‘Bison Online’ Brings New Challenges in its Pilot Year

The 2025-2026 school year is just getting started, and with it, a big change for some Buffalo High School students and teachers. For the first time, BHS is offering online classes taught by district staff members through the platform ‘Bison Online’. 

Students in Bison Online choose to take online classes for a variety of reasons. Learning online can allow for more opportunities for self-paced learning, free time, and flexibility.

“I chose to do online school because it worked well with my work schedule and I prefer to do my homework on my own time rather than having to sit in a classroom all day and do it at a set time,” Olivia Jerome ‘26 said.

While many students are thrilled about this new addition to BHS, it presents the question of how effective learning online is and whether it is the best option for students and teachers alike. 

Many teachers are very optimistic about how the new school year has been going so far. However, there can be many key differences when students take classes online. Rebecca Karna, a business teacher at BHS, feels that the content covered online is very similar, but the delivery is different.

“When you’re online, you take out the experiential portion of it: speakers, the group projects, the experiences, examples that teachers can bring into it, and other students… but it’s still going to meet all of the standards that they need to accomplish,” Karna said.

BHS history teacher Craig Lachowitzer expressed similar feelings, adding that online school is going very smoothly so far, but it can make it harder to gauge actual understanding.

“It appears at first glance that they are able to learn very well, similar to my in-class students,” said Lachowitzer. “But again, I don’t get to do the frequent check-ins with them individually and ask them questions to really see if they understand it like I would be able to do if they were in front of me in the classroom.”

Learning online does seem to have similar outcomes so far. However, it could open the door to more use of artificial intelligence, which could have long-term implications for student progress.

“There is also the fact that for the online classes, a lot of the information could be right at your fingertips, online chat, on ChatGPT, things like that,” said Lachowitzer. “And then in the end, if they’re just using that to get through the course, are they really learning anything or not?”

Despite potential concerns about the integrity of online schooling, the program seems to be going very well so far. With higher student interest in online learning, Bison Online has proven to be very welcoming to those who prefer a non-traditional learning environment.