A “new online high school in Kansas” will offer classes to Emporia students for the 2007-08 school year, according to a news release from iQ Academy Kansas’ public relations representative, Mueller Communications of Milwaukee, Wis.
Classes will be run through the Manhattan-Ogden school district. Kansas State Department of Education representatives said the district has offered an accredited virtual school for several years. Paperwork will need to be processed through the department to incorporate iQ Academy Kansas into the school’s registered name.
“I don’t think accreditation will have any involvement in the name change,” said Larry Englebrick, KSDE deputy commissioner. “It’s a process we ask the district to go through and periodically this happens across the state.”
Representatives of the new school will be in Emporia from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Holiday Inn Express to talk with potential students and their parents or guardians.
iQ Academy Kansas has held similar events this month in Wichita, Hutchinson, Junction City, Salina, Manhattan, Winfield, Parsons, Pratt, Overland Park, Dodge City, Olathe, Topeka, Garden City, Dodge City, Lawrence and Great Bend. Open houses are scheduled for the remainder of July in Manhattan and Junction City again, Colby, Norton, Topeka, Hays and Concordia.
The iQ Academy is a branch of KC Distance Learning of Portland, Ore.; its School Solutions and Sales office is in Bloomsburg, Pa. KCDL operates a variety of educational programs, including iQ Academy, Aventa Learning and Keystone National High School. The latter provides online high school courses directly to families, according to its Web site.
KCDL’s Web site states that the company has been in business since 1974, providing education through correspondence and online courses.
Courses through iQ will be taught by certified teachers from the Manhattan-Ogden school district.
“Each has also received specialized training in online instruction techniques and are readily available to assist students with their coursework,” according to an iQ Academy Kansas fact sheet included with the news release.
Help for students will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the release stated.
The school will be tuition-free and also will offer honors and advanced placement courses or electives that may be unavailable in students’ home districts.
State funds for local school districts whose students enroll in iQ Academy Kansas will be sent to the Manhattan-Ogden district. That will represent a loss of approximately $5,000 for each full-time student who leaves the local district. A state formula dictates the way state funds will be divided between districts when students choose to attend part-time at both schools.
“There’s several schools out there that are doing the same kind of thing and, honestly, we do, too,” Emporia Superintendent John Heim said. “It’s just a little more competition.”
Heim said that the Lawrence school district set up a similar academy several years ago, “and it kind of prompted us to set ours up.”
The Emporia district has a virtual segment for kindergarten through eighth-grade students from the Turning Point Learning Center, operated by Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK) of Hutchinson.
Other opportunities for online learning are available to a lesser extent at Emporia High School and The Learning Center in downtown Emporia.
EHS and Learning Center Principal Scott Sheldon said that EHS will have CompassLearning this year for some students. It is a virtual option that supplements or reinforces classroom learning, and also can be used for “credit recovery.”
“For students that may have had interrupted or holes in the learning in the past, it’s a way to catch them up or get them where they need to be,” Sheldon said.
CompassLearning will be offered only to students who need that option, and will not be available for every class.
“It originally was to supplement with math,” Sheldon said.
However, the packet had eight courses — pre-algebra, algebra and geometry, biology, physical science, freshman and sophomore English and world history — which will be used.
The Learning Center also has online choices for many of its students, who often are not able to attend regular classes because of full-time jobs, pregnancies, child care, health problems and other issues that conflict with traditional schedules.
The center is for students 16 years and older. Many English as a Second Language students attend classes at the center, according to site manager Stephanie Sullivan. Those students need a structured classroom setting. Online learning is geared more toward younger students who need flexibility in the way their educations are delivered, she said.
“Our curriculum right now is comprised partially of an integrated computer software program called ‘A+,’” she said. It can be accessed by any high-speed Internet site.
“That does not totally encompass every course,” she said. “In some courses, that’s a large part of it ... but there are also additional materials that can be completed.”
Some of the courses can be accessed through Blackboard, another high-speed access delivery mode.
Sullivan said that some classes can be done primarily at home or from a high-speed access location, though students do need to meet face-to-face at the beginning of the year and to complete final tests on-site.
Students may go to the Learning Center for individual help, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, she said. Day care is available on-site for students, unless the licensing limit is met, and breakfasts and lunches are provided by the district’s food service division.
The Learning Center meets the same outcomes as EHS’s curriculum, Sullivan said, and credits earned there can be linked to any sponsoring high school.
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