Thirty-two school districts and charter schools learned Tuesday that they will be recipients of new eResources Digital Learning Grants provided by the Little Rock based Arkansas Public School Resource Center.
The grants, totaling$330,000, are going to places such as the Hermitage School District in south Arkansas, Mountain Home in the north, Danville in the west and Armorel in the east.
The first-time awards will help the recipient school systems offset student tuition costs for online, or digitally delivered, courses during this spring semester, said Katie Clifford, a spokesman for the resource center. The Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville is funding the grants.
The money is coming at a time when Arkansas school districts are gearing up to comply with Act 1280 of 2013. The law requires students in the Class of 2018 - next year’s ninth-graders - and all subsequent classes to complete at least one digitally delivered course to be eligible for high school graduation.
Wayne Fawcett, superintendent of the Paris School District, welcomed the news of the grant to his school system, which includes a 350-student high school.
“It will allow our kids to have access to virtually hundreds of courses that they can take online, which is obviously an expansion of our curriculum, our course offerings,” Fawcett said Tuesday.
And they will be able to take those courses not only during traditional school hours but at all hours of the day and night, the weekends and in the summer.
“In a digital age. It’s not the coming thing, it’s here,” he said about online coursework.
The resource center is making some 1,300 digitally delivered courses from various national vendors available to Arkansas schools at discounted prices, Clifford said.
Schools can access the courses through the center’s eResources Digital Learning Portal on the resource center’s website. The course providers include K12 Inc., Aventa Learning, Northwestern University, Brigham Young University and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Clifford said.
The grants were awarded based on a variety of criteria including districts’ financial needs and their plans for using the funds, Clifford said. More than $500,000 was requested by the grant applicants.
“Each district is using the grant money a little bit differently,” she said. “Some of the districts are going to use the funds primarily for Advanced Placement courses and allow their students to take those AP classes that they would not otherwise be able to offer.”
Advanced Placement courses are produced by the national College Board organization for use in high schools. Students can earn college credit for the high school Advanced Placement courses by earning qualifying scores on end-of-year exams.
“We have other districts that are going to use the grants to allow their students to take digital [college] concurrent courses,” Clifford said. “One district is going to use it to offer a ‘bridge’ course to their ninth-graders to help them transition into high school.”
The Paris district has already tried out digitally delivered courses on a limited basis, as have many districts, Fawcett said.
“We’re going to open it up,” he said. He anticipates some students will use the online courses to take courses over and above what they can take in a regular school day. Others will use the online courses for remediation and course credit recovery.
Scott Smith, executive director of the resource center, said he was pleased to be able to expand the course offerings available to schools and students.
“It is clear to us that digital learning has become a focus for many of our districts across the state, particularly those in rural areas,” Smith said. “They see the opportunity for rigorous learning utilizing technology.”
Leaders in the districts and charter schools receiving the grants will eventually make presentations on how their schools fared in using the online courses at a Best Practices conference to be hosted later by the resource center.
The recipient districts are Armorel, Bald Knob, Bauxite, Cross County, Danville, Decatur, Fountain Lake, Hampton, Harrisburg, Harrison, Hermitage, Hillcrest, Hot Springs and Jessieville.
Other recipient districts are Manila, Marked Tree, Marmaduke, Melbourne, Mountain Home, Nemo Vista, Pangburn, Paris, Piggott, Riverside, Star City, White County Central and Wynne.
Charter schools that are recipients are Academics Plus charter school in Maumelle; eStem Public Charter School in Little Rock; LISA Academy charter school in Little Rock and LISA Academy-North in North Little Rock; and SIA Tech in Little Rock.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/26/2014