Bedford High School’s summer school is bustling again this summer, with about 10 percent of the school’s students attending courses because they failed a class, the dean of students said.

The two-year-old school, which will have its first senior class in the fall, had 932 students enrolled last year. Of those, 96 will attend traditional summer school for failing a course, said Dean Lisa Ransom.

There are also 110 students, some of them overlapping with the traditional summer school students, attending a separate program for failing one or more “competencies” in a class.

Students must earn a passing grade of 70 in four major “competencies,” or specific areas of learning, within each course. Failing one of those means a student will not receive credit until he or she can pass it, even if he or she has passed the class overall by performing well in other areas.

The school’s “competency recovery” summer school is shorter than the traditional program, and exists for students to “clean up” the competencies they did not pass, Ransom said. Most schools in the state do not have such competency requirements in place.

Other schools in the area, however, also had a lower rate of students attending summer school for failing a class. While 96 of Bedford’s 932 students were making up failed classes, 102 of the 1,500 students at Merrimack High School were in summer courses, said John Snell, director of summer school. At John Stark Regional High School, 45 students out of 849 total were in summer school for a failed class, according to Nancy Moran, the summer school coordinator.

At Londonderry High School, about 80 students out of around 1,700 were in summer school, said Cindy Panarello, who works for the summer school director.

Ransom said Bedford’s percentage will drop when they have four full classes of students, because most of the students who typically need to attend summer school for failing a class are freshmen and sophomores having difficulty adjusting to the demands of high school. “High school is a developmental leap,” she said.

With the addition of a senior class, the school’s total population will increase to about 1,300, while the number of students in summer school for failing a course is likely to remain close to the same, bringing the percentage of students failing a class closer to other schools.

“It is comparing apples to oranges,” Ransom said about comparing Bedford to other schools.

While there are plenty of students to fill seats in summer school, Bedford High School had a harder time recruiting teachers for the job. Ransom chalked that up to the teachers’ last day of work being in late June and their first day back being in early August, leaving them with only a month for summer vacation.

“Our teachers are working really, really hard,” Ransom said. “It’s not just showing up to work here. ... It’s been really exhausting -- wonderful exhausting -- but it’s been really exhausting to build a high school.”

All the positions were filled, with some outside hires, she said.

Amy Woods, who teaches humanities at Bedford High, decided to work over the summer because she has a wedding coming up and because she enjoys the smaller classes.

“I find this – the smaller class sizes – it’s a nice break from the larger classes that we have all year,” she said.

Ransom said school officials have been pleased with the competency program and they are not worried about the number of students making up a competency. Without competencies, she said, students can slide through a class without fully understanding certain key concepts that may cause them trouble later.

“When you were in Spanish class and you hated speaking, you just would do well in writing and reading,” she said. “This whole competency thing completely reframes that. It has kids saying to the teacher, ‘I need to do more in this speaking piece.’” She said the competencies also allow teachers and counselors to see a learning pattern across different subjects.

“Sometimes you’ll have kids who consistently, in all of their courses, English, math, science, it’s the problem-solving function they get snagged up on,” she said.

She said that while some people had expected Bedford to be a “touchy-feely” school, the high standards for passing classes and competencies -- and the insistence on making them up over the summer -- show the school is rigorous while offering support to students.

“Our standards are high. We’ve asked a lot of students and families and teachers,” she said.