Maybe this won’t seem like a big deal to you, but it’s a portent of the future. It’s not a lot of students or teachers, but it signifies what’s coming down the pike.
A small alternative school in Avondale, Michigan, is going to be converted to a full-time virtual school.
All seven teachers will be replaced.
The district pretends that the decision was for the sake of the students, but in reality, it’s to save money. The district and the state of Michigan just could not afford to educate these students anymore so they settled on a cheap strategy. The kids will get an inferior digital education with no personal interaction with real teachers, but, hey, the state can’t afford to give them a real education.
This week is National Teacher Appreciation Week – but, for the seven teachers at Avondale Academy, they just found out they’re being laid off.
On Monday, the Avondale Board of Education voted to close Avondale Academy and to restructure it as the Avondale Diploma and Careers Institute Virtual School – a fully online alternative high school.
Social studies teacher Paul Sandy said he is horrified by the board’s decision. He created the petition “Save Avondale Academy” and, as of Tuesday evening, it has more than 500 online signatures.
“It’s a central truth that all children deserve real teachers – not virtual teachers who can’t see them, talk to them, hand them fruit snacks out of their big Trader Joe’s bag, buy them art supplies or talk to them out in the hallway between classes,” said Sandy. “All students deserve an education that is hands-on and involves physical activity, social interaction and authentic, real learning…”
As part of the decision, the Diploma and Careers Institute will provide all Avondale Academy students with their own Chromebook, and a resource center would be open Monday through Thursday, staffed with an adult mentor, for students who need in-person support. There would continue to be opportunities for breakfast and lunch, transportation and counseling for the students.
According to Frank Lams, assistant superintendent for Financial Services, this decision will save the district a substantial amount of money.
“The district would pick up 20 percent of the enrollment (from per-pupil state funding) and the net revenue. DCI would pick up the cost for the counselors and mentors, as well as all the hardware and software necessary for the program. So, there’s a shift of about $180,000 positive. This is based on 115 pupil enrollment for the Academy,” said Lams.
The online board meeting attracted nearly 150 attendees – a record number for the board. Teachers, parents, students and experts from Michigan universities and organizations all joined together to argue for the future of the 115 students at Avondale Academy.
Paul Sandy, the social studies teacher at Avondale Academy, wrote this about the school in his petition to save the school:
Avondale Academy is an alternative public high school in the Avondale School District that serves approximately 113 students from Pontiac, Auburn Hills, and Rochester Hills, Michigan. It is intended for students who have either struggled to succeed in a mainstream high school or for students who want a smaller school setting with more social-emotional support and a community style education approach.
Avondale Academy currently provides students with a positive educational experience through social-emotional supports to students, mentor groups that reinforce community norms, creativity through art and music endeavors, a mental health peer-to-peer group, project-based learning, and reading and math intervention. All of those things are made possible with teachers.
The board decided: These kids are expendable.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is time for parents and teachers to start challenging the imposition of online instruction in the courts. It is also time for students to protest their treatment by civil disobedience. Students should call the local media and stage a walkout.
Online programs are not equivalent to real human instruction. We have lots of examples of the failure of online programming. If the students in the school are classified EH, emotionally handicapped, there may grounds for a civil rights violation lawsuit. States are struggling after the pandemic. We can expect to see more examples of schools attempting to substitute online learning as an acceptable alternative to traditional human instruction. Online learning will be the future of education if we do nothing.
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“stage a walkout.”
Walk out of what?
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I am assuming they will use the school to warehouse computers and students. If students are to be working at home, how are parents going to be able to work?
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Sorry, I was just noting that since everyone’s shut in their houses, there’s no place to stage a walkout from right now.
But your point here is a good one that underscores the need to open schools in the fall.
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what so many “big idea” people re-imagining school appear not to think about
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There will be MORE mental, emotional, and physical illnesses in Avondale, Michigan depending on how long this lasts and whether or not the kids rebel. If the kids don’t rebel, then … OY … HELP.
Glad this debacle in the making is NOT being thrown down the throats of all students. But, boy do I feel badly for these kids being used as guinea pigs.
Wonder if the parents have to sign a WAIVER, letting the board off the hook for doing “bad” things to the kids.
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“As part of the decision, the Diploma and Careers Institute will provide all Avondale Academy students with their own Chromebook, and a resource center would be open Monday through Thursday, staffed with an adult mentor, for students who need in-person support.”
The students must know this a horrible deal, right? They lost all their teachers and instead will get one part time, low wage monitor.
