PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — The summer camp application for Pinellas County students opens Monday.
The district moved up the application period.
Nearly all of the camps are happening in July and are separate from the summer bridge program.
“Last year, we had our summer bridge program also at the same sign-up as our summer camps in July. We decided this year to make it a little easier for parents to kind of uncouple those registrations because we know now, parents are looking for summer opportunities,” said Kim Hill, Director of Student Experiences for Pinellas County Schools.
The Pinellas County School District is offering more than 40 summer camps for elementary, middle and high school students.
“While all of our camps are really focused on all of our levels, there’s really an abundance of camps for our middle school-aged students,” said Hill.
The camps are free and vary in length.
“It’s really important that our parents are looking on our website for the specific information on each of our camps because all of them are a little bit different to hopefully attract as many kids as we can to participate,” said Hill.
There will be all different kinds of camps, including music, art, science, STEM, 3D printing, mural painting, dog grooming, hair braiding and nail class as part of the cosmetology program and a new artificial intelligence camp that’s partnering with the University of Florida.
Students are able to sign up for more than one camp.
“We are asking families to only select one per week. We have three weeks of camps available, but they can certainly do an application for a different camp each week,” said Hill.
The application closes on Sunday, Feb. 25.
“That following week, our camp coordinators will be working to see what the interest was. Determine ‘Hey are we going to be able to fit everybody into our camps? Do we need to look at possibly hiring more teachers or do some more recruitment for that camp?’” said Hill.
Families will be notified the week of March 4 if their student is accepted into camp.
“We anticipate they will be super popular. So we are not saying first come, first serve. We’re saying we’re going to see what the demand is and then fill them as much as we can. If we have to go to a waitlist, we will,” said Hill.
