District Sees the Virtue of Virtual Learning: ‘Cyber-Academy’ Offers Pleasant Valley Pupils Full Course Load Online.
By Andrew C. Martel, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.
Apr. 14–Pleasant Valley School District will get another school next year: a virtual one.
The school board voted unanimously Thursday to create a policy governing online courses the district will offer through a “cyber-academy” offered to students who can’t come to school because of illness or suspension, as well as students who prefer to learn from home.
The district will be the first in the area and among the first in Pennsylvania to set up its own Web-based academy.
Students enrolled in the academy will take courses similar to those their peers in the classroom take, and will earn the same diploma. Academy courses will count toward a student’s grade point average, class rank, and honor roll.
The students also will be allowed to participate in Pleasant Valley extracurricular activities.
Students must complete a request form and get parental permission to enroll in online classes. Parents might be required to provide the Internet connection for their child.
The students also might be required to take midterms and finals in a school setting with a teacher or administrator present. Those tests could be offered after school, according to the policy.
School officials say they hope the academy will lure back some parents who have pulled their children out of Pleasant Valley schools and enrolled them in other online schools, which are usually run as charter schools.
Those schools bill the Pleasant Valley school district for these students, which number about 168 this month, out of 6,500 in the system. Those students have cost the district $1.2 million so far this year.
Last year, a surge in online school enrollments forced the board to take more than $160,000 from its reserve fund to cover the tuition for these students.
Last month, the school district approved a contract of up to $30,000 to work with with VLN Partners, a Pittsburgh company that builds customized Web curricula for school districts. VLN, which stands for Virtual Learning Network, will design 30 online courses in subjects such as English, math, social studies and science for Grades 7 through 12.
Assistant Superintendent Carole Rissmiller has said that the district’s academy would have to enroll only about a dozen students to justify the cost of the VLN contract and salary for an online school administrator. She told the board Thursday that work with VLN has gotten off to a good start.
“We had all this ready for them: what curriculum we wanted, all the recruitment materials are in the process of being developed,” she said.
andrew.martel@mcall.com
610-379-3222
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