Students, he says, may opt for a district-run virtual school over other online options as a way to stay connected to their communities and participate in extracurricular activities with their friends. South notes that virtual charter schools have existed for years, but individual districts are just now starting to get in on the game. “Some are realizing that this is how they want school to go for them, and the districts realize they can either lose these students or open their own virtual schools at the district level.” “Many students who would never have seen themselves as online students realized the model was working better for them,” says Joseph South, chief learning officer for ISTE, an organization that advocates for technology in education. A fall 2020 RAND survey of district leaders found that 1 in 5 schools have already adopted or plan to adopt virtual schooling after the pandemic. This has led a number of school districts to seize the moment and accelerate plans for virtual-only schools that will continue to educate students remotely, even after the pandemic ends. While many parents, students and teachers across the country have leapt at the opportunity to get back into physical classrooms as quickly as possible, others have found virtual learning to be a great fit. We’re trying to find the value in every assignment, and this really caused us to look more at what is being taught, and how.” Virtual Learning Provides a Better Fit for Some Studentsįort Smith Public Schools is not alone. “We’ve found there’s a certain population of students who thrive in a virtual setting, and the pandemic has forced us to look at things through a different lens. “We’ve been looking at a virtual option for a few years,” notes Martin Mahan, deputy superintendent. The district is running focus groups with parents to obtain valuable feedback, and next year teachers will create a district-built virtual curriculum around state standards. Now, as officials plan to make the virtual option permanent, they are seeking ways to continuously improve. The district then hired teachers, many internally, specifically to staff the virtual program. “When you teach them the basics, they learn very quickly.” “The students are very tech savvy,” says Samantha Hall, assistant director of district innovation. Much of the district’s online instruction has been delivered via Zoom, and teachers frequently make use of free, game-based learning platforms such as Kahoot. Since then, FSPS educators have delivered 2,500 mobile hotspots to students and their families, turned school parking lots into Wi-Fi access hubs and ensured that all students have their own Chromebooks. “We were definitely building the airplane as we were taking off,” Udouj says.Ī remarkable achievement considering that, when the pandemic first hit last spring, many students lacked internet connectivity, and in trying to fill the gap, the district had to distribute 4,000 paper instruction packets each week. The district paid teachers a $500 stipend to complete a virtual training program standardized on a single learning management system, and it implemented a third-party online curriculum. “We were very quickly training staff and getting our resources together to make sure all of our students had the technology they needed.” “As we got closer, we were surprised to see our estimate keep growing,” says Gary Udouj, director of career education and district innovation for FSPS. When officials at Fort Smith Public Schools in Arkansas began preparing an online-only option for fall 2020, they expected to have about 500 sign-ups from the district’s 14,000 students.
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