Learning Academy

A school without walls, every July

Learning Academy is BASIC’s tuition-free summer program for Borrego Springs students who have fallen behind and need a boost — small classes, personalized attention, and over 100 hours of hands-on instruction, held every July at the Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center. It has run nearly every summer since 2016, and in that time it’s grown from a single reading class of twenty-one students into a full program spanning reading, math, and English Language Development.

The idea behind it is simple, and it comes straight from how children actually learn to read and do math. Kindergarten through third grade, students are learning to read; from fourth grade on, they’re expected to read to learn — and the same kind of turning point happens again in middle school math. A student who falls behind at either juncture has a much harder time catching up later. Nearly 90% of Borrego’s students are English Language Learners, and research shows that missing these milestones tends to compound: lower reading and math scores in elementary school translate into real, lasting effects on a student’s options later in life. Learning Academy exists to catch that gap before it hardens into a pattern.

Every summer runs the same basic shape: full days for four weeks, small groups sorted by need rather than strictly by grade, and a headmaster and teaching staff who mostly come back year after year. Students get free breakfast, snacks and lunch, door-to-door bus service, books for their own home libraries, and t-shirts and backpacks that build a sense of identity in the program. An attendance incentive — a laptop, for students who complete the summer — keeps the numbers strong; BASIC’s own goal is over 95% attendance, and most summers clear it.

Academics aren’t the whole of it. Every summer also runs an art enrichment program, “Art with OLAC,” hosted by Ed and Joan White under the mantra “art is medicine” — a component BASIC includes because coping skills, self-esteem, and a sense of community turn out to matter as much to a student’s success as the reading and math instruction itself. Each summer closes with a ceremony where every finishing student presents a class project in front of the whole cohort.

“The Summer Learning Academy is the best help our children can have to support them in reading and math over the summer.”

— a Learning Academy parent, 2024

Nearly a decade in Borrego Springs

What started as a single experimental class in 2016 is now one of the largest recurring commitments BASIC makes to this community every year. Across the nine summers it has run, well over 325 students have come through Learning Academy’s classrooms — and every one of those students is a Borrego Springs kid whose reading or math trajectory changed because a program like this existed. The 2024 summer alone — the program’s eighth — served 45 students, awarded 43 laptops for attendance, and served 1,760 meals over the course of the month, entirely free of charge to families.

Nine summers, in pictures

Every summer gets its own write-up — its own cohort, its own numbers, its own photographs. Click through any year below to read the full story of that class.

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There was no Learning Academy in 2020. Report card figures for every other summer are on file with BASIC; see the Annual Impact Reports page for the underlying documents.