PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Pittsfield Public Virtual Academy will remain in place, at least through fiscal 2023 through the use of ESSER III funds. 

 

The School Committee approved the second of three proposals on Wednesday based on the recommendation of Superintendent Joseph Curtis. 

 

This configuration will serve 215 students in Grades 1-12 (with some combination of grades). This will require 21 full-time equivalent staff positions at a cost of $1.75 million. 

 

The first proposal would have served 235 students in K-12 at a cost of $2.4 million; option three would have been 175 students in Grades 6-12 for $1.5 million.

 

The School Department will use Elementary and Secondary Education Emergency Relief funds, a grant program through the federal American Rescue Plan Act. If the School Committee had voted to discontinue the academy, the funds would have been put toward counselors and interventions within the district.

 

The PPVA gives students the same learning opportunities as students attending in-person but makes education more accessible. 

 

Teachers, students, parents, and guardians commented on Wednesday of the effectiveness the academy had on students' academics and mental health, especially marginalized populations. 

 

Substitute teacher Michael Vincent Bushy explained that although it takes three years to get academic results, educators are already noticing the social emotional benefits. 

 

"Students feel 24 percent safer than their peers at the secondary level. Specifically and markedly they feel 40 percent less likely to be disrespected, 24 percent less worried about violence and tellingly, in the area most likely to threaten a virtual population, 90 percent of the PPVA secondary students feel safe from cyber bullying, that's 19 percent higher than the district average," Bushy said.  

 

She demonstrated that some of the marginalized populations experienced benefits beyond the mainstream population. 

 

"Special ed students are showing enthusiasm for classes ranging from 6 to a staggering 41 percent above the other district secondary schools," she said. "African American students who make up 3 percent more of the PPVA population than the district average also feel a heightened sense of belonging ... So virtual learning is not going to disappear."

 

The next year of the academy is being considered as a transitional year and the School Committee charged the administration to develop a hybrid model that would impact students and help families while still being financially sustainable and aligning with the district's long-term strategic plan. 

 

"During the 2022-2023 school year, the Central Office, school leadership, and staff will collaborate with stakeholders of existing programs such as the PPVA, Learning Labs, POPs Program, and Dropout Prevention Program to develop a hybrid model that is impactful to students and financial sustainability," Curis said.  

 

Parents and guardians gave their personal experiences on how the program has affected their families. They found that this model of teaching helped students, particularly those with a history of behavioral issues, manage their social skills.   

 

"I've come here tonight to thank the staff at the PPVA for all they've done for my granddaughter in the last 18 months," one guardian said. "Through their efforts, they've taken a student who has a class and behavioral issue, and one who didn't, who appeared to have a strong disinterest in school in any of the learning that goes along with it — they turned her into an honor student." 

 

Students with a history of social anxiety have also found the PPVA form of teaching to be effective as it creates an atmosphere where they feel safe and can thrive. One speaker mentioned her fear of losing PPVA because of how much it helped her niece with social anxiety and believed that her returning would lead to the student committing suicide. 

 

"Last month, I heard so many different things about how the money could go better here, could go better there. But we were discarding the students that are in PPVA. As if they were just going to go back to brick and mortar and be fine," she said. "But I'm here to tell you, my niece will never go back to brick and mortar, she will not be fine. If she went back to brick and mortar, she would probably end up committing suicide and I am not exaggerating."

 

Bushy also demonstrated the idea that PPVA creates a safe environment for students with mental illness. 

 

"Virtual learning could be a safe environment for students with anxiety disorders or mental illnesses that right now just do not excel in a large classroom setting," she said. "But through the virtual setting, they could keep their academics up and possibly be able to start interacting with others within what they can may consider to be a safe zone."

 

One parent mentioned how her son is learning skills in a way that he otherwise would not have learned in the school building. 

 

"I can attribute this fact that the PPVA allowed him to learn how he learns, not just how taught. He has learned that he does well when he just hears teachers teaching but understands better sometimes when he can read it aloud to himself," she said. "He has learned time management skills, organizational skills, responsibility, among other things that he would not have gotten the same way in brick and mortar."

 

One speaker mentioned the range of possibilities PPVA brings to students and teachers. It gives ill students and teachers a way to learn or teach without being present in the classroom and could increase the number of students in the district by including home school students.  

 

"Teachers who need extended leave, maybe instead of leaving, they can be offered to transfer to PPVA temporarily. Early retirements due to injury or illnesses possibly transfers to PPA. Obviously that's a teachers union discussion, not for us," she said. "Perhaps home schoolers can be brought back into the district with the collaboration of PPVA and homeschooling organizations, you can homeschool, you could probably make a rather good Zoom class helper."

 

The district has applied for a grant that would allow PPVA students to be offered Advanced Placement courses through the virtual high school.

 

If a student chooses to do so, PPVA will help transition them back to the mainstream. The schools are also looking into setting up a referral process that would help students transition into PPVA.

 

Bushy argued that PPVA will put Pittsfield into the "cutting edge of a whole new educational frontier" and that it would be a detrimental to throw away all the knowledge that they have learned through the experience the past two years.  

 

"The idea that academic growth and personal development cannot exist in a virtual setting is a prejudice that persists only because we allow it to that sort of narrow thinking constricts the growth of our community, and mostly falls on our students who will suffer for it," Bushy said. 

 

"And we all like to talk about new ideas all the time. Well, this is a new idea staring us right in the face. We only need to be bold enough to commit to nurturing it instead of stuffing it out in its infancy along with the academic hopes of a small but no less important population students."tion students."