The Arkansas Board of Education voted Thursday to allow some 100 school systems to start the school year off Monday with a temporary online, remote instruction plan for families who do not want their students in a traditional classroom.
The school systems — Bryant, Fayetteville, Hot Springs and Jonesboro, among them — have until Sept. 1 to submit a full plan for state board approval or immediately lose their ability to offer the remote learning plan.
The affected districts, which include Alma, Beebe, Lakeside in Chicot County and Marvell-Elaine — are those that took up the state’s offer last month of a second chance to provide an off-campus digital instruction program to their students.
The board decision Thursday means that a large majority of the state’s approximately 260 school districts and charter school systems have made arrangements of varying kinds for delivering public education remotely to students.
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The Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education first invited traditional districts and charter schools last January to submit digital learning plans by May 1 for their students who wanted an online instructional program for this coming year.
More than 150 school systems responded and many have been approved by the state Education Board in batches over the summer — including some as recently as the Education Board’s meeting on Thursday.
The state division announced July 24 that it was reopening an opportunity for districts to propose digital learning plans — and accompanying waivers of some state laws and rules — for state review and state Board of Education approval.
The second chance at remote instructional programs came as the daily number of new covid-19 cases in the state spiked into the thousands.
While adults and children 12 and over are eligible to receive covid-19 vaccinations, the vaccinations are not approved for children under 12 years old. The vaccinations also are not absolute insurance against getting the illness.
DEMAND RISES
Education Secretary Johnny Key told the Education Board on Thursday that many school systems did not initially intend to offer remote instruction, believing in-person teaching was best for students and that the numbers of covid-19 cases were declining.
“As cases started going up, parents started demanding digital learning options,” Key said, adding, “The districts are happy to have a second chance in what has been an untenable situation in many communities.” Districts in the second round of applications can only obtain waivers of state rules and laws dealing with required student attendance on campus, the minimum number of clock hours required for each course and required recess time for elementary students, agency attorney Mary Claire Hyatt said.
Districts in the first round were able to get those waivers as well as waivers on class sizes and teacher work loads.
In response to questions from Education Board members, Deputy Education Commissioner Ivy Pfeffer pointed out that students will be enrolled full-time in the digital academies for a nine-week grading period, a semester or the full school year, depending on district requirements.
That is in contrast to in-school students who may have to pivot or transition to remote learning for a few days because of covid cases or exposure to covid cases in their schools. Up to 10 of those missed days by schools or districts can be classified as alternative methods of instruction days and will not have to be made up at the end of the school year.
PINE BLUFF, BAUXITE, CABOT
Also on Thursday the Education Board gave final approval to Friendship Aspire Academy — Pine Bluff charter school’s plans to open a new kindergarten-through-third grade campus on Main Street and to increase the enrollment cap for the two campuses from 480 to 880.
The new campus, 700 S. Main St., will enable the existing Friendship Aspire-Pine Bluff campus for grades kindergarten through five at 3911 S. Hazel St., to retain small class sizes, the application for the charter amendment stated.
Phong Tran, superintendent of the Friendship Academy system that has schools in Little Rock as well as Pine Bluff, has said in the past that the new downtown campus will give employees at the Saracen Casino and Resort convenient access to an elementary school for their children.
The board also gave final approval to Bauxite School District’s plans to increase the enrollment cap at its Miner Academy conversion charter school from 250 to 300 and add kindergarten through fifth grade to the charter that has previously served only secondary students.
The Cabot School District’s proposal to offer remote online instruction to students in grades seven through 12 under the umbrella of its Cabot Center of Excellence charter school received Education Board approval. Also approved was a change in the enrollment cap from 500 to 2,500.