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School district votes to approve cyber curriculum
By jeanne starmack
struthers
To lure students back from cyber schools, the Struthers School District is opening one of its own.
The school board voted 4-1 Tuesday to approve a one-year contract with VLN Partners, a cyber- curriculum provider that serves 40 school districts in Pennsylvania.
“School districts need a proven alternative to cyber schools that works,” Bill Driver, a sales consultant with VLN, told the board at its regular meeting. “If you don’t have an alternative to an e-community school, they’ll leave.”
Forty-seven students left the school district for cyber schools in the 2011-12 school year, Driver said. The loss cost the district $269,000, or $5,740 per student, he said.
That state funding would come back to the school district if a student chose the Struthers VLN program, and the district will pay $4,250 to VLN for each student who enrolls. The savings to the district will be $1,500, Driver said.
Students in the VLN program would get a Struthers diploma.
VLN can customize a curriculum for an $18,000 fee, Driver told the board, but the board is going to use a standard VLN curriculum.
Board member Dennis Spisak was the ‘no’ vote on the contract, saying he couldn’t support it based on what he’d heard in Driver’s presentation.
“There’s a concern in my mind of quality of charter schools and curriculum, and we’d enter into agreement to give our stamp of approval on their curriculum,” he said. “I take issue with that.”
He also pointed out that the board and administrators are not sure how to deal with the issue of students’ eligibility for athletics and other extracurricular activities.
Driver said that VLN provides free marketing for its program and will target students who have left Struthers with phone calls, mailers and meetings with parents.
“By entering into this contract, we aren’t bound by anything more than marketing to the students who are already out there,” said board president Sheri Noble.
Superintendent Robert Rostan said he considers the agreement with VLN “baby steps,” with the district using the standard curriculum at first and talking more about the eligibility issue.
VLN will provide the teachers for the program, which includes a virtual homeroom and teacher office hours to help with accountability for students’ time online, Driver said. He also said that every time a student works on an activity, “a clock is running.”
“Accountability is built into the system,” he said.
The school board also talked about whether to sell the license to its radio station, WKTL.
The teacher who taught radio classes at Struthers High School retired, and there is no longer a program there, Rostan pointed out. There is still some Saturday programming from the station.
“People enjoy it,” Rostan said. “But it’s time for us to move on. It no longer serves the needs of the schools.”
Rostan said he does not know how much the district could make selling the license, adding that he’s heard figures from $100,000 to $1 million.
He recommended putting the license up for sale, and he said he would ask a representative from a license broker to address the board next month.