this over multiple summers.

All of the our district partners do it differently.

Some of them do have mobile busses that go to different schools, different neighborhoods and others.

They have them that the students will come to the school location where they'll have their food service that's provided there.

So we really are so proud of the 29 districts and all of the different ways that they approach this, because it really does keep students at the center.

And that's the goal of the entire program.

Find educational resources for your child this summer on the Kentucky Department of Education's website by clicki