University View Academy, Louisiana's largest school, is getting into the learning pod business, and the charter school has publicly signed on to this new way to extend public school to families far from the school's physical campus. This is the third company to operate it.
Learning pods educate children in a smaller, more personalized environment that combines online and in-person instruction. Charter schools in Louisiana are beginning to adopt this approach as a way to expand their reach far beyond the geographic boundaries of their physical campuses.
As a result, learning pods are blurring the lines between brick-and-mortar and virtual charter schools.
University View Academy (UVA) has been a leader in online instruction in Louisiana since opening in 2011.
This virtual charter school educates 3,720 children from kindergarten through 12th grade. This is six times the size when the school opened.
UVA has 835 more students than the state's next largest charter school near Lafayette. East Carroll Parish is the only one of the state's 64 parishes with no students currently enrolled in UVA's roster.
And UVA has permission from the state to expand by as many as 4,000 students.
The school is considering starting pods this fall that focus on what parents in specific areas want but UVA doesn't offer or offers only in a limited way. There is.
“We need to respond to the needs of our students and our community,” said University View Superintendent Quentina Timor.
UVA currently offers some in-person services, particularly at its headquarters in Baton Rouge, and also pays for various field trips for students. The state's charter agreement allows it to offer a combination of online and in-person instruction, known as blended or hybrid learning.
However, virtual charter schools can only keep 90% of their public funding. The assumption is that virtual schools will be cheaper because they don't have many of the fixed costs associated with brick-and-mortar schools.
In contrast, students in learning pods receive 100% of public funding.
Timor said the additional funding for pods is part of the reason UVA is going the pod route.
“We understand there will be additional costs to secure space (for the pods),” said Timor, a veteran school administrator who previously held high-level positions in the East Baton Rouge Parish and state Department of Education.
Fort Lauderdale-based Charter Schools USA is Louisiana's largest charter school network and pioneered the pod concept. It helped pass a 2021 state law that sanctions the company's pods, which it had operated since 2018 without notifying state regulators.
In December 2022, after lengthy negotiations, Charter Schools USA persuaded state education leaders to adopt relaxed rules for learning pods.
But the company's little-known pod business led the state Department of Education to commission a major audit from nonprofit TenSquare.
In August 2023, the Louisiana Legislative Audit Office released its own report on learning pods, known as a performance audit. The document provides 11 recommendations on how states can improve learning of Pod laws and regulations.
Performance Audits Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools Charter Schools・School charter ・School charter ・School charter ・School charter ・School charter ・School charter ・School charter ・School charter ・School charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School Charter School The practice of transferring charter school students from one campus to another was thoroughly investigated in this performance audit. The audit also found that one of its pods, the private Red Stick Academy in Baton Rouge, served to “artificially boost” the academic performance of the much lower performing South Baton Rouge Charter Academy. , that information was not shared with the general public. .
Gina Brown, manager of the state Audit Office's performance audit division, said the agency's investigative audit team is still investigating other issues highlighted in the TenSquare audit. That includes the legality of Podd's parents paying for his tuition while receiving public state funds. Some educational services — TenSquare's auditors described these fees as tuition fees.
Charter Schools USA continues to operate a small number of pods throughout south Louisiana, primarily through its Iberville Charter Academy campus in Plaquemine. On Friday, the Louisiana Department of Education announced that 40 of the company's pod students are enrolled at Lafayette Renaissance Charter Academy, another of the company's campuses.
Kenner-based Discovery School is the first charter group to join Charter Schools USA in the pod experiment.
Last fall, Discovery School notified state regulators of its plans to launch a pod it called “Discovery Fusion” at its new campus in Baton Rouge. We aim to enroll up to 280 students in the middle school grades and gradually expand from her 1st grade to her 12th grade.
University View Academy is one of two virtual charter schools across Louisiana. For its first five years it was called Louisiana Connections Academy, but in 2016 it severed ties with Baltimore-based Connections Academy and was renamed.
Another statewide virtual charter, Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy, educates 1,920 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. He also opened this school, known as LAVCA, in 2011. Although part of Baton Rouge-based CSAL Inc.'s charter network, Herndon, Virginia-based Stride K12 Inc. (formerly known as K12 Inc.) handles the bulk of his LAVCA business.
In August, CSAL Inc. will launch a new charter school, Louisiana Reverse Blended Learning Academy, to educate high school adjudicated youth and students who have been expelled from their home school due to disciplinary issues. . The school plans to educate 450 students next year, with plans to expand further.
Timor said University View Academy's plan to transition to pods began at the request of a small group of parents in St. Tammany Parish whose children were finishing eighth grade at a local private school without a high school. said.
“They wanted everyone to be together,” Timor said.
Since then, the charter school has been holding focus groups with parents, students and teachers to identify what specialized services the school could add, Timor said. The charter group is currently considering setting up separate pods focused on aquaponics, music, and even literacy and numeracy for younger students.
UVA has not yet formally notified the state of its pod plans, and Timor said the plans have not been finalized.
Timor said the inspiration for these plans began several years ago when UVA opened an activity center in Baton Rouge.
“Students started coming in and getting some in-person experience,” Timor said. “Our parents told us they wanted to do more of this, they wanted to do it in more places.”
Timor described the new pod as a “pilot” that will help UVA fine-tune its expansion plans as it prepares to seek state charter renewal in the near future.
He also noted that competition could arise not only from increased online competition from new public learning pods, but also from the potential legal recognition of education savings accounts. These universal vouchers would provide Louisiana families of all income levels with sufficient public funds to spend on private school tuition, potentially including online private schools.
Timor said increased competition requires online charter schools to “really maintain real innovation.”
“I don't think being (strictly) online is as innovative as it was when UVA opened 13 years ago,” she said.