This mid-year shift to a new vendor to run EBR Virtual Academy is a welcome change for many of these students, who are in grades six to 12. Many of them have spent weeks, even months, without consistent instruction thanks to a shortage of teachers.
The more than 500 students in prekindergarten to fifth-grade at the virtual schools will see no change. Those students have had relatively normal school year and, unlike the older kids, they have learned from teachers employed by the local school district.
East Baton Rouge Parish Superintendent Sito Narcisse, however, has signaled that he wants to outsource instruction in the lower grades starting next fall, prompting fresh concerns from parents of students in those grades.
After a lengthy debate, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board approved the switch at its meeting last Thursday. The new vendor, ASU Prep Digital, has until Jan. 4, the day students return, to get its program up and running.
ASU Prep Digital is replacing Austin, Texas-based Proximity Learning, which struggled to find teachers at the start of the school year when enrollment in the school skyrocketed amid a surge in coronavirus cases prompted by the delta variant.
The school system is paying the Tempe, Arizona entity roughly $3,250 per student, money that will come out of the school system’s general operating budget. That works out to about $2.4 million if enrollment remains at current levels. The contract, as it stands, covers only the spring 2022 semester.
On Friday, the day after the vote, ASU Prep Digital, a K-12 online school connected to Arizona State University, held two “virtual town halls” to explain how the new school works.
It will be different, based on sample schedules ASU has released.
Instead of live lessons being the norm, ASU Prep Digital goes light on them. Aside from a homeroom class at 9 a.m. each morning, ASU Prep Digital courses have a live lesson just once a week. Lessons are recorded so students can watch them later.
The rest of the school day, students are either completing assignments on their own, meeting in small groups or one-on-one with ASU teachers or with special “learning success coaches” who keep up with the progress of individual students across their courses.
Just before midnight on Sunday is an important time. That’s when most assignments are due unless otherwise specified.
The greater reliance of students working on their own — what’s known as “asynchronous” instruction — concerns Dawn Collins, the only School Board member to vote “no” to hiring ASU. She said she has particular concerns for how Black children will fare.
“Asynchronous instruction, the research (says), is not what’s best for Black children,” she said.
Julie Young, managing director of ASU Prep, toldt he board her school’s approach as “high tech and high touch” and offers course content designed for “at-a-distance learning.”
“That is really important given what we just went through the last two years,” Young said. “We were thrown into remote work, which is not virtual work that has been designed with quality for at-a-distance learning.”
Young also noted that ASU also does not demand that all students move in tandem, favoring instead “personalized learning.”
“It would be rare to find two students in the same place at the same time,” she said.
Collins also asked for more information about how the school system settled on ASU Prep Digital and whether it looked at any other vendors.
Narcisse responded that he asked his staff to find “who’s the best in the country doing this” to fix the problems at EBR Virtual Academy.
“I know there are different opinions about this model, but they have been one of the most successful in digital learning in this space,” Narcisse said.
Initially, the ASU Prep Digital contract sparked concern because the K-12 school also operates a dual enrollment program that educates more than 42,000 students worldwide.
In his initial explanatory memo arguing for hiring the school, Supt. Narcisse previewed plans that he released two weeks later to “automatically enroll” all ninth-graders in Baton Rouge in dual enrollment courses starting next fall. Narcisse later removed that passage from the memo, calling it a “typo,” but has not said whether he ultimately intends to hire ASU Prep to offer dual enrollment courses in Baton Rouge.
In a nod to that controversy, board member Connie Bernard successfully persuaded her colleagues to include language in the motion that restricts ASU Prep this spring from educating any students next semester learning in “brick and mortar” schools.
A new controversy arose at the School Board meeting when parents of elementary children showed up with concern. They pointed to a passage in the same memo that sparked the dual enrollment debate in which Narcisse said he plans is to expand ASU Prep’s role at EBR Virtual Academy next fall to grades K-12, not just grades 6-12. The contract with ASU Prep covers only the spring semester but has provisions for extensions.
Anne Marie Blank has two children in the elementary section of the virtual school. She said she likes that portion of the school as it is and urged school leaders to maintain “stability” and not to change it.
“My second-grader is looking forward to having the same teacher that my fourth-grade brother is having right now,” said Blank.
Blank also noted that district-hired teachers undergo state-mandated background checks and are certified to teach in Louisiana.
“Not only that, they know the daily experiences of our kids here in Baton Rouge,” she said.
Another parent, Hannah Amoroso, said it’s a mistake to continue to expand outsourcing of the virtual school.
“We can do things in-house,” Amoroso said. “We’re a group of very capable people. We can figure it. We don’t need to outsource it to an out-of-state private company.”
Under questioning, Narcisse was vague about ASU Prep’s future involvement with elementary grades, saying only that it will have an extensive role at the virtual school.
“(ASU Prep) did share with us that they will be working with us in a lot of different ways in terms of staff and those pieces,” Narcisse said.
©2021 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
