Summer school students sent home due to payment glitch

DPS officials say program returns to normal Tuesday

Dozens of Dayton Public Schools summer school students and several teachers were sent home after arriving at school Monday morning, because of a glitch in DPS’ payment to a vendor.

Dayton Public Schools uses Apex Learning’s online curriculum for “credit recovery” to help students who need to make up classes. Associate Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli said DPS’ payment to Apex arrived at their office Friday, but wasn’t processed properly, so the district’s access was shut down.

“They were very apologetic. It didn’t get processed on their end,” Lolli said of a purchase order the parties handled Friday. “Somebody didn’t flip the switch Friday afternoon in Seattle to leave it on.”

Apex officials could not be reached immediately for comment.

Between 50 and 100 students arrived Monday morning at Belmont and Dunbar for their standard 8:30 a.m. start. Lolli said because Seattle is three hours behind, there was no way to immediately reach Apex to fix the problem. So students and about a dozen teachers were sent home.

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Lolli said those summer school sessions will be back to normal on Tuesday morning. The full-day classes at Dunbar and Belmont are supposed to run for another two weeks.

Lolli said Dayton Public Schools has had good success with the Apex summer school program. She said through the first week of July, 37 students either caught up to their grade level or finished graduation requirements.

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