Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Many MVA students did not return resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

Huge? There were only a few hundred kids in virtual academy.

No, there were not a few hundred. You love making things up. And a few hundred - MCPS gets what $19.800K per child, so lets say around kids left, that would be around $6 million right there.

Numbers declined as they were not allowing students off the waitlist. Pay attention to what happened vs. your own narative.

You badly misunderstand per pupil funding, or rather you are confusing per pupil spending with per pupil funding. MCPS spends maybe 19000 per kid, but most of that is fixed budget lines such as facilities, transportation, administration, and teachers. Those costs are fully fixed - MCPS receives them regardless of whether 300 kids do or do not attend that year.

Then a MUCH SMALLER allocation is allocated per student, and that's the amount MCPS may have lost when some MVA kids left the system.

However, the cost of MVA ($5m) is significantly higher than the amount lost because some smallish number of kids left, because again, the amount MCPS receives is only slightly related to count day.

As a reminder, enrollment in the MVA went from 2629 (2021-2022) to 1565 (2022-2023) to 878 (2023-2024). A 40% drop in enrollment year over year for two years in a row and an overall loss of two-thirds of its students. No, there wasn’t a waiting list because people were banging down the doors trying to get into the program. There was a “waitlist” - or, more accurately, an enrollment freeze - when MCPS saw the writing on the wall and made the decision to stop allowing new entries into the flailing program.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Many MVA students did not return resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

Huge? There were only a few hundred kids in virtual academy.

No, there were not a few hundred. You love making things up. And a few hundred - MCPS gets what $19.800K per child, so lets say around kids left, that would be around $6 million right there.

Numbers declined as they were not allowing students off the waitlist. Pay attention to what happened vs. your own narative.

What are the actual numbers for the funding MCPS lost as a result of this great migration out of the school system? As opposed to the ones you just made up out of thin air.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Many MVA students did not return resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

Huge? There were only a few hundred kids in virtual academy.

No, there were not a few hundred. You love making things up. And a few hundred - MCPS gets what $19.800K per child, so lets say around kids left, that would be around $6 million right there.

Numbers declined as they were not allowing students off the waitlist. Pay attention to what happened vs. your own narative.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Many MVA students did not return resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

Citation please? Can’t keep trotting out this myth without the numbers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Many MVA students did not return resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

Huge? There were only a few hundred kids in virtual academy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Many MVA students did not return resulting in a huge loss of revenue.

Anonymous wrote:I moved my kid to Montgomery County to learn Montgomery Country virtual arithmetic and history.

I'm not paying taxes for my kid to learn Allegheny County virtual arithmetic and history.

Great then send your kid to an MCPS in person school. The MVA is gone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think MD should create a virtual academy for the entire state.

I agree with this. I have no issue with a virtual academy in principle. I can easily accept that different kids have different needs and excel in different environments. But it seems it would be much more cost effective and offer more educational opportunities to student if this was administered on a larger, statewide scale.

+1, should be a statewide program

Exactly. If virtual programs were properly limited to only students who legitimately could not attend school in-person, attempting to operate them at a district level would never work.

Even with MCPS's free-for-all approach we only had 10 kids in some elementary school classes.

Parents should decide. Mot strangers who know nothing about the kids.

Exactly- you can decide to enroll your child in an existing virtual program and pay for it yourself. Same decision many parents have made if the public school isn’t their desire.

No, that’s not how it works. Kids are entitled to a free education and not all can go in person.

There are free programs available for those who truly cannot attend in-person schools. For those who have parents that are anxious about school violence, bullying or other issues that many other kids face without demanding a separate option, then yes, this is how it works.

Please share with us the free programs that are equal to in person? You think kids who are bullied should be forced to go to school with their bullies when schools do nothing about it? How many more kids need to die of suicide before the issue is taken seriously.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school done virtually makes no sense. What a waste of money!

One statewide would be great for kids with health issues.

The state cannot even remotely afford it. That's why they are demanding the counties do it, by the state is also looking to pass on a bunch of other costs to the counties. No, the money is not there. It borders on cruel to give these families hope in this fiscal environment. What a couple of POSs these lawmakers are.

Agreed that it's a surprising approach for Delegates Joe Vogel and April Miller. It's an odd time to be creating unfunded mandates on local school systems when budgets are already exploding. For April Miller, who represents Frederick County, it's even more strange since the county already operates a virtual school.

MCPS has budget issues due to mismanagement. They are one of the highest funded school systems. And, yet school systems with less funding provide much more. This isn’t a virtual school issue, it’s a mismanagement issue and Taylor, central office and the BOE need to be held accountable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school done virtually makes no sense. What a waste of money!

One statewide would be great for kids with health issues.

How would it be run? Who would run it? What would it look like. Who would pay for it?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school done virtually makes no sense. What a waste of money!

One statewide would be great for kids with health issues.

Not really. There's only a very narrow window where someone is too unhealthy to attend school in-person, but healthy enough to consistently attend classes on a fixed schedule. Asynchronous ultimately makes much more sense for kids with serious health issues preventing in-person attendance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school done virtually makes no sense. What a waste of money!

One statewide would be great for kids with health issues.

The state cannot even remotely afford it. That's why they are demanding the counties do it, by the state is also looking to pass on a bunch of other costs to the counties. No, the money is not there. It borders on cruel to give these families hope in this fiscal environment. What a couple of POSs these lawmakers are.

Agreed that it's a surprising approach for Delegates Joe Vogel and April Miller. It's an odd time to be creating unfunded mandates on local school systems when budgets are already exploding. For April Miller, who represents Frederick County, it's even more strange since the county already operates a virtual school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school done virtually makes no sense. What a waste of money!

One statewide would be great for kids with health issues.

The state cannot even remotely afford it. That's why they are demanding the counties do it, by the state is also looking to pass on a bunch of other costs to the counties. No, the money is not there. It borders on cruel to give these families hope in this fiscal environment. What a couple of POSs these lawmakers are.

Anonymous wrote:Elementary school done virtually makes no sense. What a waste of money!

One statewide would be great for kids with health issues.