CITY OF NEWBURGH — The Newburgh school district does not intend to go back to using the controversial online-credit recovery program at the center of a recent grand jury investigation, said Superintendent Roberto Padilla.

A 23-person Orange County grand jury said in a report released in April that the program, APEX Online Learning, was abused by district employees to help students zoom through courses in order to recover credits needed to graduate.

"We don't intend to use that particular product," Padilla said Tuesday night. "But we understand instructional technology is not going anywhere. We need to give students opportunities, not take them away, but we need to partner with organizations that meet our needs. We’ll be looking for programs that provide tighter structures."

The Newburgh school board had suspended further use of APEX in the spring, and launched its own investigation into the district's credit recovery practices and student-athlete eligibility based on attendance.

Padilla said the district's investigation should be finished in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the state Education Department is still conducting its own audit of district records focused on the same subjects with no word yet on when it might wrap up.

Parents, former NFA athletes and friends of 21-year Newburgh Free Academy track coach Malcolm Burks filled the school board's meeting room on Tuesday night.

Burks' coaching reappointment appears to be in question for the upcoming winter indoor track season.

Several people spoke to the board about Burks' moral character and his mentoring of kids on and off the track.

Burks also addressed the board. He talked about the 2015-16 season - the starting point for the DA's investigation - and described his process for handling attendance eligibility by submitting a list of students' names for the athletic director to verify if they could compete or not.

"I have emails. What I need to know from the board is who do I give my information to?" Burks said. "... I'm trying to help you solve this. If someone had come to me a long time ago when this first went down, I could've resolved a lot of this.

"I went down to the grand jury, I raised my hand, and I swore, and I told the truth."

Padilla said he and the board understand why the community supports Burks, but that the district wants to take its time considering appointments in light of the grand jury's findings.

"... In that public report, it identifies a number of acts of students who competed when they were ineligible," Padilla said. "So, since the release of that report up to today, we have been investigating, not rushing to judgment or conclusion, but digging through the data and getting to facts."

lbellamy@th-record.com