Beaufort Co. school board ends K-8 virtual class contract. What will schools use now?
Beaufort County’s school board has voted to end its contract for K-8 virtual classrooms, one week into the start of the school year and just after the superintendent announced in-person classes would resume in 2 1/2 weeks.
The board’s decision to end the $2.75 million, year-long contract with K12 Learning Solutions’ parent company Fuel Education took place around 12:45 a.m. Thursday, after three hours in executive session.
“While we believe that K12 provides a quality product, I’ve been disappointed in the company’s ability to meet our expectations,” Superintendent Frank Rodriguez said in a Thursday statement.
“We’ve been trying to work through our frustrations with K12 in recent weeks, but when our students and teachers are impacted, we needed to move quickly to find a better course.”
John Dowling made the motion to “accept the Superintendent’s recommendation” to terminate the contract with Fuel Education, “recognizing the fact that contractual obligations were not met.”
The motion passed 10-0-1. William Smith abstained, saying that the school district had not followed a board policy to provide meeting documents by the Thursday before the board’s meeting.
The school board did not specify when the school district will officially end its relationship with K12, which could impact teachers’ access to lesson plans and classroom data.
“The district will continue to rely on other online platforms like Zoom, Google Classroom and Seesaw, and will also investigate additional web-based teaching supplements to ensure that students and teachers have the resources they need to be effective in their work,” spokeswoman Candace Bruder wrote in a Thursday press release.
Last week in Miami, a similar move to cut ties with the company left teachers scrambling, according to reporting by the Miami Herald.
The Miami-Dade County School Board voted unanimously at 2 a.m. last Thursday to end its contract with K12 Learning Solutions, following 200 public comments skewering K12’s online classes.
The online class platform was also paralyzed for three days of the first week of classes by a series of cyberattacks, allegedly carried out by a 16-year-old student at the district who was eventually arrested.
The Miami-Dade school board voted to allow teachers to use the platform through Friday, and then sever the district’s relationship with K12.
But on Thursday morning, teachers discovered they had already lost lesson plans and access to the K12 platform, according to the Herald.
What was the contract?
Board members approved the contract with K12 Learning Solutions on Aug. 4 in a 9-0-1 vote.
The company was supposed to provide virtual classrooms for all kindergarten through 8th grade students in Beaufort County School District, which deputy superintendent Duke Bradley said in August would be “considerably more comprehensive than what was hastily implemented last spring.”
The classrooms come with pre-written lessons and assignments that align with South Carolina’s education standards and have the ability for teachers to track their students’ progress.
The contract was supposed to be paid with CARES Act dollars, but the district had not made any payments to K12 Learning Solutions as of Wednesday night, according to district spokeswoman Candace Bruder.
Teachers began training on the platform with “demo” logins and classrooms on Aug. 24 after administrators and literacy and numeracy coaches trained other school staff.
But the contract caused consternation at the school board’s Sept. 1 meeting, with board member Rachel Wisnefski expressing concern that both students and teachers wouldn’t receive their logins for the platform until Sept. 8 — the first day of school.
Mary Stratos, the district’s chief instructional services officer, said then that a timeline to deploy the virtual classrooms was not included in the board-approved contract.
She added that the district had been aware that students would receive login credentials on the first day of school for several weeks. But she said the district was aware only that teachers would receive credentials at the same time on Aug. 28, about a week and a half before the start of school.
District staff said at the Sept. 1 meeting that teachers would likely not use the platform in the first week of school, instead opting for Zoom to make introductions with students.
At that meeting, Wisnefski moved to amend the K12 Learning Solutions contract “to include deliverable and respective deadlines.”
That motion passed 6-4-1. Earl Campbell, Cathy Robine, Melvin Campbell and Tricia Fidrych voted no; JoAnn Orischak abstained.
What else happened at Wednesday’s meeting?
One of the biggest decisions of the night didn’t come with a board vote: Superintendent Frank Rodriguez announced Beaufort County School District plans to resume in-person classes starting Oct. 5.
The district will use a hybrid instructional model, with students going to school buildings two days a week and completing independent work two days a week. All in-person students will receive live virtual instruction on Wednesdays, as buildings are deep-cleaned.
Students will be put on an “A” or “B” schedule, which will be divided by last name to keep families on the same instructional schedule. Rodriguez asked that blended families with different surnames among students contact their principals about any possible scheduling conflicts.
“Assuming that DHEC’s COVID-19 metrics continue to decrease, the district will transition to traditional in-person classes five days a week when it is safe to do so,” district spokesperson Bruder wrote in a Thursday press release.
Rodriguez and deputy superintendent Duke Bradley III said that the decision was motivated by Beaufort County’s “medium-risk” status for COVID-19 and conversations with the district’s principals and teacher forum.
The school board did not take any votes on Rodriguez’s announcement. Its governance policy leaves operational and day-to-day decisions to the superintendent, though previously the board voted to endorse Rodriguez’s decisions to hold virtual graduation in the spring and to begin the fall semester virtually.
However, the school board did take a second vote coming out of executive session. Richard Geier moved that Rodriguez should “gather information on the personnel matter addressed in the Executive Session” to present to the board at their next meeting.
The motion passed 8-2-1. Dowling and Orischak voted no, with both saying they did not think the personnel matter fell under the board’s scope. Smith abstained. The board offered no other details on the personnel matter.