By Erica Wright
The Birmingham Times
When the U.S. shut down last March, Birmingham City Schools (BCS) quickly transitioned to virtual learning with seven weeks left in the academic year.
“What we realized was that many of our students did not have the devices or internet access needed for us to provide instruction in a digital way,” said BCS Superintendent Mark Sullivan, EdD. “Not only that, but we had not really trained our teachers on many of the digital platforms we were using because no one could have predicted where we would be.”
The system began to make immediate adjustments, said Sullivan, who was named permanent superintendent on Aug. 31, 2020. He had been the school system’s acting chief since April 2020, shortly after the pandemic began to cause major disruption.