(continued from page 27 - No Going Back from Hybrid and Remote Learning, Districts Say) calculating student attendance. Martinez is advocating that state offi cials make that change permanent. “I want that fl exibility,” 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 off ers districts certifi ed teachers who live all over the country, but run synchronous classes that can be livestreamed anywhere. “Like Peloton,” Baranwal said, referencing the fi tness-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 fi gure 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 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 fi rst contracted with Elevate K-12 during the 2017-18 school year, using live certifi ed 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 “Stronger Together!” Page 28 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 eff ective 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 COVID-19-related teacher retirements, resignations, and layoff s remain diffi cult to come by, cratering state budgets off er 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. Dyer cautioned against hiring third-party instructors as a cost-saving measure. His district now pays Elevate K-12 for 15 remote teachers, most of whom are live-streamed onto large-screen televisions in physical classrooms that students attend in person. The district saves some money, because it doesn’t have to provide benefi ts to the teachers. But there are also added costs, Dyer said, such as paying paraprofessionals to help with classroom management when a physical teacher isn’t present. That fi ts with advice from García and other experts, who stressed that no matter what
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