BOE reconsidering the Virtual Academy, Leader in Me, and Innovative School Year Calendar

[Anonymous]

I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtual should be here to stay no matter what. I've lived in plenty of areas due to my job (military) and in every district...virtual exists. Parents don't debate its existence on forums. It just is. Everyone goes on about their daily lives. It should be an option because we are currently in the year 2024 and not 1998. Time for MCPS to keep up not only with the times but with the rest of society. This place is seriously strange.

It’s a silly debate as it’s a choice and if it does not work for you don’t choose it. However, changing it to a school vs having it a program and therefore increase funding allow them to do more for their students. They need more admin, more office staff, teachers, paras, and specialists. That would make a very good program great.

Interesting that no one has experience with it who is demanding its closure.

Oh, and add hybrid.

The problem is that every school needs more of everything, not just the virtual academy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtual should be here to stay no matter what. I've lived in plenty of areas due to my job (military) and in every district...virtual exists. Parents don't debate its existence on forums. It just is. Everyone goes on about their daily lives. It should be an option because we are currently in the year 2024 and not 1998. Time for MCPS to keep up not only with the times but with the rest of society. This place is seriously strange.

It’s a silly debate as it’s a choice and if it does not work for you don’t choose it. However, changing it to a school vs having it a program and therefore increase funding allow them to do more for their students. They need more admin, more office staff, teachers, paras, and specialists. That would make a very good program great.

Interesting that no one has experience with it who is demanding its closure.

Oh, and add hybrid.

The problem is that every school needs more of everything, not just the virtual academy

No school needs more virtual academy. It’s failing its mission of educating kids according to all available data and its enrollment numbers have plummeted year over year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtual should be here to stay no matter what. I've lived in plenty of areas due to my job (military) and in every district...virtual exists. Parents don't debate its existence on forums. It just is. Everyone goes on about their daily lives. It should be an option because we are currently in the year 2024 and not 1998. Time for MCPS to keep up not only with the times but with the rest of society. This place is seriously strange.

It’s a silly debate as it’s a choice and if it does not work for you don’t choose it. However, changing it to a school vs having it a program and therefore increase funding allow them to do more for their students. They need more admin, more office staff, teachers, paras, and specialists. That would make a very good program great.

Interesting that no one has experience with it who is demanding its closure.

Oh, and add hybrid.

The problem is that every school needs more of everything, not just the virtual academy

Yes, but no other school has a waitlist and families wanting to be in it and cannot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtual should be here to stay no matter what. I've lived in plenty of areas due to my job (military) and in every district...virtual exists. Parents don't debate its existence on forums. It just is. Everyone goes on about their daily lives. It should be an option because we are currently in the year 2024 and not 1998. Time for MCPS to keep up not only with the times but with the rest of society. This place is seriously strange.

It’s a silly debate as it’s a choice and if it does not work for you don’t choose it. However, changing it to a school vs having it a program and therefore increase funding allow them to do more for their students. They need more admin, more office staff, teachers, paras, and specialists. That would make a very good program great.

Interesting that no one has experience with it who is demanding its closure.

Oh, and add hybrid.

The problem is that every school needs more of everything, not just the virtual academy

No school needs more virtual academy. It’s failing its mission of educating kids according to all available data and its enrollment numbers have plummeted year over year.

You aren't looking at the data properly. Lets look at comparing it to every school in MCPS and lets shut down the bottom 10%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

K12 isn't an equal program to MCPS. They don't have live teaching and they don't have special education supports. And, the MVA could be expanded as it has a waitlist, which you seem to forget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

The cost of the program isn't an issue. The size is small due to staffing. They run waitlists. Why are you so obsessed with this? It's cheaper to have kids in virtual and it saves space. Win for all.

So, what do you do with all the special education kids? If you send them to privates that could be $80K+ a student or more. And, how many schools do you think have openings on short notice?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtual should be here to stay no matter what. I've lived in plenty of areas due to my job (military) and in every district...virtual exists. Parents don't debate its existence on forums. It just is. Everyone goes on about their daily lives. It should be an option because we are currently in the year 2024 and not 1998. Time for MCPS to keep up not only with the times but with the rest of society. This place is seriously strange.

It’s a silly debate as it’s a choice and if it does not work for you don’t choose it. However, changing it to a school vs having it a program and therefore increase funding allow them to do more for their students. They need more admin, more office staff, teachers, paras, and specialists. That would make a very good program great.

Interesting that no one has experience with it who is demanding its closure.

Oh, and add hybrid.

