ECOT closure leaves Valley students scrambling

Friday was the final day of classes for the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, also known as "ECOT." Ohio's largest online charter school is closing down after losing its sponsor, leaving thousands of students scrambling.

For the Earl family in Leavittsburg, it's reluctantly onto Plan B.

Don Earl's kids enrolled in ECOT more than six years ago. His family loved the experience: a chance to get high school and college credits during the kids' teenage years. Today, it's all over in the middle of the school year.

"I'm very angry," said Don. "It became a matter of dollar and sense and nobody cares about the kids. ECOT has over 12,000 students who don't have a classroom now."

Don's daughter Makennah is in eleventh grade, Brooke is in ninth. They've made friends through ECOT, friends that just like them found out in an email last week that they'd probably have to switch schools.

"We weren't sure if we were going to be cut of last week or this week or next week," said Makennah. "So just trying to figure out how much school work we had to do and how to transfer over, and how they were going to send the transcripts over, and if we were even going to be accepted to another school in the middle of the year."

About a week ago, they started scrambling; trying to find a program that was not only available, but one that met their needs as well.

"We just all sat down and we started looking up schools, looking for programs. We had to keep calling the schools, asking them questions," said Brooke. "Then we had to call other schools and our college to make sure everything would transition over. So it was a lot of work."

"We tried to be prepared for it when all the legal battles started," said Don. "My wife and I were trying to get everything set so we could try and try and transition as easy as we can, but it's still a major pain."

A pain the Earl family is hoping, all works out in the end. The kids will switch to Mahoning Unlimited next week, the beginning of a new chapter online.