Most Vermont school districts plan to offer a fully remote learning option this fall, even as they must also staff in-person or hybrid classes. To help schools meet demand without hiring an avalanche of new teachers, the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative is scaling up.
The online school, based at the River Valley Technical Center in Springfield, operates — as its name suggests — on a cooperative arrangement. To participate, partner school districts provide at least one fully licensed teacher to teach at least one online course. For every teacher who teaches one course, that district can enroll up to 50 students in any class offered under the Virtual Learning Cooperative umbrella.
Historically, school districts — particularly small, rural ones — have used the learning cooperative to offer courses when they couldn’t afford to staff certain electives or higher-level subjects.
The pandemic has posed a similar, if enormously magnified, version of this quandary: If only a fraction of families opt for fully online learning, how can schools staff a full slate of online courses if their teachers are also responsible for in-person and hybrid learning?
The cooperative’s new Collaborative School Option program will create a pool of educators who want to teach all their courses online. Jeff Renard, principal of the cooperative, said late last week he anticipates about half of all Vermont school districts will participate.
The cooperative will try to match online students with their local teachers, but if a class has enough room, kids from other districts will be allowed to join. Class sizes will be capped at about 25 students.
“We’re… essentially acting like Priceline to match up the resources with where they’re needed,” said Renard, who started the organization in 2009 using start-up funding from a federal grant.
The Mount Mansfield Unified School District decided quickly to sign up, said Ben White, director of curriculum, communication, innovation, and virtual learning. For years, Mount Mansfield middle and high schoolers have tapped into the online cooperative for elective and foreign language courses.
“The structure, support, and just the years of experience that the VTVLC has in running a totally virtual program is not something that we would have been able to produce to that fidelity. So we jumped on that bandwagon very, very early,” he said.
About 10 percent of MMU’s K-12 students plan to attend school completely remotely. The district thinks it will probably wind up contributing about 10 educators to the Collaborative School Option pool to teach all their courses online.
In pre-pandemic times, the learning cooperative served about 1,200 students each year, Renard said. State officials estimate 25,000 kids – nearly a third of all preK-12 students – could use the cooperative’s platform next year, although only 6,000 to 8,000 are expected to do all of their coursework online through the cooperative’s new Collaborative School Option program.
Because of the pandemic, the state temporarily waived the online teaching endorsement that educators are typically required to have to teach classes virtually. That waiver is still in effect, but teachers who participate in the cooperative pool will need to work toward that endorsement by completing nine graduate credits this year through Castleton University and the Northeast Online Teaching Institute.
Virtual learning programs in other states are also booming. In Colorado, the state-sponsored online school had to suspend registration days after it opened because of an unprecedented surge in demand. In New Hampshire, the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School is expanding to serve students in kindergarten through grade 3 for the first time.
But unlike many online programs offered by charter schools or private outfits, Renard points out that the Vermont program is structured to complement — not compete with — the public schools. Students who take classes on the cooperative’s platform remain enrolled in their local districts, which means their schools won’t be dinged for dropping headcounts when state education funds are handed out.
And the collaborative program is free to participating school districts, although schools will need to ensure proper teacher licensure, and endorsements if needed.
“Because of our model, we’re really the only ones in the country that are doing this type of collaborative solution with brick and mortar schools and supporting the individual implementation of virtual academies rather than pulling students away,” he said.
