S. Covert, Gahanna

I want to say thank you for this website as a way of getting info out about schools whether they are public or charter and brick and mortar or online. I appreciate it. There is a need for variety for the public (customers) to pick from when considering where their students will attend school. This website will help when parents consider what is best for their situation.
My experience with the online charter school E.C.O.T. was not good as far as my niece being able to attend live classes with her teachers. The teachers, however, were great and showed they really cared about the students and I feel the school work was what it should be.
The real problem dealt with connectivity issues to their main website that I believe hindered thousands of students to attend their live classes online. E.C.O.T. has about 13,000 students and is one of the largest online schools in the state and I believe their system was overloaded. My niece was unable to attend school, that is, live classes at least two days a week and sometimes three. My understanding is the school was having issues with their provider Time Warner. The issues were never resolved and lasted the entire 4th quarter of the 2012-2013 school years. I complained to ODE, the schools sponsor and the school with no avail. They turned my complaint of IT issues into an issue of my niece’s capability to attend an online school. The IT department kept saying it was my computer that was the problem and they were very rude. The classes were to be recorded for students to be able to refer to but the recordings didn’t work and the classes were lost. After my niece was registered is when we were told she had to be signed in between 9am to 2pm everyday so they are falsely advertising being able to go to school to fit your schedule.
I believe the IT connection issues mean they are committing attendance fraud if they are getting paid for students who can’t attend live classes. Also I would like to see them give back at least the 25% of the 88M they received for that school year which would be 22M.