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Even after the final bell rang on Monday afternoon at Frederick's Waverley Elementary School, learning continued in many classrooms.

Scattered throughout the building, teachers worked with groups of two to three students to practice math and reading and to address every question left unanswered during the regular school day.

With only a month left before the Maryland School Assessments, special education teacher Katherine Aguirre and the two fifth-graders in her group focused on decoding the meaning of math test questions.

Knowing that understanding test questions is a weak spot for both students, Aguirre urged them to read carefully, spot key phrases such as "find the mean" and "how many more" and explain their meaning before starting to calculate answers.

"You may be absolutely right," she said, when students burst out with quick answers. "Let's just make sure we are doing it right."

Thanks to the Extended Learning Opportunities program, Aguirre and about 25 other teachers at Waverley Elementary get the opportunity to spend an extra hour beyond the regular school day tutoring about 100 students in all grade-levels who perform below grade-level standards.

The program helps boost student performance by focusing on individual students' needs. It pays for teachers to spend the equivalent of an extra month each year to work with struggling students, set goals, meet with parents and make sure that each under-performing student gets the support they need to be successful.

The Extended Learning Opportunities program in Frederick County may be negatively affected this year if the school board moves to reduce the programs by 50 percent across the county, as proposed. The cut is one of 13 potential budget actions the school board is considering in an effort to balance their fiscal 2012 budget.

Reducing extended learning could save the system $1.1 million by reducing hours worked by 102 teachers who are in the extended learning program at Brunswick, Lincoln, North Frederick, Hillcrest, Lincoln and Waverley elementary schools, as well as at Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle and High schools, West Frederick Middle and Frederick High and Tuscarora High schools.

Frederick County educators say that the cuts would immediately affect students who need individual attention the most.

The extended learning program is crucial for schools such as Waverly, which has a disproportionately high percentage of poor students. A Title 1 school, Waverley is based in a highly transient area and 75 percent of its students come from low-income families. More than 41 percent of students at the school are English Language Learners.

"Some of our parents are illiterate," said Aguirro, who knows that most of her students have no other way to get extra support. Students in her classes come from all parts of the world, some have troubled homes and others are homeless.

"Many of our parents work two or three jobs," she said. "They are very grateful for the job that we do here."

While the students receiving Extended Learning Opportunities support don't necessarily miss test targets, they tend to require more support to pass the tests, said Steve Hess, the school system director for research development and accountability.

The program for these students is a way to level the playing field and provide them with equitable resources so they can strive to meet the same test targets as any other group of students in the system, Hess said.

In Frederick County, schools use extended learning programs to meet increasing state mandates that require all students – regardless of their ethnicity, race, economic status or English proficiency — to score proficient in reading and in math on the Maryland School Assessments by 2014. Test goals go up every year and schools which don't meet the standards in multiple years can face serious state interventions.

With very few exceptions, the schools which use the extended learning program are also those that have struggled with meeting state test targets and educators fear that reducing the programs may put them at even greater risk of not meeting these goals, said Keith Harris, the instructional director who coordinates the extended learning program on the elementary level.

Lowering the number of teachers for the program next year could mean larger tutoring groups and less individual attention for students at a time when the need for that is becoming greater, he said.

Educators at Waverley Elementary are holding their breath as they await a school board decision.

"If they cut ELO, we'll have nothing left but the school day," said Principal Barbara Nash, who added that her teachers are doing everything they can to help students boost their achievement.

Nash's school has experienced a major change in demographics in the last few years. Its population went from 56.8 percent in poverty in 2006, to 77 percent in September 2010.

If the school gets to the stage of requiring extra interventions to meet test goals, the school system will end up spending more on resources to help it improve than it does now on pro-active prevention programs such as extended learning, Nash said.

"We are just trying to be proactive," she said. "Our teachers are tremendous and our students are eager to learn. But their parents don't have the resources to get them what they need. They need us to help them with that."

mraycheva@gazette.net