WARWICK — As the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s decision on whether to close Warwick Community School looms, parents and town officials are continuing to explore options for educating their children, including having them attend school online.
Instructor Greg Runyan with the Greenfield Commonwealth Virtual School outlined his school’s curriculum during the Warwick Education Committee’s Tuesday meeting.
Education Committee Chair Adam Holloway said Warwick is exploring educational options outside of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District’s suggestion to merge with Northfield Elementary School, mainly because many parents, including himself, view bussing children to Northfield as a safety issue.
“That’s the big thing,” he said.
Holloway said parents had a lot of questions, and the meeting with Runyan helped provide information.
“We need to digest it and then see if it would work,” Holloway said of the online schooling model.
He added that if the school were to be closed following the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeffrey C. Riley’s decision, the town can “use the building to do whatever they want.” Holloway said townspeople could even set up a home-school collaborative, and use the building as a base learning location.
With the virtual school’s curriculum, there wouldn’t be a need for an actual school location, as nearly all work is designed to be done at home. However, Runyan acknowledged that Warwick’s position is unique. Warwick is interested in using its elementary school building as an on-site learning location for students to login on computers at the elementary school building while being supervised by learning coaches.
For the virtual school to accept the entire Warwick elementary population of 45 students, Runyan said it would need to enter a memorandum of understanding with the district. However, Warwick officials and residents expressed concern with the Pioneer school district’s cooperation.
As of now, to attend the Greenfield Commonwealth Virtual School, students need to sign up for a wait list and lottery system. The School Choice cost to attend the virtual school is roughly $8,500 per student. Once accepted, Runyan noted there is a preference given to siblings. The virtual school has a cap of 750 students, which it reached for the first time this year.
“That shows there is a need and demand for this kind of model out there,” he said.
The school’s typical schedule begins with a morning meeting, where the teacher video chats with students about the plans for the day. Runyan said, for privacy purposes, students have a choice of using their camera to be seen by the teacher or not. Classes are a combination of “live” activities and work that can be completed online at the students’ leisure. Some classes, such as art, music or physical education, require “live” instruction time.
Students sign up for a Blackboard Collaborate Ultra or Canvas student account to access various resources or class activities and to submit assignments. The service can be used to schedule one-on-one sessions with a class instructor, and a learning coach is assigned to work with two or three students. With a Canvas account, students also have access to Storia, an online library. Lexia is another literacy resource available.
“As an online school, we don’t have a library, so this is what we’ve got,” Runyan said.
While students are generally in standard grade levels, he said the model makes it easy to adjust classes depending on the personal needs of a student to move up or down in class levels. For example, Runyan said his son is in third-grade morning meetings and literacy courses, but takes part in higher levels of math.
“With just a couple of clicks he’s switched into the middle school class,” Runyan said. “In just a couple of clicks I can have a kid from one part of the state collaborating with a student on the other end of the state.”
According to Runyan, many students who attend the Greenfield Commonwealth Virtual School go on to attend two- or four-year colleges. He said most of these students have found the online program to benefit their college preparedness.
“More than 90 percent of the work is online,” Runyan said. “It helps a lot with their independence.”
According to Warwick Education Committee Vice Chair Tom Wyatt, the committee has not yet met to discuss Tuesday’s presentation as a group. He said he suspects there will need to be discussions within the community about whether the model meets the needs of students. The role the person at the school has, whether it’s as a coach or a teacher, makes a big difference, Wyatt noted. He also said aspects of the virtual school model could be incorporated into a new model that is specific to Warwick.
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.
virtual school system allow the student control and direction in their own education . The cost saving are benefit to everyone even the students , The students in system are independent minded starting form day one instilling correct incentive in students . who express learning direction can be expended by many curriculum that can be offer and are not offer in public habit schools which are failure and need to be pass over .for so many reason size being one this being other 22 million for 1038 student per year for high school education / GED cost less then 100.00
ReplyDeletebest possible position and state can be in ,is to implement virtual school as fast as possible
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