Only a handful of public schools are expected to offer summer school this year — down from 60 last summer and 75 a year earlier — and parents are worried about finding courses for their children, according to Department of Education officials.

The drop in summer school offerings is a result of changes to the school calendar that shortened the summer break and lengthened the fall and spring recesses. The "year round" calendar was adopted at regular schools statewide with the start of the last school year.

Though it's too soon to know how many schools will offer summer courses, "one district said no high school in the whole district would offer summer school," acting administrator Keoni Inciong told a Board of Education committee yesterday. Inciong heads the DOE's Instructional Services Branch.

"We've heard lots of complaints about fewer opportunities, and the fact that fewer schools are offering summer school is a real concern," said board member Breene Harimoto. "Most students use it to get extra credits and more variety. These opportunities for students are drying up."

To counter the problem, the department is gathering data and considering extending the summer break, schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto told the committee.

"We're working with different schools," Hamamoto said. "Many have already implemented other opportunities to recover credits." Included in that was some extension of their school day, she said.

When the BOE set a unified school calendar a year ago — as mandated by the Legislature — board members chose longer breaks between terms and a seven-week summer to keep students from forgetting what they had learned. Traditionally, summer breaks had been about 11 weeks.

Yesterday, concerned board members called on the department to help find solutions.

"Before we run into a disaster on graduation requirements, we need to be aware of that and make adjustments," said board Chairwoman Karen Knudsen, asking the DOE to consider offering some kind of "extended learning opportunities" for students to make up the losses.

Department officials indicated that while those solutions are being looked at by individual schools, there's no universal policy.

And Inciong told committee members the department needs to have discussions "very fast" about providing extra opportunities during the winter and spring intercessions.

Though summer is still months away, schools that want to offer summer courses must apply to Inciong's office by March 12, he said. By the end of that week, he expects to have a list of schools offering courses up on the DOE Web site.

Kathy Kawaguchi, assistant superintendent for the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Student Support, said some schools are using online courses to bolster their afterschool offerings to make up summer school losses.

"We hope to expand that," she said.

Board member Donna Ikeda asked department officials if they had any way to make future adjustments to address this issue before students got discouraged and just dropped out.

"The problem has to be fixed," Ikeda said. "If kids can't make up their credits, they can't graduate. ... I'm looking for a solution."

Kawaguchi suggested that the board might want to look at some other options, including an official expansion of the summer intercession period.

Kawaguchi also noted that school districts across the country are considering expanding the school day, and Hawai'i might want to look at that, too.

"Ours is much too short," Kawaguchi said. "We have one of the shortest."

Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com.