By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Brandon Learn From Home will have a few changes next school year.
“Currently we have 130 students, and that includes Summit, and a majority of those are Brandon Learn From Home with Brandon teachers,” said superintendent Dr. Karl Heidrich. “Enrollment is much lower than we had in the past, we went from 6-700 students to 130 now. It’s spread out pretty equally across the grade levels.”
The changes for next year vary by grade level. In addition, the school will be looking for a new BLFH principal since David Wyatt resigned.
“We wish Mr. Wyatt the best,” said Heidrich. “We don’t anticipate significant changes at the elementary level, but we are looking at multi-grade classes. So, for example, we keep the program the same, but we add a K-1 teacher. So we have synchronistic instruction from the beginning of the school day to the end of the school day for those children, and no changes in how we teach them, they would just be in a multi-grade format due to low enrollment.”
Those would be the only changes at the elementary level, but for secondary grade levels, there would be a bigger change.
“We would be moving towards an Edmentum style course,” said Heidrich. “And we would assign those core courses to middle schoolers and high schoolers and we would have support from Brandon teachers in all the core areas and opportunities for mentoring, coaching and checking in on students.”
Edmentum is an online vendor for school classes, and students will follow a class schedule with their assigned BLFH teachers to check in.
“So that’s a little more change than the elementary, but we will still be offering Brandon School District support, and it’s still more than districts around us are doing,” he said. “We’re pleased to still be able to offer more than those around us.”