Pennsylvania Online High Schools

In the decade since cyber charter schools first opened to Pennsylvania students, turning on a computer instead of hopping on the bus has just … clicked.

The Internet became the classroom, partly or wholly, for more than a million students across the country last year. And in few places has it been more popular than in Pennsylvania, where the cyber charter school experiment has morphed into a movement, serving one of the highest registrations in the country, more than 23,000 full-time students.

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Conestoga Valley School District has a virtual academy in which about 20 students go through an online course of instruction.

But many more district students are enrolled in similar cyber charter schools for which the district annually spends $500,000. Now, district officials are looking at a plan to get more students to enroll in its own cyber school and recoup some of those costs.

Currently, 49 students in the Conestoga Valley School District are enrolled in state-certified cyber charter schools, for which the district must pay roughly $8,700 per student. Yet at the Conestoga Valley Virtual Academy, yearly costs max out around $5,200.

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Dover Area School District students who thought “no more teachers, no more books” when school closed for summer sort of got their wish.

But probably not in the way they thought.

About 40 teachers went through training last week so they can teach in Dover Cyber Academy, an online classroom program that was in pilot mode last school year.

It’s part of Dover’s push to offer more scheduling options for students and to reclaim those who had enrolled in cyber charter schools elsewhere, said Dana Baker, assistant superintendent.

The training taught teachers how to use the software, how to teach without textbooks and how to overcome other hurdles to a cyber model.

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East Penn School District officials who have long bemoaned the rising cost of students lost to cyber charter schools are making an aggressive push to win them back.

The district has joined the increasing number of schools in the region getting into the cyber charter school business in a move largely meant to save its taxpayers money

School directors voted this week to join the Lehigh Valley Cyber Consortium, a group of districts pooling resources to offer online courses through a Pittsburgh-based firm.

It’s part of the district’s summer-long campaign to market East Penn schools to both cyber charter and charter school students who cost the district roughly $2.5 million this past school year, according to Superintendent Thomas Seidenberger.

“We’re not strong-arming,” Seidenberger said. “We’re just trying to give parents a choice. We’ve been screaming about the high cost of cyber schools. This is a practical solution.

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