DECATUR - The Decatur school board has been asked to consider mandatory summer school attendance for students at risk of failing.

Grants coordinator Debbie Holeman-Shipp gave a report on the district's summer school program during Tuesday's meeting.

Summer Bridges, a literacy program for elementary students, has been in the district for nine years. It's a state-funded grant, and for a district to apply, at least one school building must have 50 percent of its students not meeting state standards.

For the last five years, she said, the district also has offered a middle school summer program with similar standards for admission, and this year, the high school summer program was reinstated after several years' absence.

"We prioritized students who needed only one credit to graduate," she said.

For next year, Holeman-Shipp said, the staff would like the board to consider mandatory attendance in summer programs for children at risk of failing and to begin planning which children will be required to attend as early as the first semester of school. This, she said, would encourage students to aim for high achievement all year.

Assistant Superintendent Brian Hodges gave a report on a necessary change in board policy. Due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2007 that school districts no longer use ethnicity to balance school populations, the board will have to change its diversity policy's language.

The court will allow socioeconomic status to be a factor in assigning students to buildings for diversity in school populations, and the number of students in each building should be reflective of the total student population.

Decatur will use the federal poverty criteria, which students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, to determine socioeconomic status, he said. The district's overall low-income population is 67.3 percent.

In other business, the school board approved the budget for the Macon-Piatt Special Education District and the Decatur Area Technical Academy.

The tech academy's annual budget is $1.9 million, while the special education district's budget is $29 million.

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