NATCHEZ — The Morgantown Academies are experimenting this summer with a new program aimed at helping struggling readers get ahead.

Morgantown Arts Principal Tawanna Thornton said rather than focusing on credit recovery, this summer bridge program would help students who are performing low on literacy concepts get their scores up.

“It is not for making up work,” she said. “This is a new program to boost our reading scores.”

The bridge program is designed for 120 students who are in the bottom 25 to 30 percent using the STAR Reading Assessment from the end of the 2015-16 school year. Though Thornton said she would not turn away students not in the bottom 30 percent who wanted to improve scores.

The 4-week program will run from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., each Monday through Thursday beginning June 6.“We will also have an art and physical education class,” Thornton said. “We don’t want students to have to read all day long — we want them to have enjoyable things, too.”

Students will also have courses on improving basic math skills and breaking down problems.

Thornton said data from the experiment would come in December when the district would see if these specific students improved their literacy scores.

“If we don’t do something with our children, we lose them,” Natchez-Adams School Board member Thelma Newsome said. “This is an excellent opportunity for them to grow rather than going backward.”

The district is also offering its usual summer school program for high school students from June 6 to July 1 for students interested in credit recovery or who would like to get ahead of schedule. The cost is $200 per one-credit session.

Two sessions are offered daily from 8 to 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

School board member Benny Wright said he wondered if data existed to show the effectiveness of the summer school program.

“Are there any tests or measurements on the progress of students subsequent to summer school exposure?” he said. “Or are we just batting frogs with snakes?”

Board member Cynthia Smith said summer school is not about the state tests, so it’s not something that is standardized.

Wright suggested coming up with an in-house test to make sure the students are moving forward.

“Just a simple measure of our effort to increase student achievement,” he said. “In my heart, I know we will get better, but it would be nice to have hard data.”

Interim Superintendent Fred Butcher said he would get staff to work on this in-house test and bring it back before the board.