COVID-Era North Shore Remote Day School Set To Shut Down Amid Budget Crunch

PEABODY, MA — An innovative district-based learning approach launched in Peabody amid the COVID-19 health crisis is set to close at the end of the school year as the city looks to close a $5.6 million school budget deficit.

Peabody P.R.E.P. (Personalized Remote Education Program) was extended into the 2021-2022 school year as one of only 13 district-run remote academies across the state and survived a series of questions each year about the necessity of a fully remote learning option as the coronavirus crisis waned.

While it remained open, enrollment dwindled among younger grades, with Superintendent Josh Vadala saying on Tuesday night that 109 of the 130 students in the day school were in high school grades.

With its proposed closing, the district would reallocate staff members to other in-person positions in the school while giving students the option to return to classroom learning or attend other regional or state-run virtual learning academies.

Vadala said the district would maintain the night remote program with teachers being paid on a stipend basis — which could also allow day students to attend virtual schooling on a temporary, case-by-case basis.

"I would love to be able to keep the school open," Vadala told the School Committee. "If we have the night program, the school will still be a school. We could maintain the school itself. However, it wouldn't be a full-day program. It would look a little different."

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School Committee member Jarrod Hochman has argued for the virtual school's closure for several years but faced pushback among students who came before the Committee and lobbied for it to stay open as a critical option for them for various personal reasons.

"My feelings on the P.R.E.P. are well-known," he said. "I believe in recovery programs. I believe in night programs. I believe that everyone should have an opportunity, regardless of their circumstances, to receive a high school diploma.

"But I never thought the P.R.E.P. was a good idea. I think kids need to be around kids. I think people need to be around people. We learned that from COVID. We learned about the social-emotional impact that keeping people isolated causes."

When first launched and extended, the local virtual academy was lauded as a setting where many students flourished in the environment and benefited from the flexibility of being able to learn when it was right for them, as opposed to a rigid classroom schedule.

Peabody Executive Director of Remote Learning Christopher Lord told Patch in 2021 that the district's success with remote learning was "a silver lining" to the pandemic, and said that about 800 students chose to remain remote when schools first shifted from hybrid to full in-classroom learning that spring.

School Committee member Beverley Ann Griffin Dunne said anecdotal evidence indicated that bullying concerns — not overriding respiratory illness or other physical issues — were a primary reason that many students remained in the P.R.E.P. in recent years.

"We owe it to everyone to take care of that if it is rising to a level where you've got that many students (there for that reason)," she said. "We have to do something about it."

Vadala said options would be available for those students who, for whatever reason, did not feel comfortable returning to Peabody Public Schools in person.

"We've had kids who have left the virtual school, and have come back, and have been very successful," Vadala said. "We've helped successfully transition students back. We will try to do that as well here. But if it's not something that they want to do, we would support them in whatever decision their family wants to make."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)