Numbers down as Leading Edge starts school in class, online

 

While other public schools in Maricopa started the new academic year online weeks ago, Leading Edge Academy opened its doors Monday.

About half of its enrolled students were in classroom seats while the other half started their schooling online. Principal Mat Reese said there were 295 students on campus and 298 online. Normally, the charter school has enrollment around 750.

The lower number was a circumstance that happened in other schools in the community as they started only online.

“We were down 46 in seats from people who said they were going to show, and we were down 121 online,” Reese said.

Leading Edge has a network of six schools in the East Valley, one of which was already an all-online format, and they all coordinated the Aug. 17 opening.

“I thought in-seat went extremely well,” Reese said. “The class sizes were extremely low.”

To mitigate and screen for COVID-19, students on campus were temperature-checked at the door. Each classroom, which normally has 25 desks, had 10 removed, and students were kept separated. The largest class was a third-grade room with 15 students. All students wore masks, too.

Lunch was eaten in the classroom. Art and music teachers came to the home classrooms. Kids kept their face masks on for PE.

Unlike the spring online experience in which students were supplied with resources and a device, the school has a specific online program. On Day 1, there were network problems.

“A lot of parents had difficulties logging in today,” Reese said Monday. “We just need to take care of some issues, and that’s what we’re looking at, trying to get things squared away. It’s a challenge.”

The lower number of students, he thinks, can be attributed to parents seeking out alternative online schools. He believes several parents are keeping their kindergarteners home. The school usually has four classes of kindergartners but currently has only three.

Keeping children home to attend an online school has its own issues. Reese said parents of children in kindergarten through third grade “almost have to be online with them. And that’s the challenge. We all learned that in March, April and May,” he said. “We had to learn an awful lot of stuff.”

Reese thinks parents who elected to go with an online school will soon realize they don’t want to be schoolteachers and send their kids back to school.

The online program at Leading Edge for the new year requires students to be logged in 240 minutes to be counted present. That level of accountability was not part of the spring experience.

“What was happening was some teachers did a fairly good job in March, April and May. However, some just did not do a very good job,” Reese said. “Kids were not prepared for it.”

But there is still a challenge to verify children’s attendance for those four hours.

Leading Edge also opened its new brick-and-mortar high school. For the past couple of years, the charter, which had been K-8, started an online program for high school-aged students. This year, it completed construction of a small high school building.

“We usually have 50-75 online. Now we actually bring the kids in, and they’re able to come into a bigger room and they actually get help if they need it,” Reese said. “It’s not like these other programs where the kids are at home, and they get stuck and don’t call anyone. Then the poor kids don’t get credit. We really pride ourselves in helping those kids.”

Because in-seat and online students are not having the same experience, staff will make two videos a day of math and English/Language Arts class to send to the online students, “so they have a little bit of connection with the rest of the classroom.”

Early days means glitches, unanticipated complications and lots of questions. With social distancing required, Reese does not see any classroom accommodating more than 16 students. That limits the number of students Leading Edge can bring back to campus.

About half of the staff – including Reese – have underlying health conditions, making them vulnerable in this time of pandemic.

“This is my 47th year in the business,” Reese said. “In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d be involved in something like this.”

Legacy Traditional School, a nearby charter, expects to be able to allow children back on campus Aug. 24. They may continue to learn online at home if families wish. Heritage Academy expects to bring students back to campus Sept. 9.