There was an explosion of interest in remote and online learning this year thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.
The year started with 9,000 students enrolling in Volusia Online Learning and another 16,000 opting for Volusia Live. By March, more than half of those students were back in face-to-face schooling: Volusia Online Learning had 4,000 students and Volusia Live had 7,000.
But Volusia Live was developed quickly out of lessons learned from remote schooling at the end of the 2019-2020 school year and posed many problems.
Teachers complained about constantly shifting rosters, technological challenges and the hefty task of teaching two groups of students at once. Students' grades slipped, prompting the district to ask that many students return to in-person learning (in turn, exacerbating the challenges teachers were already dealing with).