Online learning options added during the pandemic, to some extent, will stick around
Student Abigail Damielson types on a computer at Pleasant Grove High School on Friday, Nov. 22, 2019, in Pleasant Grove.
A Weber School District student completes coursework at home on a school-issued Chromebook on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020.
As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened last summer and hopes of it ending before the 2020-21 school year dimmed, local districts scrambled to expand online instruction as parents considered whether they would send their students back for in-person classes.
One year later, as cases decline and most schools throughout Utah are planning for a maskless, fully in-person return next fall, much of the growth necessitated by the pandemic is sticking around in local school districts. And for many, it has transformed their approach to online learning.
Both the Weber and Ogden school districts offered online courses to high school students long before the the coronavirus was even a concern, and Davis School District had virtual options for all grade levels. But after Gov. Gary Herbert closed schools last spring and COVID-19 became a growing threat to school safety, each district was forced to consider doing more to avoid drastic drops in enrollment.
Statewide, the number of students enrolled in the public school system went down by just a fraction of a percent during the 2020-21 school year. But in local school districts, the loss of students was much larger — 1.2% in Weber, 3.1% in Davis and 7.4% in Ogden.
Much of the decline in public school districts was likely due to parents sending their students to charter schools with more online learning options or, in some cases, more opportunities for in-person instruction. The Utah State Board of Education, in a press release announcing the numbers, also noted that “public school exit codes for students showed a decided upturn in both home schooling options for younger children and a larger than normal migration to private school options.”
Each district, according to what it already had available, varied in how it responded to the demand for online options.
Ogden School District created the stand-alone Ogden Online Elementary School, as well as expanded the online offerings to junior high and high school students. They had the option of enrolling full or part time in Ogden Online Secondary, according to Assistant Superintendent Chad Carpenter.
In 2020, the Weber School District also set out to establish an online alternative school for all students, from kindergarten to 12th grade. That school, an expansion of Weber Online, launched during the second quarter of the academic year.
Expanding students’ online options was already a plan for Davis School District, which previously offered online schooling options to everyone. The pandemic did, however, expedite the district’s intentions to increase Davis Connect’s capacity.
“Those are goals we had as a school district,” said Ryan Hansen, the district’s director of digital learning. “It’s just that the pandemic put us in a pressure cooker, if you will, and we had to polish those up a lot faster.”
Hansen said the district lifted previously existing caps on elementary online enrollment in November 2019. Then, as the pandemic hit, the school’s biggest challenge became accommodating a registration boom. The elementary portion of Davis Connect went from having 150 students to 3,100 enrolled before the end of September 2020, according to Hansen.
The district also increased the number of courses available to secondary students — by the second semester, numerous advanced placement and concurrent enrollment courses were accessible remotely. And it changed its structure to allow secondary students to create a more flexible schedule for themselves. Unlike before, students could remain enrolled at their traditional school while taking a significant portion of their classes online.
All of the districts, as programs evolved and grew, found themselves hiring new teachers dedicated to their respective online schools.
“This year, we were purposeful in not asking elementary teachers to teach both in-person instruction as well as students online,” Carpenter said. “We felt it was important to have dedicated teachers for both learning environments as opposed to doubling the load of our teachers, and we anticipate that practice will continue next year as well.”
In secondary courses, some teachers at traditional schools were able to take on multiple roles as they instructed both online and in-person classes. With massive class sizes, though, that task was impossible for elementary school teachers. Weber School District capped elementary classes at 150 while secondary classes were generally limited to 70 students.
Across the board, many caps that were in place had to be lifted or new accommodations were made to meet the high demand for online classes.
Davis School District saw a more than 1,500% increase in the number of secondary classes taken online as students went from participating in 3,000 at any given time to about 47,000, Hansen said. Davis Connect, at its high-water mark in October, had a total of 6,100 K-12 students enrolled.
“We think it was the largest school in the state,” Hansen said.
There are now approximately 2,400 elementary students in Davis Connect — a reduction from its highest of 3,100 — and significantly fewer secondary students, as many have opted to craft a hybrid schedule.
Currently, there are 571 elementary students enrolled in Ogden Online Elementary School and another 226 full-time online students in Ogden Online Secondary, Carpenter said. According to enrollment data from the state school board, both of those numbers have declined since the beginning of the school year when 860 elementary students and 609 secondary students were participating in Ogden Online.
In a district of about 11,000, those numbers are significant as the elementary school surpasses the student body of the largest elementary school in the district, which is Shadow Valley with 557.
The Weber School District technology director did not immediately respond with up-to-date information on Weber Online.
The future of virtual
With the coming and anticipated going of the pandemic, many of the online expansions adopted by local districts are here to stay. The extent to which they continue, though, largely depends on whether there is a sustained interest in remote learning.
“Most of our parents in that program now or in those schools are still waiting to see,” Hansen said, referencing the results of a survey sent out to parents.
Although going into next year many parents are still undecided, Davis, Ogden and Weber school districts have all opened up registration for their online schools, with some holding a kindergarten roundup for new students they expect to enter the program.
“While some families elected to participate in online learning this year due to concerns related to COVID-19, we recognize that online learning continues to be a desired option for many additional reasons,” read an email from the Ogden School District notifying parents that it had opened registration for the elementary portion of Ogden Online.
Parents have numerous motives for continuing to enroll their children in online schools — convenience, flexibility, a greater ability to participate in their child’s education and, as many have expressed in online parent groups, a sustained concern for their child’s health.
In one local parent group, Keep Hybrid for DSD — a group that fought to keep the Davis School District on the online, in-person hybrid schedule that it started the year with — there have been multiple discussions about whether parents will send their children to traditional schools next year. When the Davis School District Board of Education voted to transition to a four-day in-person schedule, some of the parents in that group pulled their students out of their physical schools and enrolled them in Davis Connect.
“I am planning to keep both of my kids online in August,” wrote one parent, Taylor Andrews, in the group. “I am concerned about the (COVID-19) variants and flu season.”
Another parent, Wendy Connors, wrote, “We’ve been with Davis Connect this year. We are planning to do part time at the local school and part online next school year. I love the flexibility to make the schedules work for our kids.”
Hansen said he anticipates 500-1,000 children registering for the elementary portion of Davis Connect — a significant increase from pre-pandemic numbers. He expects the number of secondary students taking classes online will stay the same or increase, as the number signing up for online summer classes is on the rise. Going into next year, Davis Connect has been staffed accordingly.
Weber School District has continued registering students in all grades for Weber Online, though the level of interest in the school is unclear. Carpenter said while not all of the online learning options have been finalized, the Ogden School District anticipates it will continue to provide virtual learning options for elementary and high school students.
“We are in the process of reviewing secondary online course requests and applications for Ogden Online Elementary School,” Carpenter said. “Initial reports indicate a substantial decrease in the desire for full-time online learning, but we will continue to monitor interests and other data points before making any final decisions for what virtual learning will look like next year.”
As his district continues its online alternative school and adds more secondary courses, Hansen is excited to see how the new, innovative ways students are learning will impact their future. The skills he’s seen students develop over the course of the last year, he said, are some not mastered by any cohort before them.
“Kids this year have learned in a completely different way than what has happened in the previous century of education, and I think the tools they picked up while doing that will change the way they interact with the world forever,” Hansen said.