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Photo by Jim Craven Ignacio Sanchez, 15, and Abdiaziz Guled hang up decorations in the hallway of the Santo Center in preparation for summer day camp. School's out, summer camp's in Kids Unlimited provides fun, skill building SUMMER'S CHILD 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. By BILL KETTLER Now that school's out, Dawn Linwood will really go to work. For the next eight weeks, Linwood will help manage Kids Unlimited, a new summer day-camp for about 150 children in West Medford. Starting today, Linwood and her colleagues will supervise swimming trips to neighborhood pools, reading sessions, craft classes and dozens of other activities at Jackson Elementary School and the Santo Community Center. "We just figured the more stuff we had for kids to do the more successful we'd be," Linwood said Friday, as other Kids Unlimited staffers decorated the Santo Community Center for today's opening. Linwood and dozens of other adults will have a busy summer organizing activities for Jackson County kids who are too old for day care and too young to stay at home unsupervised. It's difficult to pinpoint just how many children fall into that category, but there were 13,482 children enrolled in grades one through six in Jackson County public schools during the school year that just ended. There are far too few summer camps and organized activities for those children, and many can't participate because their families can't afford the tuition, said Robin Turgesen, a Jackson County public health nurse. "It's a huge issue," said Turgesen. "We hear so much criticism about kids getting in trouble, yet we don't do anything for them." Summer programs range from traditional scout camps to specialized camps for children suffering from asthma. Some run for a few days or a week; others, like Kids Unlimited, continue eight or nine weeks. Familiar activities like crafts, games and swimming still form the backbone of most summer programs, but many also try to include activities that help children cope with daily problems. One component of the Kids Unlimited program, for example, will help kids learn how to resolve conflicts without fighting. "We're trying to develop some consistency with programs that are happening during the school year," said Tom Cole, who developed Kids Unlimited for several Medford schools last year. He worked with more than a dozen community organizations and government agencies to find funding to extend the program into summer vacation. Cole has recruited a number of teachers to work during the summer, as well as Medford police officers and volunteers from the Foster Grandparent program to give kids positive role models. "If kids don't have positive role models," he said, "or outlets that are healthy, there will be other things that rise up to take their place, naturally. It's sort of the `idle hands' theory." Some summer day camps are designed specifically for children with special needs. A week-long camp for kids who suffer from asthma has been organized at Camp Latgawa in the Cascade Mountains off Highway 140. The asthmatic children will get to play and swim and enjoy the activities that normal kids do during summer, but under medical supervision. Other programs take time to teach kids basic life skills during the summer. The Boys and Girls Clubs, for example, will teach younger kids the value of money. Some camps are open to anyone in the neighborhood who drops in. Others are tailored for specific audiences. The day camp at Barnett Townhomes, beginning its fourth summer, was organized for the residents of the affordable-housing development. "We have a lot of families with a lot of kids," said Cindy Dyer, housing manager for ACCESS, the community action agency that developed the project, "and they didn't have a lot of fun, unstructured activities in the summer." Most camp organizers try to keep costs low to encourage parents to enroll their children. Kids Unlimited, for example, will charge just $300 for its eight weeks of Monday-through-Friday activities that begin at 7:30 a.m. and continue until 5:30 p.m. "That's less than $40 a week for 50 hours, including free lunch and breakfast," said Cole. "But even as low as that is, we have a lot of scholarships." Many community organizations and government agencies support the day camps by providing volunteer help or sponsoring children whose parents can't afford even modest tuition. Adult and Family Services, for example, paid for 120 children who would not otherwise have been able to attend Kids Unlimited. "It's a challenge to find the resources to keep the cost as low as possible," said Greg Wicklem, the executive director of Boys and Girls Club of Jackson County. The club has organized day camps at Talent Elementary School and Mountain View Elementary School in White City and expects to serve more than 300 children at the two day camps and its drop-in club houses. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA