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Fitzsimon: War on public schools

April 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One of the least discussed destructive decisions made by the General Assembly last year was the approval of a budget provision that opened the door to for profit virtual charter schools in North Carolina.

And it didn’t take long for a company to try to take advantage of the new law. Officials with K12, Inc. convinced the Cabarrus County Board of Education in January to vote to partner with the company to set up a virtual charter in the state.

Virtual charters have a spotty record overall and K12 is an especially questionable company. An audit of K12’s virtual charter in Colorado found the state paid $800,000 to the company for students who never enrolled or lived out of state.

The company also faces a lawsuit charging that company officials misled investors and the public about the quality of education it was offering. A news story about the company’s efforts to set up a virtual school for Tennessee reported that K12 outsourced grading of papers to India until publicity about it forced the company to end the practice.

The only saving grace in North Carolina was that it seemed unlikely the state Board of Education would allow the for-profit virtual charter to open this fall, giving policymakers time to come to their senses and reverse the decision to further dismantle public schools.

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Consolidation talk angers, worries RM community

April 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

At their monthly meeting on Friday, the Carter County Schools Long-Range Facilities Planning Team held preliminary discussions on the timetable for writing their strategic plan. McMahan said the group is nearing the end of their data gathering period. Planning team members have received presentations from school supervisors and other local officials on specific areas of focus, including the condition of current schools and the City of Elizabethton’s annexation plans.

McMahan noted that he is still optimistic the LRPT can start developing scenarios and complete the strategic plan for the school board and county commissioners later this summer. Once the documents are drafted, the planning team will submit the report to the Carter County Board of Education and to the Carter County Commission. They will also conduct another tour of community schools to present the plan to parents and other concerned citizens.

On Thursday, McMahan and the LRPT also expressed their pride in the teachers and students at Cloudland for their academic successes over the last year. During the 2010-2011 school term, CHS was the only school in Carter County to exceed the goals set forth under the Average Yearly Progress, or AYP, objectives.

Carter County Assistant Director of Schools Dr. Kevin Ward said the LRPT’s main objective is to find ways for the school system to be more efficient. Ward noted that the district has steadily lost over 500 students since the 2001-2002 school year.  That year, Carter County’s end-of-year membership was 5,997. Ward said the school system had reached nearly 6,100 students in the late 1990’s.

School Board member Don Julian commented that the school system is actually ahead of most school systems in East Tennessee in the area of technology. “Our schools are actually not behind technologically,” said Julian. “We have long-distance classes being taught online, along with virtual classes and our classrooms have greater access to computers than ever before.”

Several elected officials from the county commission and the school board participated in the meeting. Carter County Commissioners Steve Lowrance, Joel Street and Nancy Brown were on hand at Thursday’s session. School board members Daniel Holder, Don Julian, Keith Church and Jerry McMahan also attended the event.

For the rest of the article, go to Consolidation talk angers, worries RM community

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Home schools draw closer look

April 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Bedford County Board of Education met Tuesday evening in a special called study session to discuss proposed rezoning for elementary grades and certain school board policies.

Virtual schools

In May 2011, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Virtual Public Schools Act, which gives authority to public school systems to establish online schools and allows students to complete all of their primary and secondary education online.

The act also allows private companies to contract with school systems to provide the online classes.

Most notable of these is Union County public schools, which contracted with Virginia-based for-profit firm K12 Inc. to provide a family-friendly learning platform. Officials there estimate 1,100 students signed up to take online classes after the academy launched late last year.

For the rest of the article, go to Home schools draw closer look 

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Bradley Board of Education Approves Virtual School

March 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Bradley County Board of Education has approved a Virtual School program that even home schoolers could use, said Director of Schools, Johnny McDaniel.

Board member Vicki Beaty asked how student achievement would be monitored and how school officials will use the data to improve the program. Mr. McDaniel said there will be certified teachers involved with a lot of written work and face to face time. He said he does not believe it will meet the needs of all students.

Zoe Renfro, Reach Adult High School principal, said, “We will pull staff to look at the data to determine where we are, where we fall short and what we need to add.”

Mr. McDaniel said he recommended approval of the program and establishment of a line item for funding for the 2012-2013 school year. It was unanimously approved.

Angie Lyon of the architectural firm Kaatz, Binkley, Jones and Morris gave an update on the construction at Michigan Avenue Elementary and the demolition bids for Waterville Elementary, both damaged in the April 2011 tornadoes. Ms. Lyon said bids for the bleachers and athletic equipment for Michigan Avenue were received and the job has been awarded to Southern Facility Sales and Service for $74,767.

For the rest of the article, go to Bradley Board of Education Approves Virtual School

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Bradley County Virtual School slated for board vote next week

March 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A new option for Bradley County students could be nearing as the Board of Education votes next week on a proposal for a Bradley County Virtual School.

The virtual school would provide students with a completely online option, allowing them to complete classwork anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Zoe Renfro, district coordinator for alternative and adult education, presented her plans for the school during a work session Tuesday.

Renfro said a virtual school could be beneficial to students who are currently home-schooled, attend private school or have life circumstances that make a flexible program beneficial, such as those with health issues or who are working.

“We’ll be one of the few that are doing it … and one of the even smaller few who are doing secondary school,” Renfro said.

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County educators go to ‘Hill’

February 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Many Bradley County Board of Education members attended the Tennessee School Board Association’s “Day on the Hill” gathering earlier this week.

Board chairman Charlie Rose and board members Vicki Beaty, Troy Weathers and Rodney Dillard, along with Director of Schools Johnny McDaniel, attended the annual event.

“Events such as ‘Day on the Hill’ are helpful to school boards across the state,” Rose said. “It not only gives us time to meet with our legislators and discuss the needs or our students, teachers and others, it also gives us time to talk to other board members across the state.”

The event gives local school board members a chance to express concerns about upcoming legislation in the House and Senate of the General Assembly.

This year some of the major topics were publicly funded vouchers for private schools, classroom size limits, the funding formula known as the Basic Education Program, Virtual Schools and allowing school board members to participate in a meeting via videoconferencing.

For the rest of the article, go to County educators go to ‘Hill’

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Virtually Educated

December 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I always thought that the only kids getting their entire public schooling online were in the hospital, living in the Alaskan tundra, or pursuing a career as a singing orphan in the road company of “Annie.” Not so. There are now around 250,000 cyberschool students in kindergarten through high school and the number is growing fast.

If I had managed to envision a lot of students going to school online, I’d have imagined them being home-schooled by a diligent middle-class parent. But, lately, the target seems to be low-income families. Andy Berke, a state senator in Chattanooga, Tenn., says that when an educational company named K12 Inc. held a meeting to publicize its online taxpayer-funded academy, it chose “one of the poorest neighborhoods” in his district. In Pennsylvania, where K12 runs a statewide online charter school called Agora, you can go to the Web site and watch Head of School Sharon Williams explain about “online learning as an alternative to a violent in-school experience.”

O.K., here is my first question: Does full-time online learning really work for disadvantaged kids who may be alone at home all day?

Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado did a review of all the information available on this and, in fact, on the entire question of how well full-time online learning works for kids in elementary through high school. The answer was: nobody knows.

“The most detailed study is a couple of blog entries,” he said.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtually Educated

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Chattanoogans Tell School Board, Transition Committee How Unification Went Down for Them

October 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There were as many differences between the Hamilton County situation and that of Shelby County as similarities, however. The two systems in Hamilton County were combined in 1997 after a three-year planning period, creating a merger system which today is less than one-third the size (40,000 students) and considerably more integrated (59 percent white) than the combined Memphis and Shelby County systems will be under the best of outcomes.

Another difference: In addition to allowing for special school districts in the wake of the Memphis/Shelby County school-system merger, the state legislature has created two other escape hatches — a greatly expanded charter-school system and licensing of virtual-school networks — and shows an inclination to create even more, including the imminent prospect of vouchers for private schools.

For the rest of the article, go to Chattanoogans Tell School Board, Transition Committee How Unification Went Down for Them

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Students, money go to East TN virtual school

October 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Dickson County School System has lost several students and tax dollars to Union County – a tiny county of less than 18,000 people in East Tennessee.

But the students aren’t moving, they are simply enrolling in the Tennessee Virtual School and taking classes from their homes in Dickson County.

And the state funding that the county gets from those students is going to Union County and a private company.

Union County is acting as the fiscal agent for K12, Inc. – a for-profit online education company – to provide online classes for students from Kindergarten through high school.

For the rest of the article, go to Students, money go to East TN virtual school

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Union Co. virtual school sees enrollment problem

September 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

School officials say a number of factors are to blame for more than a thousand students applying to attend the state’s first public online academy not being enrolled some three weeks into the beginning of the institution’s school year.

K12 Inc., a Virginia-based for-profit virtual school company, runs Union County’s Tennessee Virtual Academy, which opened Aug. 8.

Union County Schools Director Wayne Goforth and K12 officials told the Chattanooga Times Free Press the factors range from more students than expected applying to issues some parents face in gathering and submitting documents establishing state residency, birth certificates and proof of immunization

For the rest of the article, go to Union Co. virtual school sees enrollment problem

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