A few days ago I came across a link for the new Virtual Learning Academy of St. Clair County, which is being operated by the St. Clair County RESA here in Michigan. For those folks not from Michigan, as best I can tell they are a level of bureaucracy somewhere between school district and the state Department of Education (it has been hard to figure out cause there are schools, school districts, ISDs, and RESAs and I’m not sure the exact pecking order).
Anyway, there is nothing particularly special about this program – as it appears to be similar to hundreds of district-based programs across the country. Except there is a link at the bottom of their page to:
Virtual Learning Academy 2009-10 Budget
This is kind of interesting, as it indicates that the proposed budget for the coming year will have this online program turn a profit of about $65,000 based on revenue of $365,000. Now by my simple math, that means that 17.6% of the money coming into this online program will be profit – which isn’t a bad margin.
Upon looking at this, my first action was to contact the National Research Collaborative Seeking Cost Details to let them know about the program and the proposed budget. The second thing that I thought of was a conversation that I had some someone on this very blog a few months ago about funding and the cost of operating a cyber school (see Funding And Legislative Issues In Ohio For K-12 Online Learning). For those who don’t want to follow the link, the gist of it was that Ohio was looking to cut funding for cyber charter schools (I assume arguing that it didn’t cost as much to run them as a brick-and-mortar school). I took the same position and figure out some approximate figures based largely on my own opinions. The Communications Coordinator for Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School took issue with that and cited the 2006 BellSouth Foundation report as evidence that online schooling costs as much as brick-and-mortar education. I pointed out to that individual “their primary method of data collection was bringing a bunch of people together who were supposedly knowledgeable in this area and asking them to make estimations” and that the “expert panels included [at least] 11 people from K-12 online learning programs” out of a total of fifteen. The Communications Coordinator didn’t bother to respond.
Now this little piece of data comes across my computer screen, which again leads to some of the same questions I asked in that previous post:
- What is the difference between homeschooling and full-time cyber schooling (of the kind that is offered by many of these cyber charter schools)?
- …why they [i.e., cyber charter schools or any K-12 online learning program] need the same funding?
- …what level of funding or what percentage of that FTE they should receive?
- …[does] all of the money cyber charter schools receive goes into the education of the student?
- What do you suppose might have happened to these seven online learning programs if they had determined that K-12 online learning could be accomplished for 65% of the cost of brick-and-mortar education?
- Do you honestly believe that any state government would have allowed those online programs to keep the other 35%?
- …if cyber charter schools can do it more efficiently with less waste, why do they need to be allocated the same amount of per pupil funding?
Anyone?
Jamey Fitzpatrick from Michigan Virtual sent me this late last week.
I received this message from a parent last night.
