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Photo by Ray Petengell Dorcas Herr and her granddaughter, Amber Southerland of Ashland, spent Sunday afternoon cooling off at the Emigrant Lake waterslide. Some 15,000 children ride the slide each summer. Children of summer They'll swim, go to camp, play and keep parents on their toes By JONEL ALECCIA EDITOR'S NOTE : This story is the first in a series about local children's lives during the summer. The stories will appear on Mondays throughout the summer. If you're counting, the magic figure is 28,910. That's the number of Jackson County public school children unleashed from classrooms now that another summer is here. For parents, child-care providers, day-camp operators and the lifeguards at Jackson Pool, the next 12 weeks will be hectic as they scramble to cope with the teeming hordes. "We've got a lot of new kids coming from Medford and Ashland. If you don't prepare ahead, it could be a headache at the end," said Will Young, unit director for the Talent Boys and Girls Clubs of Jackson County. He's expecting 170 kids to attend camps this summer. "We started preparing in December and January," he said. "Now we've got it under control." For the young people themselves, summer means 87 days of freedom between June 11 and Sept. 7. That's 2,088 hours to do what they will, which is plenty of time, even subtracting 870 hours for sleeping and 435 hours for watching TV. How will the young masses spend this precious time? That depends on whom you ask. For three Medford boys on skateboards on a June afternoon, the summer stretched ahead, full of vague possibilities. "I'll be skateboarding," said Blake Shropshire, 15. "I go camping," said Brandon Roybal, 14. "I play baseball -- All Stars," said Wes Thompson, 14. But for the adults responsible for keeping kids occupied, the numbers speak louder than words. A little less than half the children who attend public schools will be cared for by relatives during the summer. Others will sign up for a camp here, a Bible school there, or afternoons of arts and crafts. Their activities will be cobbled together by parents for whom summer is a three-month headache, said Dennis Alexander, director of the Job Council's Child Care Resource Network. "Just in doing what I do, I hear from parents who say, `There's nothing for my 9-year-old to do,"' Alexander said. For about 4,000 kids, the summer break leaves them with nowhere to go, said Alexander, who juggles child care for his own two kids, ages 11 and 9. "It's a tough market out there this summer," he said. Even when families find good care, keeping the kids occupied and out of trouble is a big task. That's where area entertainment comes in. At Jackson and Hawthorne pools in Medford, for instance, 32,265 kids showed up for open swim sessions last year. At Ashland's Daniel Meyer Memorial Pool, 25,000 kids splashed in. Out at the Emigrant Lake Water Slide, county workers counted 15,000 sliders last season. Kids who don't like getting wet do cool their heels in summer camps. At the Medford YMCA, 1,193 youngsters have signed up for summer sessions, with an additional 960 on the books in Ashland. Area Boy Scouts hope to serve between 1,500 and 1,700 kids at camps this summer. Young people who aren't at the pool or in camps hit other attractions. At Medford's Tinseltown USA movie theater, organizers expect more than 1,200 kids to show up for a reduced-priced summer children's film festival. In Jacksonville, 2,751 kids will visit the children's museum, if figures from the Southern Oregon Historical Society are met this year. At the Rogue Valley Family Fun Center in Central Point, 500 kids a day -- 43,500 for the season -- are expected to ride bumper boats and hit the arcade. And some 75,000 children will be among the more than 148,000 anticipated visitors to the Jackson County Fair, which runs this year from July 20-25. Even Rogue Valley ice cream truck drivers know that business peaks in the summer. Dan Gunter, owner of Sweet Dreams in Ashland, sells 300 ice cream bars every night. That's about 15,000 Klondike Bars and Fudgesicles by the time Labor Day rolls around. But crowds of kids don't show up just for fun. Some turn out for food as well, taking advantage of free breakfast and lunch programs that offer essential nutrition. Marriott School Food Service in Medford and Phoenix provides 3,100 free breakfasts and 17,000 free lunches every summer through a U.S. Department of Agriculture program. ACCESS of Medford offers an additional 9,000 meals. "For some kids, this is the only meal they get," said coordinator Jon Deason. Other young people use summer's freedom less wisely. Crime among juveniles remains steady when school's out, said Carl Erickson, program manager for the Jackson County Juvenile Services Department. Although specific summer statistics aren't compiled, records show juveniles committed 1,110 thefts in 1998, 509 acts of criminal mischief and 375 curfew violations. About a quarter of those were committed during the summer months, he surmised. "For us, the summer is not calmer," he said. "We have to try harder to locate the kids." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA