by James A. Bacon
While Virginia’s public school bureaucracy fixates on racial justice issues and dithers over how to respond to the COVID-19 epidemic, ten school districts in Southwest Virginia are taking matters into their own hands by creating a regional virtual academy.
Under a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the ten districts, the regional academy will hire its own teachers and create its own curriculum. The group is discussing whether to contract with a private company, Herndon-based Stride Inc., or another entity expected to submit an offer this week.
Online classes would be offered at no charge to families with state funds allocated to school districts on a per-person basis, reports the Bristol Herald-Courier. The level of state funding is determined by a formula that calculates a locality’s ability to pay. The City of Bristol receives about $7,000 annually per student/ The virtual academy is expected to cost $3,500 per pupil. School districts would keep the balance.
The academy is expected to cost $1.78 million annually, based on an enrollment of 500 students. In addition to the City of Bristol, Participating school districts include the counties of Bland, Giles, Pulaski, Radford, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington and Wythe. Four others are considering the program, and four have rejected the idea.
“We’ve kind of been in a hurry to get this in place for when school starts next year,” Keith Perrigan, Bristol school superintendent, told the virtual academy’s new board last month. “Virtual learning may not look like it does now, next fall. But now that Pandora’s Box has been opened, we’re not going to shove virtual learning back into it. I don’t know what the right plan is, but to not have any plan is the worst possible direction we can take.”
Bacon’s bottom line: Hopefully, most students will return to in-person learning in public schools next year, but an online learning environment is preferable for some students. One would think that the Virginia Department of Education would have taken the initiative. For whatever reason, the Southwest Virginia localities decided to take matters into their own hands. They’ve done it before, bypassing Richmond to create the Comprehensive Instructional Program, which has contributed to significant gains in SOL scores in participating school systems. Perhaps SW Va schools have learned they can move more quickly by avoiding the politics, the bureaucracy, and the ideological peccadillos of the educrats in Richmond.
One other thing stands out: $3,500 cost per student! Are you serious? Average spending per student in Virginia was more than $12,300 in the 2017-18 school year, and it’s higher now. Obviously, the online experience doesn’t include everything the in-person experience does. But, then, with may schools shut down by the COVID-19 epidemic most students haven’t been getting the in-person experience. What an indictment of the state’s educational leadership.
I’m beginning to wonder if the best thing Virginia could do is shut down the entire Virginia Department of Education apparatus, send state funds directly to local school districts with no strings attached, and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in the process.
