(continued from page 27 - No Going Back from Hybrid and Remote Learning, Districts Say) “Like Peloton,” Baranwal said, referencing the fitness-equipment juggernaut whose exercise instructors livestream workout classes via the tablets mounted on riders’ stationary cycles. So far, Elevate K-12’s footprint is relatively small, with about 700 live classes delivered to roughly 200 schools per day. Baranwal said that figure is up 93 percent from last school year. A little over half the company’s current clients are fully remote, while the rest are mostly hybrid. Among Elevate Teresa Vazquez, a teacher in Fort Wayne, Ind., remotely teaches a Spanish 1 class to students at Monroe High School in Albany, Ga., Courtesy of Elevate K-12 “I think the right mix is the reverse of what we have now,” the superintendent said. “My ideal is when we can have 70 percent of students inperson and 30 percent remote.” San Antonio isn’t alone. Ten percent of district leaders surveyed by the RAND Corporation last fall said they had adopted or were considering a similar hybrid instructional model. Another 19 percent said they were at least considering offering ongoing remote instruction, perhaps to specific subsets of students or to keep all children learning during weather emergencies. To make that vision more feasible, some education leaders are already pushing for state-level policy changes. Since the coronavirus hit, for example, the Texas Education Agency has allowed schools to include remote instruction when calculating student attendance. Martinez is advocating that state officials make that change permanent. “I want that flexibility,” he said, “as long as we can show children are still learning.” Ed-tech entrepreneur Shaily Baranwal believes the nation is weary of remote learning because it too often amounts to little more than kids watching online videos. To rectify that, Elevate K-12 offers districts certified teachers who live all over the country, but run synchronous classes that can be livestreamed anywhere. “Stronger Together!” Page 28 K-12’s power users is the 14,000-student Dougherty County, Ga., public schools, which serves the small city of Albany and its poor, mostly rural surroundings. The district first contracted with Elevate K-12 during the 2017-18 school year, using live certified teachers instead of paraprofessionals or software programs to provide remedial math and reading help to small groups of struggling students. Superintendent Kenneth Dyer was so happy with the results he turned to Elevate K-12 to help solve an even bigger problem. His district employs about 1,000 teachers across 21 schools. But it often started the school year with as many as 50 vacancies. “If everyone could have an effective teacher physically in the classroom at all times, we would certainly prefer that. But that’s not possible in every school system in the country,” Kenneth Dyer, Superintendent, Dougherty County, Ga., Public Schools. In a country that is short an estimated 100,000 teachers or more, that’s a common problem, said Emma García, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. And while clear data on COVID19-related teacher retirements, resignations, and layoffs remain difficult to come by, cratering state budgets offer plenty of reason to believe that shortage is about to get worse. “We know from plenty of previous recessions that after a crisis, there’s a cut in the number education jobs,” García said.
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