A new online public school is set to launch in Ohio for the upcoming academic year, and officials are aiming to assist as many students as possible to get back on track with their education.
Ohio Digital Learning School is seeking students in grades 9-12 between 16 and 21 years old who now reside in Ohio. The tuition-free charter school is authorized by the Ohio Council of Community Schools and will serve as a dropout prevention and recovery center.
Interim head of school Elizabeth Roth said the school is targeting students who dropped out of high school or are at risk of dropping out from their current institution.
“We’re going to offer a high level of academic and emotional support for our students,” Ms. Roth said. “We’re really targeting and serving those students that initially have been underserved.”
Ms. Roth said the school will offer credit-recovery classes, support programs, and individualized learning programs to address strengths and weaknesses of each student. The curriculum promises to be interactive.
There will also be a college and career-planning component.
Ms. Roth said ODLS is hiring only Ohio-certified teachers. About 20 will be hired, with eight focused on special education.
“We’re looking for folks who have experience working with an opportunity youth population that have a strong background in serving high school students so we can really individualize their learning throughout the time they’re with us,” Ms. Roth said.
Teachers will regularly interact with students and parents through email, web-based classrooms, and online discussion.
Ms. Roth said a full-time head of school will be hired before classes start in August. She said that person will function more like a superintendent than a principal.
Students at every grade level will be encouraged to connect with their peers through school-sponsored activities, including online recognition assemblies and clubs, community outings, and student leadership opportunities.
“As research shows, if the student has a connection with more than one person within the school, the likelihood they succeed and stay in school is much higher,” Ms. Roth said. “Our teachers will be providing live instruction as well as offering opportunities to meet with students outside live instructional sessions. We will also have our student counselors meet with our students on a monthly basis.”
According to the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, about 14,000 Ohio charter school students — or 12 percent — are in the dropout prevention and recovery charter system. The Ohio Council of Community Schools operates 42 brick-and-mortar schools, including six in Toledo, and four virtual schools.
The council is based in Toledo and was previously affiliated with the University of Toledo.
ODLS is launching in the wake of the failure of what was once Ohio’s largest online charter school: Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, which was also sponsored by a Toledo-area entity.
At its height, ECOT enrolled 12,000 students who left brick-and-mortar classrooms for a fully online experience. The school was designed to serve students who couldn’t thrive in a traditional setting, but the enterprise was criticized for a graduation rate that dipped below 40 percent and poor attendance.
The latter ultimately doomed the school when the state determined ECOT administrators couldn’t account for all the students it had claimed for taxpayer funding. In front of the Ohio Supreme Court, ECOT argued the Department of Education had suddenly changed the way it calculated enrollment based on the number of hours students spent logged into its system. The court ruled in favor of the state.
The embattled school kept operating until it could no longer afford to once the state set out to recoup millions for inflated student enrollment figures provided to the state Department of Education. $879,000 settlement from the millions it received in sponsorship fees.
Eventually the Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West, the Toledo-based sponsor of ECOT, agreed to pay the state an $879,000 settlement from the millions from those sponsorship fees.
A lawsuit, filed last year by Mike DeWine, then-attorney general and now governor, seeks to collect a still outstanding $62 million from ECOT founder William Lager and two affiliated entities, Altair Learning Management and IQ Innovations, seeking revenues they had received through their association with the school.
Lake Erie West was not sued.
First Published July 16, 2019, 5:10 p.m.
