Board okays partnership for home school students

Naselle-Grays River School Board members met January 18 to decide whether to pursue a partnership that would set up a school-within-a-school to focus on coursework for home schooled students.

Superintendent Rick Pass proposed that Naselle apply to become a partner school district with Columbia Virtual Academy (CVA). The new program created from the partnership would be called Naselle Home Link and would be located in the former elementary computer lab, which would be renovated into offices to house teachers that work for the program.

Naselle Home Link would be treated as a separate school by the state, said Pass, and would be designed to serve families that choose to homeschool their students.

CVA is a tuition free virtual public school program offered to students from kindergarten through 12th grade in any Washington school district, explained Pass. Students that apply and are accepted into the program are assigned a school from one of the 12 existing partner school districts in Washington. Most are on the east side of the state, but the Raymond and Battle Ground School districts participate in the program.

Families choose the curriculum and create a learning plan for their child with the aid of a CVA advisory teacher. All of the schooling is online. There is weekly student to teacher contact. All courses offered by the academy are aligned to the state standards, and CVA students are required to take state assessment tests. CVA began in 2003 at the Valley School District in rural northeast Washington, said Pass.

Pass offered possible answers as to why the Naselle school district should partner with CVA. He stated it would offer a quality educational option to students and their families and bring in additional revenue to the school district. The teachers would be hired by Naselle school district and would create jobs in our community, said Pass. Raymond’s CVA program created 4.5 teaching positions and three classified staff positions, said Pass.

Pass said a Level One partnership agreement, with teachers and administration centralized in CVA offices in Valley, could be worked out for the second semester of this school year, which begins February 1.

Pass said he has been told that right now there are 600 students that have submitted applications to the program but CVA doesn’t have space for them in their currently existing programs. A Level Two partnership where teachers and staff are onsite in Naselle could begin next fall, said Pass.

Pass emphasized that development costs to implement the program would not come out of district funds, but would come from new revenues generated by state funding for students enrolled in the program.

As a Level One school, CVA would retain 90 percent of the money given by the state for the education of each child in the program. The remaining money would go to Naselle to offset the costs of refurnishing the computer lab.

After Naselle has passed its Level One status, it will become a Level Two school, meaning that CVA would retain only ten percent of the money (for financing administrative support) and the remaining 90 percent would go directly to Naselle School District.

After the information was presented to the board, the floor was opened up for questions and discussion.

School board member Ed Darcher asked if there was a guarantee that once the program is up and running in Naselle, other nearby school districts could not apply to create their own CVA school which could mean no students for Naselle’s school. Sarah Piper, who attended the meeting representing CVA, replied that any school district can apply for membership in the academy, but not all will be accepted if there is not a student need.

School board member Gilbert Haataia asked how CVA handles disciplinary issues. Piper replied that in truancy cases, students can be dropped from the program. CVA follows the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s guidelines for other issues.

Community member Cliff Weimer asked if the virtual students would ever actually be on the school grounds. Pass replied that for the most part, no, they would not, but if a nearby student or parent wanted to meet with their advisory teacher, a meeting could be arranged that would most likely take place on school grounds. Weimer also asked if CVA students would be counted as part of the classification system for sports. Pass explained that a virtual student would not be eligible to participate in sports, so Naselle’s sports classification would not be affected.

Business Manager Jon Tienhaara estimated the overall cost to remodel the computer lab and to outfit it with all the necessary equipment to create Naselle Home Link would be around $19,000.

After the discussion, the board approved an interlocal cooperation agreement for financing and operating Naselle Home Link through Columbia Virtual Academy.