The Pulaski County Special School District is expanding its menu of instructional options in the 2021-2022 school year to include the new Driven Virtual Academy for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The academy, a state-approved conversion charter school, will become the 26th school in the 11,700-student system.
But students in the new school -- up to 500 in the first year and ultimately as many as 900 in 2024-2025 -- won't be boarding any buses to attend a new state-of-the art bricks-and-mortar campus of classrooms, playground, gym, cafeteria and library/media center.
Instead, instruction will be delivered to a student in the student's home via the student's district-issued Chromebook device and with guidance from a parent and support and mentoring from district staff members at a distant location.
Rachel Blackwell, digital learning facilitator for the Pulaski County Special district, said the Driven Virtual Academy was half-a-dozen years in the making.
"This is something we looked at about six or seven years ago, when we got our Chromebooks and we started to be 1-to-1 [student-to-devices]. We started thinking 'How can we look at education differently?' Covid threw a wrench in it, but this is something we have had in our pipeline to make part of our school district for years now."
Virtual instruction and virtual academies are no longer brand new. They have existed for almost 20 years in Arkansas and elsewhere, and they are growing -- this year in particular because of the coronavirus pandemic that caused families to want to keep their children out of large school settings.
State approval for the Driven Virtual Academy comes in a year in which both the Arkansas Virtual Academy, established in 2003 and based in Little Rock, and the Arkansas Connections Academy in Bentonville received state approval to increase their enrollment caps by hundreds. Arkansas Virtual Academy has a 5,500-student cap, up from 4,000 last year. Arkansas Connections Academy's cap was increased from 3,000 to 7,000 to be phased in over time. Both are open-enrollment charter schools operated by nonprofit entities other than traditional school systems.
The Fayetteville School District just this month received preliminary approval for the five-year renewal of the state-issued charter for its Fayetteville Virtual Academy, which has an enrollment of 466 this year, up from 159 last year, and can grow to 2,500.
The Van Buren School District is another example of a traditional school district operating a virtual school, the River Valley Virtual Academy for up to 1,000 students.
Pulaski County Special district leaders visited virtual schools in the state and across the country, and pulled elements from several in creating the Driven Virtual Academy.
"I know we have a lot of competition with other virtual academies," Blackwell said, adding that the district's virtual school "will be the only one in this region that is tied to a school district. Students and their parents will have someone close by that they can call and talk to."
Driven Virtual Academy, like all other charter schools in the state, is a public school that will provide its services and most instructional materials -- including computer devices -- at no cost to students and families.
The district will be able to count the academy enrollment as part of the district's overall enrollment, which is the basis for state funding for the district.
"It will be nice to have something centrally located for our families in our district," Blackwell said about the program that will be staffed by district teachers housed at the district's Center of Innovation building at 21001 Arkansas 10. The former Robinson Middle School campus is also used for teacher-training programs and for the district's alternative education program.
The district-employed teachers will support students in their use of curriculum provided by a vendor. That vendor is to be selected by Pulaski County Special district leaders in the coming days. The instruction will be asynchronous -- not live -- enabling students to access it at times best for them.
Blackwell emphasized that one of the main purposes of the academy is to provide a self-paced personalized instructional program that meets the needs of students who want a flexible schedule because of health issues, or travel or work schedules or because they want to accelerate their learning.
No decision has been made on the numbers of students who will be assigned to an academy teacher. But each student will have a mentor teacher who will be a point of contact for the family. The district-employed teachers will maintain regular office hours for their students for online and face-to-face conversations and tutoring.
"Teachers aren't just grading machines," Blackwell said. "They are going to be in there making contact with students, and so we are making sure that the ratio is small enough so they can build relationships."
A big part of the district's initial outreach for the virtual academy will be to families who reside within the boundaries of the Pulaski County Special district who home-school their children or who send their children to private schools. The virtual academy also is open to students who live outside the district but apply for Arkansas School Choice Act transfers to the Pulaski County Special district.
More than 1,141 of Arkansas' current home-school students reside in the Pulaski County Special district.
"We have so many supports in our district. They will have access to dyslexia services and gifted and talented education. They can play athletics in the schools," Blackwell said.
Charles McNulty, the district's superintendent, in presenting the academy proposal to the state's Charter Authorizing Panel, added that components of the virtual school would include career education, college preparation activities, counseling and fine arts.
"What PCSSD brings to the table is a myriad of services, professionals with specific skills," he said. "Our students in Driven Virtual Academy will be able to access these.
"And finally, we are no newcomer to 1-to-1 education and we have learned a lot ... regarding technological needs," he said. "Right now, we offer hot spots to many of our families who do not have access to the internet and we would intend to support that process and get better at it as we support Driven Virtual Academy."
Naccaman Williams, a member of the charter panel, noted that the Pulaski County Special district has five schools with state-issued letter grades of a "D."
"I'd like to get to where the rubber meets the road," Williams said. "What are you going to do to help these students get better [who are] going to be enrolled in the school?"
McNulty noted that the state-required ACT Aspire tests were not given to students this spring because campuses were closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, but that he believed several of the schools would have shown improvement on the test and in the letter grades. That was based on results on other tests, including the ACT college entrance exams.
Driven Virtual Academy is different than the district's existing Driven School of Opportunity but under the district's same innovation umbrella, Blackwell said. The School of Opportunity programs at Mills, Robinson and Maumelle high schools enable participating students in attendance at those schools to work more independently and at their own pace in core academic courses, using both online and in-person teacher instruction.
More information about the Driven Virtual Academy and a parent-interest survey are on the district's website: https://bit.ly/38v2Aay.