Today, school is out for summer.
For 11 high-spirited weeks, children can revel in a period of heady liberty in which sprinklers can and must be run through, grass stains are glorious badges of activity and the soul knows no bitterness beyond the impudent arrival of a rival lemonade stand.
For many adults, summer offers the opposite of liberation. It is a time of constantly unfolding child-care crises, in which, every day, a parent must ask: What will I do with my children?
Tom Sawyer hijinks
While Mark Twain fondly portrayed Tom Sawyer using his summers for maximum mischief, 11 weeks is a long time for most modern children to go without structure.
Laura Lucero, program director of Durango Boys & Girls Club, laughingly agreed with one mother’s assessment that the nearly three-month summer could be the difference between a kid acquiring fluency in French or a serious drug problem.
Lucero cited studies that show crime goes up in hours when kids are left unsupervised. And La Plata County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Ed Aber said the vast majority of crimes perpetrated by youths occur during the summer months.
Though Aber said teenagers’ alcohol use tended to increase in summer, he said most youth-committed crimes seemed motivated by boredom.
Options abound
Durango parents go to all sorts of lengths to care for their children in summer, sometimes hiring a full-time baby sitter (often around $20 per hour), or, in one case, relocating the whole family to Brazil until August.
Some parents, intent on cultivating their kids’ athletic talent, send their children to intensive sports camps at Fort Lewis College.
Durango Nature Studies and Purgatory run summer camps that get children outdoors.
Other parents keep their kids in class through Durango School District 9-R, which offers extended lessons that typically are sought by “highly motivated students,” said district spokeswoman Julie Popp.
But that won’t suit most children, who stubbornly see summertime as a sweet respite from the gruesome hardships of adult-mandated learning, the tyranny of homework and the nagging of benevolent despots, teachers – and most of their parents turn to several Durango-based day-camp programs to provide structure, safety and familial sanity during summer months.
The big three
With 140 children enrolling daily, the Boys & Girls Club is the biggest summer program in Durango, operating from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Program Director Laura Lucero said kids aged 6-14 divide their days between the art room, gym, computer lab, game room, the outdoors and daily field trips, with excursions ranging from mini-golfing to Durango Discovery Museum.
The program typically costs about $100 for two weeks.
Hundreds of Durango parents elect to send their children to Durango Community Recreation Center, which runs Gametime, a summerlong day-camp program for kids aged 5-14 that emphasizes “fun” through activities such as swimming, hiking, drama, arts and crafts, “and a whole bunch of other activities to keep kids safe, engaged and entertained,” said John Robinette, youth recreation supervisor with the city’s parks and rec department.
Gametime runs from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and it’s best for parents to buy in bulk: The daily cost is $20, the weekly $90 and the monthly varies: In June, it’s $260, July $286 and August $156.
While some Durango parents balk at those prices, Robinette pointed out that the hourly rate comes to about $2 – an incredible bargain, much less than a baby sitter would cost.
In addition to Gametime, Robinette said Parks & Recreation runs several other programs for kids throughout the summer, including camps for golfing, dirt biking, gymnastics, robotics, rafting and new this year, fly-fishing.
For $200 to $250 a week, Durango Discovery Museum offers an intellectually exciting summer camp from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (with an option for a few extra hours) that aims to keep kids’ brains from atrophying during the long summer by engaging them through subjects such as forensics. The museum’s Education Programs Manager Jen Lokey said kids would sit and listen for a little bit, then use what they learned to test blood spatter with real forensic instruments in staged crime scenes.
Lokey said no interns would be providing the blood for testing.
“We have synthetic blood that tests just like real blood,” she said. “I got it off a biological supply company website. It’s going to get gory, but, again, teenagers love that ‘we’re going to take this innate fascination with crime and put it in science’ context.”
For the sake of the town’s peace, local Tom Sawyers need not apply to that summer camp.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
