A state initiative intended to help underserved students recover from pandemic learning loss has become a flashpoint in Akron, with local teachers’ unions across the state opposed to the use of state dollars to pay private tutors.
The issue came to a head this week as the Akron Education Association filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to stop the Akron Public Schools from using $156,000 in state funds to hire Varsity Tutors, a Missouri company, to teach students in online sessions after school. The same day, in a 5-2 vote, the school board rejected Superintendent Michael Robinson’s suggestion that the board rescind its vote to approve the contract with Varsity Tutors.
Board Member Rene Molenaur, who voted against the contract Jan. 8 and was in favor of rescinding it this week, said she has a number of concerns about the arrangement — namely, that the state is putting public tax dollars into a private company.
“They could have just given us $200,000,” she said.
Derrick Hall, the former school board president, said the contract had been on the agenda twice in the fall but had been pulled from consideration after he questioned whether the agreement was in line with the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
“I shared those concerns,” he said. “The superintendent heard those concerns.”
He added that the administration was supposed to talk to the union about the issue and he was told it wasn’t brought back last year because “the superintendent didn’t feel it was ready.”
A spokesperson for Robinson, the superintendent, said he would not speak to the contract. The AEA president, Pat Shipe, didn’t return a phone call seeking comment about the earlier talks.
In addition to filing for an injunction, Shipe filed a grievance last week regarding the contract. She said previously she also plans to file an unfair labor practice complaint with the state over the outside hiring of tutors who she said should be subject to the union agreement.
Shipe’s concerns with the tutoring program are felt statewide, said Paul Palomba, co-chair of the Ohio 8 Coalition, a consortium of the state’s nine urban school districts.
Palomba, who is also president of the Canton Professional Educators Association, said no other major district in the state has taken the money for outside tutors. He said union members should be doing the tutoring work.
“Labor does not support that in any form,” he said. “It’s a violation of the contract.”
High-dosage tutoring
The state’s program is funded with $26.1 million from the federal Governor’s Emergency Education Relief fund and is a new offering this academic year. It follows the 2022 approval by the state legislature of high-quality tutoring programs to accelerate learning for those who need additional help, particularly in reading and math. Additionally, information from the State Education & Workforce Department states districts received more than $6.8 billion in pandemic relief funds that could be used for tutoring or other programs.
The State Education & Workforce Department, in announcing the program, pointed to research about the effects of high-dosage tutoring — defined as tutoring that takes place more than three days a week. An analysis of 96 independent studies on tutoring, conducted by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, showed a “large and statistically significant effect on learning outcomes.” It also showed that tutoring was most effective when it was done in school, not after school, and was led by teachers or paraprofessional tutors.
In opening applications for its available funds, the education department said participants had to use one of six vetted tutoring companies — Varsity Tutors among them — to do the work. Elsewhere on its website and in the bill creating the vetting process, the state says, “No school district or school shall be required to use a tutoring program on the list unless participating in a grant program or funding opportunity for which it is required.”`
Palomba said he knows the state is paying for the program, but the money is still going to a private entity.
“You have people already employed by the district,” he said. “I believe the state has it all wrong. Why not allocate money to the district? Why not keep private money out of it? If the state wants to provide aid, we would stand up, cheer and applaud.”
Varsity Tutors is second choice – in-person, after-school tutoring is preferred to maximize benefit
Akron applied for two tutoring programs — Varsity Tutors was its second choice. The first was with a company called Amplify, which also would have offered online tutoring. Akron Public Schools has used high-dosage tutoring for the past two years, the district said in its application, so it wouldn’t be new for teachers. But not all students with a reading improvement monitoring plan had gotten access to the intensive tutoring program.
In fact, the application said, nearly 3,500 students in Kindergarten through third grade were on a reading improvement monitoring plan. In some schools, more than 70% of students in a grade needed support.
The district asked for 4,118 tutoring seats to begin in October; it was awarded 2,400 with Varsity Tutors. A spokesperson for the company said executives there would not comment on the injunction request or the board’s decision to consider rescinding its vote on the contract.
In a text message, Akron Public Schools spokesperson Mark Williamson said the district originally intended to start offering tutoring in October, so it could be completed by winter break. The district soon realized scheduling students for the tutoring program during the school day would mean they would be pulled from other tutoring or intervention programs.
“But, our conversations with AEA were not supportive, so we asked for more time to figure out a plan to implement outside the school day,” Williamson said. “We shifted our focus to after school so that students would still get the full benefit from our current instructional program. The thought was after school would be an additional layer.”
Molenaur, the school board member, said the benefits between in-person and online learning are stark. She questioned whether online tutoring would be helpful for students, noting the different experiences her Kindergarten and third grade children have had with the same Kindergarten teacher — now in person, then online.
Her son’s Kindergarten teacher is sending home two books a day, tied to his interests, to help with his reading, she said. That was impossible when instruction was online.
“This is supposed to be helping the students who missed valuable experiences due to remote learning,” Molenaur said. “It doesn’t make sense to me remote learning would fix that.”
Board members said on Monday they were open to taking another vote next week about whether to rescind the contract approval. They have a retreat scheduled for Saturday, where they could decide to vote again on the superintendent’s recommendation to rescind the previous approval.
Molenaur said she’s looking forward to the discussion, and to getting more information.
“We all want to do what we think is best,” she said.