The Arkansas Board of Education on Thursday approved virtual instruction plans from 20 of 152 school systems that have submitted proposals and asked for waivers of some state laws and rules to carry them out.
The Springdale, Benton-ville, Rogers, Fort Smith and West Memphis school districts are among the districts that received approval for online academies to operate in the coming 2021-22 school year and for up to two years after that.
Some of the other districts getting approval Thursday for the online options that will enable students to receive a public school education in their homes included the Bryant, Russellville, Texarkana and Jacksonville/North Pulaski districts.
The dozens of digital academy proposals that have been submitted to the state come after many Arkansas school systems scrambled in the current school year to offer students an online instructional option as a way to combat the spread of the contagious and potentially fatal covid-19 virus.
States and school districts nationwide are now grappling with whether to continue with online learning options for the coming 2021-22 school year.
New York City public schools are eliminating the option of remote schooling, the city’s mayor said this week.
In New Jersey, the governor announced last week that there won’t be an option for remote classes in the new school year.
Massachusetts, Illinois and Florida are putting strict limits on remote instruction, The New York Times reported earlier this week.
But California, as well as the cities of Philadelphia and Houston, intends to make virtual, remote instruction an option. The school board in Portland, Ore., earlier this week directed that a virtual instructional option must be available in that system until there are vaccines against covid-19 for children under 12 years old.
In January, the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education and the state Education Board invited school districts to submit virtual instruction plans for the coming school year.
With that invitation came the offer of waivers of state rules and laws that cap maximum class sizes to no more than 30 students, limit teacher workloads to no more than 150 students, require 120 clock hours of instruction per course and six-hour instructional days, set student attendance requirements, and require a minimum number of recess minutes.
Not all the newly approved plans incorporate all the waivers.
QUESTIONS FROM BOARD
State Education Board members approved every proposal presented and recommended to them by state education agency leaders Thursday — but not before questioning most of the school district representatives about the particulars of their plans.
“We do have to be very careful … as we walk into something that we just don’t have a whole lot of data about,” Education Board Chairman Charisse Dean of Little Rock said about the review and approval process.
“There are safeguards in place,” Dean also said. “We aren’t venturing into the wild blindly. We are [taking] pointed and directed steps” to enable districts to serve students in new ways.
Some of the board member questions centered on how reading would be taught effectively in the early elementary grades to virtual students and how many times a week virtual students would interact with their teachers or other district employees. Most of the virtual instruction plans include both live or synchronous instruction as well as asynchronous instruction in which a teacher records a lesson for later viewing by students.
Education Board member Sarah Moore of Stuttgart said that the state has worked so hard to improve the teaching of reading and reading achievement in recent years, and that she wants those efforts to continue.
“I thought long and hard about whether to approve elementary grades [for virtual instruction] because it requires so much from the families and the schools,” Moore said just before the board approved the virtual school from the Trumann School District.
“I want to make sure that all the districts that are here today are very serious about all grades but particularly about the lower elementary grades,” Moore said, “and that the [division] will be monitoring and following up with these districts, especially in these lower levels.” Moore also said she was reluctant to approve any plan in which a virtual elementary class size exceeds state education standards for maximum class size.
“Maybe in a year or two if they can show success,” she said. “We should start tighter and loosen up as we go,” she said, comparing the forming of virtual academies to building an airplane as it is flying.
Stacy Smith, a state deputy education commissioner, said the state division has assigned degrees of risk to the digital learning plans and that those that include kindergarten through second grades are higher-risk programs that will get more monitoring from the state.
Other questions from Education Board members focused on whether proposals would result in a single teacher having the responsibility of teaching children in multiple grades.
The Westside School District in Johnson County is part of a consortium of small school systems that will rely on the Guy Fenter Education Service Cooperative to provide online instruction for students. The plan, at least initially, envisions one teacher for grades kindergarten through second and one teacher for third through sixth grades.
Board member Ouida Newton of Leola objected to that.
Westside Superintendent Brad Kent and Angela Miller of the cooperative said they are prepared to reassign existing staff or hire additional staff if there is a need.
Smith, who complimented the education cooperatives for their help in vetting the digital academy plans, said the Westside/Guy Fenter plan would be a good one for the Education Board to call back in the early part of the new school year for a status report on the online program.
State board members sought assurances that the remote learning plans would not result in teachers having to simultaneously teach online and on-site students, which has been a fairly common practice during the 2020-21 school year.
The board members quizzed the school districts about their policies for requiring students who struggle in a virtual program to return to on-site instruction. They also asked whether the districts are providing their own curriculum or purchasing it from a vendor. At the high school level, several districts are relying at least in part on courses and even teachers provided by the Virtual Arkansas, a long-standing online course provider.
WAIVER OF STATE RULES
A handful of the digital academies approved Thursday asked for and received waivers of state rules and laws for just one year. The board gave three-year waivers to the other plans, including the addition of two years to the one-year waiver the state board approved earlier for the Siloam Springs School District’s virtual plan.
Tiffany Bone, assistant superintendent of the Jacksonville/North Pulaski district, said the one-year plan for that district would give the district’s new administrative team — starting July 1 — time to assess the digital program and make adjustments for future years.
Jon Collins, superintendent of the West Memphis School District, said his district proposed a plan for one year only because he hopes to have all students return to on-campus instruction after the 2021-22 school year.
Eighty-seven percent of West Memphis students started this school year as virtual students and better than a third ended this year as remote students, Collins said.
“Our intent is to use it for one year,” he said about the digital plan. “We hope to get our kids back sooner rather than later and we won’t need it after that.” Digital learning plans and accompanying waivers were approved for the: Beebe School District, seventh through 12th grades.
Bentonville School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Bergman School District, ninth through 12th grades.
Berryville School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Bryant School District for grades six through 12.
Fort Smith School District, kindergarten through eighth grades.
Gentry School District, seventh through 12th grades.
Hamburg School District, seventh through 12th grades.
Harrison School District, third through 12th grades.
Jacksonville/North Pulaski County School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Jasper School District, ninth through 12th grades.
Pea Ridge School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Rogers School District for kindergarten through 12th grades.
Russellville School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Springdale School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Texarkana School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Trumann School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
Valley Springs School District, seventh through 12th grades.
Westside Johnson County School District, kindergarten through 12th grades.
West Memphis School District, kindergarten through 12th grade.