K12′s North Carolina team includes Jeff Barnhart, a former state representative for Cabarrus County, where the North Carolina Virtual Academy would be based.

K12 probably needs those lobbyists. That’s because the North Carolina School Boards Association and others are making the case against online charters.

“The way our funding formulas work in North Carolina for both the traditional public schools and charter schools is that it’s based upon estimated student counts and home school students aren’t included in those counts,” says Leanne Winner, NCSBA’s chief lobbyist and director of government relations.

For the rest of the article, go to ‘Virtual’ Charter School Goes To State Board For Approval

The application will now be sent to the State Board of Education for approval.

This was the third time the board discussed the application.

If it is approved at the state level, the virtual charter school would be based in Cabarrus County and would enroll students statewide.

It would have North Carolina-certified teachers, and students would have online and hardcopy school materials, said Joseph Chisholm, vice president of school development for K12, Inc., a technology-based education company that provides curriculum, who presented at the board’s business meeting in December.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual Charter Academy gains initial approval

Taking the online classes would have no cost to parents or students, but the home counties of students would send each enrolled student’s share of state and local funding to the company.

In December, we reported on how the company was courting Cabarrus County as a way to wedge itself into the larger North Carolina market (Click here to read our December report, “Questionable company targets NC for virtual charter school).

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual charter school company gets approval in Cabarrus

According to the request, certified teachers would work from home and students’ work would be supervised by their parents.

For the rest of the rest of the article, go to Virtual charter school up for vote in Cabarrus County

“This is your research partner speaking. I’ll be guiding you through your ocean exploration,” says the voice as the screen asks you to identify various fish.

This lesson is taught by a for-profit company called K12 Inc. K12 wants to start an online charter school in Cabarrus County called the North Carolina Virtual Academy. In fact, this would be the first online charter school in North Carolina.

The company wants to partner with Cabarrus County Schools. It would be a business arrangement of sorts. The school system would receive up to $550,000 in return for serving as a consultant.

For the rest of the article, go to ‘Virtual’ Charter School Looks To Cabarrus, Seeks BOE Partnership

“We just passed 50,000 enrollments for this school year (Thursday),” said Ross White, the executive director of the school. “We’re a big school all of a sudden.”

More than 32,000 students took N.C. Virtual Public School courses last school year, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, making it the second-largest virtual school by enrollment in the country. The N.C. Virtual Public School was indirectly established by the General Assembly and first offered online courses in June 2007.

It provides a greater array of course work than many traditional high schools, including advanced placement and special-needs classes, in addition to opportunities for students to catch up with their classmates or work ahead. Virtual school teachers must meet the same licensing requirements and the course work and students are held to the same standards as those in traditional high schools, state superintendent June Atkinson said.

The technologies used by the virtual school include:

l Video.

l Blogs.

l Wikis, which are web pages that can be modified by several members of a group.

l Active worlds, which allow users to explore 3D virtual reality environments, as in video games.

l Online discussion tools.

For the rest of the article, go to EARLY GRADUATION: Real learning in virtual school

The company, K-12, Inc. (NYSE: LRN), wants the school district (which is located just outside of Charlotte) to sponsor an application to the N.C. State Board of Education to open up the state’s first virtual charter school. Then, the company (operating under a yet-to-be created non-profit in order to comply with state laws) would enroll students statewide, siphoning off money from various school districts and sending Cabarrus County a cut of the money their trouble . (Read our investigative article from December to learn more about K12 in North Carolina).

The company hopes to have 2,750 students within a few years, at a cost of $18 million to taxpayers for a quality of education that critics have said is questionable and puts profits before children.

The Cabarrus County School board held a meeting Monday, and several board members questioned why the company wanted to enter the state’s market through them, according to the Concord Independent Tribune.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual charter company gets pushback in Western N.C.

The board is scheduled to vote at its Jan. 23 business meeting on whether or not the district will grant preliminary approval and support the charter school.

Board members first discussed this at their business meeting last month. At that meeting, they heard that, if it is ultimately approved, the virtual charter school would be based in Cabarrus County and would enroll students statewide.

For the rest of the article, go to Cabarrus school board discusses reservations about virtual charter school

Joseph Chisholm, vice president of school development for K12, Inc., which is a technology-based education company that provides curriculum, presented a proposal for the school, and the board’s attorney, Sarah Stone, told members about the process for review. Stone told the board that it needs to make a decision about this by Feb. 1, 2012.

If approved, the virtual charter school would be based in Cabarrus County and is meant to enroll students statewide. When it is proposed to open, in the fall of 2012, it would initially serve students in grades kindergarten through 10th, but it would grow to include 11th and 12th-grade students, Chisholm said.

For the rest of the article, go to Cabarrus school board hears proposal for virtual charter school

The state is expecting a $3 million funding shortfall in the virtual program’s budget and has temporarily suspended 15 districts from enrolling any more students in the spring, including Mooresville City Schools, because their enrollment exceeded expectations.

I-SS is not one of the 15, and David Blattner, principal of the Collaborative College for Technology and Leadership and overseer of the district’s virtual program, said I-SS will have no problems funding all its students that want to take online classes.

For the rest of the article, go to I-SS eludes Virtual High School funding woes