The 2021-22 school year that starts this week features widespread opportunities for online public education instruction that are outside of traditional classrooms but within state-set parameters.
Full-time online instruction is being offered by districts in the four corners of the state and in many points in between -- from Siloam Springs to Lakeside School District in Chicot County and from Brookland in the northeast to Texarkana and with all four Pulaski County school districts in the middle.
The Earle School District, on the other hand, is a district that is not offering an online plan. More on that later.
Leaders providing the online teaching in their communities see the new, widespread reliance on virtual instruction as a watershed event in public education.
"To have a staff that is fully dedicated to growing online learning and making it something that is rich and a very engaging experience -- I think it is very historic." Karen Heatherly, principal of the Little Rock School District's Ignite Digital Academy for secondary students, said last week.
"It's been a challenge but a good challenge in education," Angie Miller of the Guy Fenter Education Service Cooperative said about offering online instruction. "I don't think anyone could have foreseen it coming the way it did. But I think educators in Arkansas are learning to adapt to the needs of all the students -- virtual or onsite. We are growing with it. It's allowing a lot of growth."
The Arkansas Board of Education has to date approved digital learning plans and accompanying waivers of state rules and laws for 133 of the state's 237 traditional school districts and also for 26 charter schools.
A few more digital plans are to be voted on by the Education Board at a special meeting Thursday.
And, as a result of surging numbers of covid-19 cases in July and August, another 120 districts and charter schools -- which did not act on the state's first invitation back in January to submit digital learning plans -- have now since sent in letters of intent to do so.
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The state Education Board last Thursday gave those systems a temporary okay to start their online offerings as soon as this week, but the school systems must submit full plans by Sept. 1 for state approval to be able to continue the offering.
A hodgepodge of online schooling by old-school public education institutions started in earnest this past school year because of covid-19. Parents of tens of thousands of public school students wanted to keep children at home to minimize exposure to the contagious and potentially fatal virus.
In January, Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education leaders invited districts to submit digital learning plans for this new school year. With that invitation came the offer of waivers of state rules and laws that typically cap maximum class sizes to no more than 30 students; limit teacher workloads to no more than 150 students; require 120 hours of instruction per course and six-hour instructional days; set student attendance requirements; and require a minimum number of recess minutes.
The state asked the applicant school systems for details on whether instruction will be synchronous or asynchronous -- whether it will be live or recorded to be viewed by the student at a convenient time.
Districts were asked whether teachers will have to teach online students only, or a combination of online and in-person students.
The applicants also had to describe technology and curriculum resources for students, how students will participate in state-required testing programs and what support will be provided to students in terms of special education, gifted education and help for students who are not native English speakers.
The districts are providing the online instruction in a variety of ways.
The Little Rock School District created and received state approval earlier this year for the Ignite Digital Academy for grades kindergarten through six -- headquartered at the former Henderson Middle School -- and the Ignite Digital Academy for seventh through 12th grades -- headquartered at the Little Rock West School of Innovation adjacent to Pinnacle View Middle School.
At the end of last week, there were 485 students registered for the secondary program and 679 pupils for the elementary programs, with dozens on waiting lists for the two schools. Little Rock district leaders were scrambling to fill teaching positions and stabilize class rosters for the fast-growing student numbers. The district is using its federal covid relief funding to pay for the Ignite programs.
Heatherly, principal of the secondary program as well as head of the district's West School of Innovation, has the online teaching staff distributed among the third floor offices of the School of Innovation building -- a former office building -- at 5619 Ranch Drive. The teachers have desks with tops that elevate to allow them to alternate between sitting and standing as they teach live lessons that are also recorded for later viewing.
"We have 16 teachers, and if I could add one more math teacher, that would be great," Heatherly said of her staff, who were hired primarily from outside the district.
To be hired, Ignite teachers had to show their technology skills and their ability to interact online.
"They had to have a true love and excitement for digital learning and for adventure because it is a whole new thing," Heatherly said. "We are raring to get going."
