By Haley Wilson The Birmingham Times As a former teacher and a principal, Birmingham Schools Superintendent (BCS) Mark Sullivan, Ed.D., knows about the summer slide, which occurs when students are out of school and lose much of what they’ve learned the previous year—“particularly among minority students and students who have low socioeconomic status,” he said. “Typically, [those students] are not engaged in some activity because some activities can be expensive for parents paying for summer camps,” Sullivan added, noting that some of the challenges families faced during the COVID-19 pandemic may contribute to some of the steepest learning loses faced by educators and teachers in years.