Building an Inclusive and Sustainable Swim Lesson Program

Starting in 2022, Apex Park and Recreation District’s aquatics program went through several changes to help its sustainability, quality and inclusion for all guests. These changes included enacting an 80 percent group lesson and 167 percent private lesson cost-recovery pricing model that allowed for a $3+ increase in wages, requiring all instructors to be certified through the American Red Cross as water safety instructors, creating an aide position to assist with safety and active participation time, and mandating monthly trainings for staff to attend. In July 2022, we started offering adaptive swim lessons for people of all ages with special needs so they could attend lessons with a higher trained swim instructor. In 2023, we enacted more changes and additions that included certifying the adaptive instructors in Swim Angelfish, adding a full-time employee to manage private swim lessons, hosting a water safety instructor trainer academy and starting a non-competitive swim team. With the change to the cost-recovery model, we saw revenue increase 147 percent and 116 percent in back-to-back years. This allows us to help sustain our adaptive programs and our open swim hours through increased revenue. 

Learning Objectives: 

1. Attendees will be able to describe how to develop a cost recovery plan for aquatics programming to ensure sustainability. 
2. Attendees will be able to outline the importance of developing inclusive aquatics programming for all ages and abilities. 
3. Attendees will be able to explain the value of having a nationally recognized content backing in aquatics programming