The St. Cloud Area School Board approved at its meeting Wednesday the first steps towards creating a new online school.
Ryan Cox, the director of innovation and instructional technology for the school district, told the board that the Central Minnesota Virtual Academy (or CMVA) will provide “learning opportunities for all of the learners in our district.” It will also provide flexibility for “our students and for our teachers.”
Cox said not all courses are equally available in all schools, so with the CMVA, the access will bridge that gap. He also said that some students, for whatever reason, may have difficulty being in school so the instant access would be beneficial for them.
Other benefits that Cox mentioned included online videos for support, independence for students, that it encourages responsibility and devotes more time to learning.
The Minnesota Department of Education approved the online academy for the 2023-2024 school year. There will be fully-online programming for grades 6-8. In addition to fully-online programming, there will be supplemental programing for grades 9-12. Cox said that 40% of next year’s high school students expressed an interest in the CMVA with nearly 28% for the supplemental aspect and nearly 13% for attending all classes online.
CMVA would be treated as a separate school among the more than 20 different schools and programs that are part of the St. Cloud district.
When describing what the CMVA would look like to a typical student, Cox specified that he does “not want students to feel like they’re isolated or by themselves, or not feeling like there’s a connection to 742.” He ensures this by pointing at activity opportunities and peer-to-peer connections through online chats.
Like other districts with similar programs, the CMVA is open to enroll any student as long as they live in the state of Minnesota. Some students who live in St. Cloud are part of other online schools, but from other districts in the state like New Code Academy which helped prompt a local learning pod.
More:New Code Academy partners with learning pod in St. Cloud
School Board Vice Chair Al Dahlgren asked how administration and activities would be determined and Cox said it will be based on how many enrollments they will receive.
When Superintendent Laurie Putnam asked to clarify how the CMVA will be different from the remote learning that began with the COVID-19 pandemic, Cox said, “What we experienced the last two years were not authentic online learning… we had three weeks [to] a month to build an online school that we had to plan toward.” Earlier, Cox said, “This has been about two years in the making with some research, some planning, we have talked to other districts in the state.”
Board memeber Natalie Ringsmuth asked if the supplemental learning could be utilized for credit recovery which Cox answered, “it could.” She later asked about equity in regard to internet access. Cox said he mentioned that the district provides mobile hotspots to those who need it and he mentioned the Affordable Connectivity Program which uses federal funding to supplement internet access.
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The next steps that Cox listed for the CMVA is to finalize course offerings and descriptions, develop a program summary for interested families, integrate the registration process, staffing allocations based on student requests and prepare for professionals learning needs.
