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While his classmates were enjoying the summer sun, 10th-grader Jace Barrett was at Bingham High School, making his way through a worksheet on complex numbers.

A nearby poster encouraged Barrett to "Eat, Sleep, Do Math," and a broken air conditioning system had scattered his fellow academic exiles through the school's empty halls in search of a cool breeze.

For two weeks, Barrett arrived at school at 8 a.m. and studied until 4:15 p.m.

"Waking up is not the bad part," he said. "It's getting here early for eight hours straight of hard math."

That daily classroom grind is a far cry from idyllic images of summer break, but Barrett said it's worth the sacrifice to earn a year's worth of math credit in a few weeks of summer school.

When the summer course ends this month, he'll have completed the requirements for Secondary Math 2 Honors, allowing him to leapfrog ahead of his sophomore peers into junior-level honors math.

"I want to be a computer programmer when I grow up, so I'm just trying to get all my math done," he said.

The courses at Bingham High School are part of a suite of summertime options now available to students looking to either jump ahead or catch up on course credits. Less a summer school free-for-all for delinquents, the new and increasing online and brick-and-mortar course list is an attempt to meet student demand in an era of declining classroom time during the school year.

With state lawmakers and school board members periodically adding to the list of graduation requirements, and students choosing to prioritize their individual interests, educators say the number of kids sitting at a desk or logging on to a summertime course is only likely to grow.

Doing away with paper • At one time, many students satisfied graduation requirements with summertime packets — a bulky set of notes, worksheets and take-home tests.

Those piles of paper still are an option in many school districts, but are largely being replaced with digital options.

Salt Lake City's East High School did away with paper packets over the past two years, converting to a fully digital format for its credit "recovery" and original credit programs, former Principal Paul Sagers said.

"It's more rigorous and a lot of kids like it because it gives them immediate feedback," he said.

In his new position as principal of West High School, Sagers said he'll oversee a similar transition.

"West [High School] still does packets. I don't know if that's still common practice among other schools," he said. "They're probably just a year away from going digital."

The transition cost is roughly $100,000 in school trust lands funding, Sagers said, but ongoing costs are largely offset by student fees.

At Jordan School District, Bingham High School math teacher Noelani Ioane said she still prepares packets, but only had two students request them last year, compared to the 25 students who enrolled in her summer course.

Classroom time, she says, is better. Students are more motivated when they face a teacher every day.

When Ioane started using packets roughly a decade ago, the success rates were underwhelming.

"I would give out maybe 30 at the beginning of the summer and I'd be lucky if I got two or three back," she said. "If a child is motivated and wants to learn, there are a lot of options these days that weren't available even five years ago."

Last year, Jordan School District students earned 534 semester credits through the summer school program, district spokesman Steve Dunham said. That number is expected to more than double this year, with students enrolled in 1,215 semester credits.

Online courses have largely replaced both paper packets and summer school classes at Canyons School District.

Since its pilot year in 2011, Canyons Virtual High School participation has skyrocketed from 128 unique students to 2,421 last year.

Those students earned a combined 5,638 quarter credits during the 2014-15 school year, a more than hundredfold increase from the 53 quarter credits earned in 2012.

That bump in enrollment makes the online school the district's primary avenue for students looking to make up credit for failed courses, Canyon's education technology director Darren Draper said.

But the Virtual High School also is available for students who are taking a class for the first time. Draper said many students will complete required credits online in order to take electives, such as band, theater or orchestra.

"Because of the limit to the number of classes they can take in a day, they love being able to take that online so it frees up their schedule to take something else," he said.

And the virtual catalogue also is used by roughly 70 home school students who supplement their at-home learning with online public school offerings. "They're taking the courses that their parents can't teach — that they don't have expertise in," Draper said.

Limited time • In Utah, where most students are members of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, release time for seminary classes takes a significant bite out of course schedules.

When they graduate, most Utah students will have taken 32 credits over four years of school. The vast majority — 27 credits — are already spoken for in the form of state and district graduation requirements.

Statewide, students must take four years of English, three years each of math, science and social studies, two years of physical and health education and another three-and-one-half years of specific courses like financial literacy, fine arts and computer technology.

That leaves nine credits for electives, 5.5 of which must be passed with a C grade or higher to graduate.

The checklist leaves little wiggle room for a student who takes four years of LDS seminary.

Any more than one failed credit on a seminary student's transcript, and packets, summer school or online courses become a necessity for graduation, said Rick Anthony, principal of Granite School District's Connection High School.

"A student who fails a course somehow must recover that credit," he said.

Credit recovery has always been a "necessary evil," Anthony said, but the demand for first-time credits outside the school day has erupted with online technology and hybrid learning.

The most popular original credits for Granite students are physical education, financial literacy, health and computer technology — an introductory desktop publishing and spreadsheet class — which are required for graduation but get in the way of other interests.

"They look to online courses as a way to get ahead and do it on their own time and in their own fashion," Anthony said.

Between the regular school year and summer break, Granite School District had roughly 2,400 students in online classes last year, Anthony said. Online learning, he said, is still in a "Wild West" stage, but school administrators recognize the need to evolve to new formats or lose students to other providers.

"In a world where parents have a lot of options and choice now, they might opt to send [their children] not to Kearns High School but instead send them to Utah Virtual Academy," he said.

But online isn't the only way schools respond to the demand for options. Some districts are creating unique summertime classroom opportunities.

In Jordan School District, students can earn a marine biology credit over the summer through a class held at Living Planet Aquarium.

And students can scratch physical education off their to-do list by spending four hours a day at school in June. "They can get it done here in three weeks and it's over and done with," Jordan spokesman Steve Dunham said.

Easy out? • Educators maintain the summertime online courses and in-class options are not necessarily easier than 9-month classes.

Ioane said she prefers the in-class summer groups, which benefit from small class sizes and more one-on-one attention from teachers. "We have eight or nine [students] who are doing it to accelerate," she said of her 25-student summer class. "The rest of them are making up credit."

Students who see summer school as an easy way to get ahead could be in for a surprise, Ioane said. The courses are completed in a few weeks, but the same amount of content is crammed into long days.

"We use the same book that we use during the school year," she said. "We use a lot of the same quizzes and tests."

Educators say they have adjusted their lesson plans and will continue to tweak to stay on par with school-year coursework. Some disparities remain, Draper said, particularly in the sequencing and scope of how certain subjects are presented in the online and summer school format.

Alternative credit programs are still young, he said, and districts continue to work to align them with their school-year counterparts.

bwood@sltrib.com Canyons Virtual High School participation

2011-2012: 128 unique students *

2012-2013: 1,590 unique students

2013-2014: 1,797 unique students

2014-2015: 2,421 unique students

Quarter credits earned

2011-2012: 53 *

2012-2013: 652

2013-2014: 2,393

2014-2015: 5,638

*Not widely available at Canyons' five high schools during the first year

Source: Canyons School District