The problem is that every school needs more of everything, not just the virtual academy

No school needs more virtual academy. It’s failing its mission of educating kids according to all available data and its enrollment numbers have plummeted year over year.

Yet there is a wait list

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

The cost of the program isn't an issue. The size is small due to staffing. They run waitlists. Why are you so obsessed with this? It's cheaper to have kids in virtual and it saves space. Win for all.

So, what do you do with all the special education kids? If you send them to privates that could be $80K+ a student or more. And, how many schools do you think have openings on short notice?

It's not cheaper to have kids in virtual if the number of students is so small that it doesn't actually affect the resourcing at the homeschools. And that's obviously the case here. So VA becomes quite expensive because it is strictly *in addition* to what we're spending on schools, not an *alternative* to what we're spending on schools. A kid dropping out of their homeschool for VA doesn't save any money for the homeschool.

So yes, cost is absolutely an issue, particularly until you get to a much larger scale.

And the kids that need the supports that require private placements aren't going to VA, given that that comes with none of those supports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

K12 isn't an equal program to MCPS. They don't have live teaching and they don't have special education supports. And, the MVA could be expanded as it has a waitlist, which you seem to forget.

K12 does live teaching in the states where they've partnered to do so. They could do it, but yes, it would almost certainly be more expensive than MCPS doing it itself. As I said, the only path that makes sense is MSDE taking it on for the entire state, at which point it might be large enough to scale effectively. And since, as others have pointed out, MSDE doesn't operate schools, the natural implementation path would be contracting out operations to an entity like K12.

VA isn't even close to enrollment levels that scale. First and second grades have less than 40 kids a piece!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

K12 isn't an equal program to MCPS. They don't have live teaching and they don't have special education supports. And, the MVA could be expanded as it has a waitlist, which you seem to forget.

K12 does live teaching in the states where they've partnered to do so. They could do it, but yes, it would almost certainly be more expensive than MCPS doing it itself. As I said, the only path that makes sense is MSDE taking it on for the entire state, at which point it might be large enough to scale effectively. And since, as others have pointed out, MSDE doesn't operate schools, the natural implementation path would be contracting out operations to an entity like K12.

VA isn't even close to enrollment levels that scale. First and second grades have less than 40 kids a piece!

Why do you want a state school? It's bizarre and you post it everywhere.

They don't have the size as they don't have the funding. They don't have more teachers to let more students in and keep regular classroom numbers. There is a waitlist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

The cost of the program isn't an issue. The size is small due to staffing. They run waitlists. Why are you so obsessed with this? It's cheaper to have kids in virtual and it saves space. Win for all.

So, what do you do with all the special education kids? If you send them to privates that could be $80K+ a student or more. And, how many schools do you think have openings on short notice?

It's not cheaper to have kids in virtual if the number of students is so small that it doesn't actually affect the resourcing at the homeschools. And that's obviously the case here. So VA becomes quite expensive because it is strictly *in addition* to what we're spending on schools, not an *alternative* to what we're spending on schools. A kid dropping out of their homeschool for VA doesn't save any money for the homeschool.

So yes, cost is absolutely an issue, particularly until you get to a much larger scale.

And the kids that need the supports that require private placements aren't going to VA, given that that comes with none of those supports.

The homeschool is not relevant. Did you listen to the testimony? Yes, there are kids who would otherwise be in highly specialized placements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven

Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved. They want it. Nix doesn't want it. You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale.

The cost of the program isn't an issue. The size is small due to staffing. They run waitlists. Why are you so obsessed with this? It's cheaper to have kids in virtual and it saves space. Win for all.

So, what do you do with all the special education kids? If you send them to privates that could be $80K+ a student or more. And, how many schools do you think have openings on short notice?

It's not cheaper to have kids in virtual if the number of students is so small that it doesn't actually affect the resourcing at the homeschools. And that's obviously the case here. So VA becomes quite expensive because it is strictly *in addition* to what we're spending on schools, not an *alternative* to what we're spending on schools. A kid dropping out of their homeschool for VA doesn't save any money for the homeschool.

So yes, cost is absolutely an issue, particularly until you get to a much larger scale.

And the kids that need the supports that require private placements aren't going to VA, given that that comes with none of those supports.

The homeschool is not relevant. Did you listen to the testimony? Yes, there are kids who would otherwise be in highly specialized placements.

Why? Because of a bullying problem? This is what I heard mostly last night. Anxiety due to school environment. They need to fix the chaotic nature of the school environment, not wast money on MVA. I observed one kid claiming he used to have low grades and went to all 100s in the MVA. Does anyone realize there is a serious grade inflation issue in MVA?