7-2 board vote backs ‘Plan B’ on digital school

LR outsourcing a last resort

The Little Rock School Board voted 7-2 Thursday to authorize Superintendent Mike Poore to contract — as a last resort — with the Pearson education company to provide online instruction to overflow students in the district’s Ignite Digital Learning Academies.

Board member Greg Adams made the motion to outsource the instruction for this semester only “if all other reasonable options are exhausted.” He said he doesn’t want families and students “stuck in limbo for too long.”

“We have families that if we don’t provide them with an educational setting then education won’t happen for them,” Adams said during the board’s lengthy discussion of the possible contract.

“They have chosen not to go to in-person school,” he said. “We have said we will provide you with virtual school and we have tried to do everything possible to provide them with virtual school, but we may fall short for a certain number of families.”

Almost 1,400 students in kindergarten through 12th grade have signed up for virtual, remote instruction in the new Ignite Digital Academies for elementary and secondary students. Poore and Deputy Superintendent Keith McGee have said the district needs as many as 13 more teachers to cover instruction for about 300 of those students — most if not all of them at the elementary grades.

Poore has said that no more than $600,000 would be spent on a contract with Pearson, an international company that would use Arkansas certified teachers in its online instruction, but different curriculum materials from what the district uses. The district would be charged on a per-student basis, about $3,400, plus some staff training costs.

Voting for the motion — sometimes reluctantly — were Adams, Norma Johnson, Michael Mason, Sandrekkia Morning, Ali Noland, Leigh Ann Wilson and Greg Wood.

Board President Vicki Hatter and board member Evelyn Callaway opposed the motion.

Hatter urged that the board delay a decision on hiring the company until after district leaders can finalize student counts, and determine if there are teachers at traditional campuses who can be reassigned to the virtual school for kindergarten-through-sixth grades.

Hatter noted that the district had in the past day assigned nearly all of the pupils on the waiting list for the Ignite elementary academy to the academy — resulting in those students now having teachers. She said teachers at Ignite have been “insanely creative” and “superstars” in overcoming the challenges of the new virtual program.

While the waiting-list students have now been assigned to Ignite, Poore said that Ignite teachers now have more students than allowed by the district’s state-approved plan for virtual instruction. The district can’t continue to exceed the class size caps, he said.

Poore asked the board to authorize him to enter into a contract with Pearson as a “Plan B” in the event the district can’t reassign sufficient district teachers to cover all the students who have signed up for virtual, remote instruction.

“We want our teachers working with our kids, if possible,” Poore said and he described how the district has to date hired a couple of retired teachers and reassigned a couple of teachers from the alternative education program to work in the digital academy.

He also told the School Board that if the student counts from Thursday hold steady into next week, there could be as many as 15 teachers from under-enrolled schools for the Ignite Academy students.

The Little Rock School Board vote this week is the latest development in the effort to provide virtual, remote instruction to families who don’t want their students to attend school in-person, largely because of concerns about the coronavirus.

The Ignite academies were born out of the pandemic in the 2020-21 school year that saw teachers across the district having to simultaneously teach remote and in-class students.

As the numbers of virus cases surged in July and August and while the students under 12 continue to be ineligible for vaccinations, the enrollment numbers for the Ignite academies soared. That has been the case with digital learning academies in other Arkansas districts, as well.

At Thursday’s meeting, Rhiannon Delano, an online educational specialist for Pearson, described the instructional programs, schedules and supports that would be provided to students and their families if the company is hired.

Wood voiced concerns about the fact that the company uses different instructional materials than the district is using and that the district leaders have spent a lot of time selecting curriculum to improve math achievement and to align with the science of teaching reading.

Wood also said the district can’t leave students out in the cold.

“Something is better than nothing,” he said in saying that he was voting reluctantly for the possible outsourcing.

McGee said that curriculum is important but that Arkansas education standards will be covered by Pearson.

Callaway noted that with the employment of Pearson, Little Rock students will be using three different learning platforms — the Pearson platform plus the different instructional delivery methods for on-site and the Ignite students. She questioned how the Pearson students would transition back to district learning programs at the semester’s end or at the end of the school year.

Poore said there are curriculum alignment issues but every student deserves to have a qualified teacher rather than a substitute for the next six months or possibly a year.

Johnson said the decision on Pearson was not a difficult one.

“We cannot allow our students to be dormant,” Johnson said. “We need to move students forward. If it will benefit students we must do it.”

Wilson said that the plan is not perfect, but in light of the explosion in virtual school enrollment, it is the solution that causes the least harm.

Noland asked how students will be selected for the Pearson instruction. Poore said the enrollment will be based on the time stamps placed on registrations for Ignite.

Noland urged that parents whose children might be assigned to the Pearson program be given the option to send their children to their bricks-and-mortar schools. When parents signed up for Ignite, they believed their children would have Little Rock district teachers. The Pearson program may not be what they want now, she said.

She said she didn’t like the outsourcing plan but the district will lose students if they can’t be accommodated by Ignite and are required to return to in-person school.

“We cannot allow our students to be dormant. We need to move students forward. If it will benefit students we must do it.”

— Norma Johnson, LRISD school board member