Online schools make gains

Enrollment jumps as students enjoy benefits of telecommuting to school

By Venice Buhain | The Olympian • Published December 01, 2008

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About 400 students in kindergarten through 12th grade who live in the Olympia, Tumwater and North Thurston school districts transferred this year to fully online public schools locally or in other districts.

Full-online public schools have become a draw for about 1 percent of South Sound students and their families. The schools, run by private companies, allow students to take on subjects at their own pace and provide instructors to teach subjects to students who previously were home-schooled.

The programs are free to families with a computer and Internet access. Some programs even provide the computer — because the online schools have been funded at the same per-student rate as traditional brick-and-mortar schools since 2005.

The numbers

In North Thurston schools, 208 students this year transferred to other districts to attend full-time online schools, district spokeswoman Courtney Schrieve said. In Tumwater, 92 students — about half of them former home-schoolers — did the same, district spokeswoman Sue Haskin said, though about half of those students were homeschooled and therefore not part of the Tumwater school system before going to an online public school.

In Olympia, 43 students transferred to other districts for online schools — about one-half of 1 percent. The district's own online school, iConnect, enrolled 70 students from Olympia and elsewhere, said district spokesman Peter Rex.

The North Thurston and Tumwater districts both have online classes at their high schools, but neither operates a full-time online school.

Two years ago, Olympia started a fully online school program, called iConnect Academy, out of the Olympia Regional Learning Academy.

Tumwater

Tumwater's high schools offer online courses to their students who need to catch up on credits, but it's not an option for students who want to attend a fully online school, Haskin said.

Haskin said that while district officials have noted the number of students who have transferred to online schools, the district isn't in a rush to create its own fully-online school. Of the 92 students who transferred to a public online school, 13 of them left Tumwater classrooms. Most of the others were home-schooled, she said.