Parents and students say the program is plagued by delays and lax supervision.
By MELANIE AVE
Published October 21, 2004
TAMPA - Carolyn Hart has a ninth-grade son. She notices his knack for computers.
That's why she transferred Hunter this fall from a private school to Blake High's online school. Students can finish high school almost completely over the Internet - the only such public school program based in Hillsborough County, and a rarity statewide.
But the Brandon mother says she has become disillusioned with the program and says her son's education has suffered.
Hart says assignments have been graded late or not at all. Teachers have quit or been transferred. And face-to-face, on-site classes were canceled for the rest of the year with little notice to students.
When the program began, students worked through a curriculum using booklets and the Internet, setting their own pace and interacting with teachers via e-mail. They met regularly in person once a week or more at Blake. Work was graded by teachers and returned through the Internet, and students could complete requirements for a diploma in as little as 2 1/2 years.
The online school, hailed as novel and futuristic when it started three years ago, is losing money, district officials acknowledge. Enrollment, by almost everyone's admission, has not taken off as expected.
"I'm not sure the program has been monitored as carefully as it should have been," said School Board member Carolyn Bricklemyer. "That's going to be changing."
The struggles experienced by the Accelerated Curriculum Magnet Program stand in deep contrast to the success of a statewide online program. The Florida Virtual School, based in Orlando, grew from 77 students taking five classes in 1997 to about 13,000 students taking more than 80 classes last year.
Blake's program, modeled after the Florida Virtual School, began as a pilot program in the summer of 2002 with 350 students. Today, there are about 100 students enrolled, one-sixth of the 600 that administrators envisioned.
According to records, only 28 students have graduated.
Because a $1.5-million, three-year federal grant ran out this year, the program must rely on state revenue to operate, Bricklemyer said. To sustain itself financially, she said, the school needs an enrollment of at least 100 students completing their classes.
Last year, she said, there were 75 students.
"The program has to fund itself," said Bricklemyer, who has not lost faith that the online school will succeed.
"I don't think there's been enough recruiting," she said. "I think we'll get there."
Chuck Fleming, general director of secondary education in Hillsborough, downplayed the program's problems, but said recruitment efforts must improve.
"We don't have the number of students in there that we had hoped," he said. "We would like to find more youngsters interested in choosing this method of education."
Blake online was revamped this year, with federal financial support gone and enrollment down.
Teachers, who had been full time, were transferred to teach at regular schools and converted to part-time online instructors.
The result, said Hunter Hart's mother, Carolyn, has been class assignments that have not been graded for weeks at a time. Only one teacher grades or responds to her son within 24 hours, she said.
Another time, Hart said, a teacher quit and her son's class was overseen by no one. Unlike traditional school, there was no substitute assigned.
"What I don't understand is why it's so haphazardly run," Hart said. "There have been so, so, so many problems at this school."
In a district memo, Blake principal Jacqueline Haynes said some teachers were "unwilling to give the time required" and some did not want students to call them at home or on cell phones.
"Thus, they were unable to meet their grading responsibilities and unable to effectively communicate with their students in that time frame," she wrote.
Teachers are supposed to check their e-mail twice a day, morning and evening, according to the student handbook.
Bricklemyer said she is confident teachers are improving their communication with students and that administrators are now giving the program proper oversight.
The communication problems aside, Hart said computer links to course work have not worked and little technical help, if any, is offered to students.
Ginny Boles, whose 17-year-old daughter Erin attends Blake online, said the school did not have a guidance counselor to help choose classes last year. And this year, two weeks after the year began, the school canceled the in-person classes held at Blake.
All work, other than semester exams, is done online.
"I think it could be very successful," Boles said. "But they aren't getting backing at all."
The goal for Blake online was to attract self-motivated teens who had been home-schooled, were academically gifted or who otherwise struggled to make it in regular schools.
Janine Schwartz said her gifted son Benjamin, now 17, graduated from the program in 2003 and experienced no problems.
"He just loved it," she said.
Hart, who says her son's experience has been just the opposite, said she is trying to transfer her son out of Blake online to the Florida Virtual School. Although he can't earn a diploma directly from that school (course credits must be transferred to a traditional school), she said she has confidence in the statewide program that she does not hold for Blake.
"I'm getting out," she said. "I'm getting out as fast as I can."
Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at 813 226-3400 or melanie@sptimes.com
