Education - The board restricts the size of online charters and requires them to get districts' permission
Friday, March 14, 2008
BETSY HAMMOND - The Oregonian
Online charter schools can operate in Oregon only under severe restrictions, including limits on enrollment and securing permission from each local school district before enrolling students, the state Board of Education decided Thursday.
Two national companies -- Insight Schools, based in Portland, and K-12, based in Virginia -- want to open large online schools that would enroll students from across the state and teach them using lessons delivered via computer to the students' homes.
They would collect roughly the same $6,000 per-student of state money that bricks-and-mortar schools do.
The state school board, which had the power to kill the idea or open the door wide, was lobbied heavily by both backers and opponents of statewide cyber-schools.
After more than six months of deliberation, it offered a compromise Thursday, allowing the schools to open but keeping them small and forcing them to jump through hurdles.
One of the proposed schools will open for sure, its backers said. Under the sponsorship of the North Bend school district, K-12 will open a kindergarten through eighth-grade school called the Oregon Virtual Academy for 900 students this fall.
But backers of the Insight School plan weren't sure Thursday whether they would proceed, given the new restrictions. State board members said they would limit Insight School of Oregon, which offers grades nine through 12, to 500 students.
The school, which is sponsored by the Lincoln County School District, opened in January with about 200 students -- most of whom do not have permission from their home school districts to attend, because that was not required.
Many school districts in Oregon restrict their students from attending other school districts -- usually because the home district doesn't want to lose the per-student funding, to help its own schools remain robust.
Oregon's first and largest for-profit cyber-school, Connections Academy, is exempt from the new restrictions for two more years. Connections opened in fall 2005, before state law was changed to add restrictions, and it is allowed to operate outside of the new rule until its contract expires in 2010.
Sponsored by the Scio school district, that K-12 cyber-school has 1,800 students.
Organizers of the Oregon Virtual Academy said they were unsure how difficult it would be for them to get permission from local school districts for students to enroll in their charter. They said they plan to work hard to convince districts that the online school will be an effective learning option for some of their students.
The fact that the state board will allow cyber-schools to open at all "is a very positive outcome for us," said Dianne Phillips, a Eugene parent who is on the school's founding board. "Their intent is to do what's right for kids."
Mark Horning, a Gresham parent on the school's board, said the state board's decision to limit enrollment to 100 students per grade was not one the school wanted, but it will abide by the decision. "It's hard to tell families that you have a great program but you have to turn students away. . . . We're taken some pretty hard restrictions, and we've smiled and said we will make this work for students."
Betsy Hammond: 503-294-7623 or betsyhammond@ news.oregonian.com
©2008 The Oregonian
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