They were robbed.
Also- it’s a “career academy”. Weren’t we promised that vocational ed would provide “hands on learning”? Instead it will just be another way to rip off students?
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This is why you-all have to open schools in the fall. If you don’t the vultures will be swooping in looking to replace public schools with cheap junk.
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This note made me feel as if I had been hit by a train. . . Kabaam! CBK
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Agreed. I felt sick to my stomach when I read this. It’s been my creepig fear for years that our neediest children, those most expensive to teach, would take the hit first. Special Education students will be next. DeVos & ESSA already allow work-arounds of IDEA’s basic protections. Arne started his degradation of IDEA compliance & monitoring in 2011.
Pandemic is the perfect time to kill government—the golden chance. Revenues are plummeting & taxes are unamerican. This is their big chance. Schools are first; more to come.
They’ve been saying they’d do this since Gingrichs contract for America in 1994.
This is their long game.
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“The board decided: These kids are expendable.”
That’s pretty much it, yeah. And I fear a lot more of this is forthcoming.
What a cynical way to economize! How about instead they get rid of some administrators? The “assistant superintendent” quoted above might be a good position to jettison.
Just sayin’.
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It’s just such a brutal bait and switch. They’re attracted to career training because it’s hands on and then they plunk them in front of a computer. “Hands on”. They lied to them!
Maybe they can switch back to the comprehensive high school that still employs actual human beings.
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I hope so–because I don’t think this method of instruction will produce a particularly bright future for these kids. And that, to say the very least, is, as my students used to say, “some shameful s**t.”
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The US House Education and Labor Committee is taking advice on how to support public schools going forward.
I think we have to make sure they don’t hear exclusively from the ed reform echo chamber, and that a few people who actually work in and support public schools are permitted to speak.
I’m reminded of when the Ohio legislature heard “testimony on public schools” and 14 of the 15 witnesses came from Students First.
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A teacher I know has had an interesting experience with the school program during the covid thing. The school system set up a way for children to do something on-line. Teachers chose modules that were already set up. they consisted of readings and exercises followed by a “mastery test”. Very few children took the opportunity to do anything, but there was this one child who had never done anything. He came to class with his earphones solidly within his skull, never had materials, and had a terrible attitude. What a wonder occurred when the on-line thing began. this kid became a veritable academic warrior, slaying one module after another like wheat falling into the maw of a combine.
Of course you know what was really happening. Either he had figured out a combination to getting all this stuff done without learning anything or someone else was doing it. Already we have many children who choose to get their work done on-line if it is easier on-line. A significant portion of our students will always choose the easiest path. This is what on-line plays to.
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RT: It’s a given . . . children develop, it takes a long time, and they need face-to-fact guidance from another human being that they know gives a hoot–almost daily. In my experience, online learning is good FOR ADULTS who, for instance, work all day and don’t want to drive to school and stay till 10:00, AND who are SELF-MOTIVATED.
But again, such self-motivation emerges with human maturity, but before that, children need a direct, human, well-guided context to get there.
CBK
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CBK: You could not be more right. None of us dislikes the internet. Why else would we be here most days? What we question is its dominance over us.
Sure, adults use on-line learning all the time. I have an old friend who makes certification lessons for EMTs on-line. Works well. But EMTs are not your average students.
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RT: Yes, the biggest oversight in the whole thing is child development. And in my experience, some adults don’t take well to online learning either.
The second-biggest oversight is the intimate relationship between the two institutions: family and education, and that in a larger very-accessible culture (such as it is). The Gates people (and many others) seem to think children arrive at school in an educational vacuum, or as parts on an assembly line. CBK
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I wonder who is getting the contract to supply the software and instructional delivery and what that curriculum will be? Has K-12 Inc. been part of the sales pitch?
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It’s a corporation called DCI that partners with the Avondale school district. We can’t find any info about it…
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Paul Sandy,
If anyone can dig up info on DCI, it’s Laura Chapman.
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Mate. . . and then there’s the children . . . what good are they, anyway? CBK
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We love babies, but love is main evil to mislead us in determining what we truly need. What saves babies from doom is that they are future workforce. This is why we need to prevent abortion. But then the workforce should be raised as cheaply as possible, hence they should pay for their own education, healthcare so that they can do quality work and produce useful (well, sellable) stuff and the future workforce, while the money is piling up for Koch and Gates, reaching a trillion by their 100th birthday.
I wonder what will under their 100th standardized, 6 foot tall Xmas tree.
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