Abby Gavin, who is teaching seventh- and eighth-grade English, was in graduate school last year. She called the new digital school -- born out of a pandemic -- "a really great safe option that we can fall back on no matter what happens. This program is here. We have something going."
The online program will use the Schoology education platform that the district first used last year to deliver online lessons to students.
"We will do more orientation stuff for the first week as we get kids into the system," Gavin said. "We have a pretty good plan for what we will do."
Christopher Pearce, who is new to the teaching profession, will teach ninth- and 10th-grade English for Ignite.
"It's new ground ... but it's going to be really good for the kids," Pearce added.
Just a few miles to the west of the School of Innovation campus is the Pulaski County Special School District's Center of Innovation. The center is the headquarters of that district's new online conversion charter school, Driven Virtual Academy for kindergarten through 12th graders.
Even before the first day of classes, the academy that features a self-paced instructional program has met its 500-student cap. District leaders are asking the state for an immediate 250-seat increase, Rachel Blackwell, digital learning facilitator for the Pulaski County Special School District, said last week.
Online instruction from the academy will be provided by district-employed teachers who will use academic content provided by Florida Virtual Academy, Blackwell said.
The instruction will be asynchronous.
"Our teachers will do a weekly guide for parents to let them know what is due by the end of the week," she said, adding that there are also procedures for students, parents and teacher mentors to check in and confer with each other.
Blackwell said online instruction will be different for students this year as compared with what was previously provided by the district by each of its campuses. The campuses will no longer provide full-time remote instruction, leaving that to Driven.
"Last year was about following kids' traditional classroom schedule -- just doing it online," she said. "Now, parents will definitely be involved and helping out, but students won't have to stay online all day, every day. They have more flexibility in their schedule during the day."
Some of the other school districts in the state have turned to their educational service cooperatives or formed an association to facilitate an online instruction program.
Miller, the teacher center coordinator for the Guy Fenter Education Service Cooperative in Branch, said last week that there were 65 pupils in kindergarten-through-sixth grades from 11 districts enrolled in that cooperative's program.
But the numbers were constantly changing and Miller said she expects the student count and the number of participating districts to continue to increase into the first few days of the new school year. The Guy Fenter Cooperative has 21 member school districts and a charter system in west Arkansas.
"We have districts that didn't originally opt in, but they are opting in now as the covid numbers go up," Miller said.
A total of three teachers, each with experience in online education, and a paraprofessional have been hired by the cooperative to deliver curriculum content that is being purchased from an outside provider.
The instruction will be both live and recorded, she said, but each grade of students will meet live with their instructors at least twice every school day via the Zoom meeting platform. Kindergartners, for example, may have reading lessons at 8:30 a.m. and then math at a set time in the afternoons, Monday through Thursday. Science and social studies projects, small group sessions, interventions and enrichment lessons will typically be scheduled for Fridays.
The co-op pupils will also have assignments to complete between the live sessions and on their own time --especially if they need their parents' help, Miller said. That might require them to use pre-recorded information.
"We are following all the Arkansas state standards," Miller said. "We are making sure that these virtual students will get the same instruction required by the state's science of reading initiative. We're making sure that all the things that on-site students get in terms of curriculum and extracurriculars will be there for virtual students as well."
The cooperative's member districts provide the computer devices, access to the internet via hotspots if necessary and other supplies for their students to learn at their homes. While the cooperative is providing the elementary instruction, middle and high school students in the cooperative's member districts are using the longstanding Virtual Arkansas organization for online course work.
A remote instruction program is not for everyone.
"Earle is not looking for a virtual option," J0hn Hoy told the Arkansas Education Board on Friday. Hoy is assistant state superintendent for the Office of Coordinated Support and Service assigned to the Earle district, which is operating under state control.
"We intend to get back in school," Hoy said. "Our students did not necessarily do well with virtual last year. Earle is one of those districts that says if you are going to play sports or be a cheerleader you have to be on-site. And if you have your athletic teams and cheerleaders on-site it encourages a lot of other students to be on-site."
Hoy said students will be encouraged to get vaccinated.
"We know the delta variant is real," he added.