Digital Academy of Florida

"I’d give it zero stars if I could. From a horrible enrollment experience to very little communication on picking classes for a high schooler and lack of response from guidance counselors to now threats to kick my student out who is struggling. This is not a public school. It’s a joke! They want to enforce Hendry county rules about requiring a school physical to stay enrolled (ridiculous given it’s virtual school) then they want to be able to kick kids out who are struggling. Have you heard of kicking a child out of school for their grades - a public school? I think that is to provide inflated numbers to keep their funding. None of them know how to communicate that are in administration. The guidance counselors are less than helpful. The teachers try to help but when I explain my student is struggling and the school is threatening us, I’m asked what plan they suggested we put in place or supports and I respond with the fact that the school didn’t offer any help or plan or support - just a threat and some ridiculous contract. Do yourself a favor - go elsewhere. My son is doing poorly because the classes are boring, the curriculum is boring, and he didn’t get a chance to even pick his classes ahead of time. Absolutely horrible experience and school. I seriously regret even giving it a chance."

"Horrible horrible horrible. My daughter was wrongfully unenrolled the day before school started. Then they took over a week to get her back into school and the whole time the teachers were not made aware she was not going to be starting so they continued to give her zeros on all assignments. I then get her back into the school and the 8th grade counselor refuses to contact me back and this is an issue because she was put in two wrong classes. 6 emails and several calls later I decided I was done and tried to withdraw my daughter from the school. Took them over a week to put it in to the teachers and her grades dropped again. I again tried to reach the counselor but apparently she is way to busy to help parents of 8th grades. I would never recommend this school to anyone."

"Our family moved from Colorado where our youngest attended Destinations Career Academy, which is part of K-12 and is connected to schools around the U.S. When we arrived here we settled on the Digital Academy of Florida. Our experience was disappointing at best, during the registration process we would upload the required documents, just to continually receive emails saying we hadn't completed it yet. Our son who worked very hard was only required to complete 1.5 credit hours to graduate, but was told according to Florida standards he was required to take seven classes, per semester, regardless of the amount necessary to graduate. Busy work that took up valuable time he could have been doing other things like further college courses. At this time they did not recognized dual enrollment, so he was not receiving the college credit he earned for his Biology college courses through Destinations Career Academy and Northwestern Junior College, or for that matter his well earned Weighted GPA. Digital Academy did have the same issues as the last school with teachers sending emails to the entire class regarding missing work, so even if your child turned in something on time, the parents were still sent an email about missing work. Then, they would enter something as missing to show what their grade would be if they didn't complete an assignment, which wasn't due yet. I don't think they understand the amount of stress this causes in a family due to constantly receiving these emails. The counsellor would set appointments and not connect with us and then reschedule. Then when we did receive contact she did not do her research and always claimed he needed to take a certain class, which was already completed earlier in his high school career. In the end, our son was required to complete 24 credits and ended with 29.25 credits. He finished with better than a 4.1 Weighted G.P.A. and was part of the National Society for High School Scholars. At the end of the school year we were told he needed to log in, every day, regardless if his classes were completed as a Senior and would do it both on his phone and on the computer, but still received emails saying he was not logging in. He sent them his history showing the log-ins, but was told the times he did it on his phone didn't count, then was informed later on he didn't have to log in because Senior classes were over. Our son was probably in the top 5% of his class and not the Valedictorian or Salutatorian; however, I did find it disturbing they didn't allow either one of them to speak during the ceremony, but allowed Representative Jennifer Canaday to use this platform to boast about herself while using quotes from Dolly Parton. Ms. Canaday claimed to be "honored" to be there, but ducked out after her speech. Typical behavior for a politician all the while robbing the top of their class from their right to speak about their trials and future. Why are people so afraid to allow people the right to speak? I served in the Army for everyone to have that right, especially those who would be prevented from doing so. You would think an online school would be better equipped to handle being online. Not to mention not allowing the children to have opportunities to connect with their fellow classmates. The only time our son was given this opportunity was to the Everglades, but it turned out to be a virtual field trip. What a joke! Additional: Here we are 3 days from the next school year's start date and the transcript he requested, digitally, has not arrived, which he requested 4-6 weeks ago, preventing him from completing his college enrollment, or enlisting in the military. What a joke! Do not enroll in this farce of a school!"

"Absolutely horrible, do not send your kids here. So bad I'm getting a lawyer"

"I just graduated and went to the graduation ceremony and they lost my diploma. They haven’t responded to any of my emails won’t send my official transcripts to a college so I can enroll I can’t contact anyone or go to a physical location. I don’t know what to do it’s like I never went here because now they’ve unenrolled me so i can’t access the school portal, or access my school email to try and contact the useless administrators of this lousy school."