Chesterfield hopes to market high school classes online

Want your child to get a Chesterfield County education from the comfort of your Richmond home?

That could be possible as early as this fall, and it won't require fudging addresses and it may not require out-of-pocket tuition payments.

In the coming weeks, Chesterfield is expected to be named by the state as an approved multi-district provider of online education. That means it can begin marketing its assortment of online high school classes to students outside the county — including to Richmond, which has one of the state's most robust populations of students who eschew free public education.

County administrators received notification of approval last month, and the School Board approved the acceptance at its May 24 meeting.

"I think the state is trying to be progressive and creative ... in a push to provide the best education," said David Myers, the assistant superintendent for finance in Chesterfield.

He said administrators had yet to finalize a marketing plan for the service or figure out all the costs but that he thinks there is definitely a market for what Chesterfield teaches.

He said it could appeal to parents "who for a variety of reasons" don't use their local school systems.

Chesterfield is home to the state's largest population of students who have opted out of school on religious grounds, with 834, according to 2010-11 enrollment data compiled by the state. It also has the third-largest population of home-schooled children, with 1,358 students.

But the real market might be in Richmond, where about one in three school-age children does not attend city schools. According to a 2008 count by the state, the most recent available, the city had 34,811 school-age children but only 23,202 students.

"Richmond would be a great market, and so would the Tri-Cities," said Chesterfield School Board member U. Omarh Rajah.

"But so would Chesterfield," he said, noting the number of home-schooled students in the county.

"I don't anticipate any backlash," he said. "I would anticipate competiveness. I see it as everyone else is going to up the ante. It's a win-win."

Kimberly Bridges, the chairwoman of the Richmond School Board and the representative from the city's 1st District, said she was eager to see the full details of the Chesterfield plan.

"We have a good working relationship, superintendent to superintendent and board member to board member," she said. "There may be an opportunity to collaborate."

Kimberly B. Gray, who represents the 2nd District on the Richmond School Board, said she welcomed the competition but said the city needs to stay focused on keeping the students it already has.

"The gains we've made in recent years have been on the elementary level," she said, noting that the city had been able to stabilize school enrollment for the first time in decades based on the strength of several elementary schools. "We need to continue to strengthen what we offer in middle school and high school."

She did say that it "would be a missed opportunity to allow our neighbor to educate children we should be educating."

The multi-divisional designation is part of Gov. Bob McDonnell's three-part education plan, along with a push for more charter schools and for the creation of university-backed "laboratory schools."

In 2010, state legislators approved the virtual learning program, and early this year, the Virginia Department of Education solicited applications from school divisions and commercial vendors for the program.

In a May 24 memo to the Chesterfield School Board, Superintendent Marcus J. Newsome said the county was one of two divisions in the state to win provisional acceptance. Full acceptance, he wrote, would come after teachers had been identified and the School Board approved the move.

Like many school divisions, Chesterfield already offers online classes. The new designation will allow it to expand the program, CCPSOnline. Under the new state legislation, school divisions can offer online courses without state approval if 90 percent or more of the students live in the division's boundaries. The state designation allows approved providers to serve more students outside their divisions.

Myers said Chesterfield hoped to have its first classes available this fall.

He said the county spends about $8,500 per student and that it would cost "significantly less" for online students, though he didn't have an exact number.

Myers said Chesterfield was working under the assumption that it would be able to capture the state funding along with the student, so if a Richmond student enrolled in the Chesterfield program, then the county, not the city, would get the funding.

He said they "anticipated working out a business model that wouldn't" result in out-of-pocket expenses for participants.

Rajah said he thought Chesterfield could provide online learning for considerably less than the $4,000 per student the county gets from the state.

"It's a great opportunity," he said. "I foresee this really growing."

zreid@timesdispatch.com

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