Jul. 23—CENTRAL POINT — The laser printer came all the way up to their shoulders, so the six girls and one boy had to crowd in close to watch through a protective glass window Monday as a 60-watt beam seared their patterns of rainbows and stars into the circular and square wood that would later snap perfectly onto their flashlights and nightlights.
Not bad for a morning’s worth of work at CraterWorks MakerSpace, where Central Point School District students used their hands for something other than pointing and clicking during the district’s D6 Summer Connect program, which is providing enrichment activities for kindergarten through eighth-graders and academic support for high-schoolers.
Summer Connect represents the district’s effort to pour into students who have experienced what the Oregon Department of Education, in a program summary released in April, described as “unfinished…