iHigh Academy ends for some San Diego Unified students

The San Diego Unified School District is closing its iHigh Academy for middle and high school students. The virtual platform helped hundreds of children learn from home during the pandemic.

The upcoming change has some parents concerned. One is a San Diego mother who only wanted to be identified as “Maria” because she has a restraining order against the father of her three children.

Maria's sons Bobby, 11, Matthew, 10, and Maya, 7, have used their living room as a classroom for over two years. They are children with special needs and San Diego Unified’s iHigh Academy students.

Their mother said it is the safest learning environment, especially for Matthew, who has ongoing medical needs. She said he was depressed while attending school in-person.

"All the time, they were bullying him. So, his self-esteem was very bad. He felt he couldn’t read when he did know how to read. They called him names I never knew of," Maria said in Spanish.

The San Diego Unified Board of Trustees is negotiating options for roughly 300 middle and high school students who remain virtual and would be impacted by the iHigh shutdown.

Those options include passing the teaching responsibilities to neighborhood schools that would then offer independent study programs and hybrid online learning.

Trustee Sharon Whitehurst-Payne said, "The best (option) would be a student could remain at his or her neighborhood school and figure out a way to they can take time off and do (learning) virtually.”

iHigh Academy will continue for about 245 elementary school students who remain for virtual learning in the next school year.

That means Maria"s daughter Maya, diagnosed with autism, can keep learning from home for a couple more years, but her brothers cannot.

“They study at their proper rhythm. For children with special needs, this is completely illogical," Maria said.