Do you wish your child had access to classes at other schools? For instance, maybe he’d like to take Mandarin or Arabic or re-take a class he bungled that’s not offered again for a year. Thanks to technology and the state legislature, it’s possible. This year nearly 50,000 students from across the state took classes at the North Carolina Virtual Public School, in spite of the fact that it could be one of the state’s best-kept secrets. Not that school officials want it that way. But with budget cuts on the rise, it hasn’t been easy to get the word out.
WHAT IS THE NORTH CAROLINA VIRTUAL PUBLIC SCHOOL? First, let’s cover what it’s not. You can’t earn a diploma from the school; courses are intended to supplement a public school education, at no cost to the student as long as he or she is enrolled in the public school system. Home-schooled and private school students will be able to take classes for a fee this summer. A little background: In 2002, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted a statute charged with making the state’s public school system graduate a globally competitive and technologically-sound workforce. From that, the North Carolina Virtual Public School opened in 2007, the brain child of Governor Bev Perdue. The goal of the school was to offer access to classes high schoolers couldn’t get at their local schools. For example, if a student wanted to take Latin, but the course wasn’t offered at his school, he could take it online and receive credit on his transcript. “She (Perdue) really wanted rural students in North Carolina to have the same benefits of students in more metropolitan areas that might have Arabic, Chinese, Russian and other courses,” says Andrea Pacyna, office assistant for the North Carolina Virtual Public School, who talks to parents and administrators daily about enrollments and class offerings. Quickly, though, administrators realized there were other needs the school could meet and reached out to embrace these as well. CARYLIVING.COM | 53
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