Central MN Virtual Academy Launches this Fall

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- When the new school year starts this fall the St. Cloud Area School District will be launching the first year of its online school called Central Minnesota Virtual Academy.

Students in grades six through eight can enroll full-time in the program. So far they have about 25 students signed up and they are capping enrollment at 40.

For grades nine through 12 students can be either part-time or full-time and so far they have 125 students taking at least some classes online.

Director of Programming Ryan Cox says they are offering a wide variety of classes.

We'll be offering classes that are required for graduation. We've got a whole host of language arts, social studies, math, and science, we've got physical education, health, and art classes that are exciting for our kids.

Cox says students are encouraged to continue interacting with their classmates.

We've got students that will be taking maybe one class online for a variety of reasons, and we've got students going fulltime online, and in every student, we do encourage them to take part in that student experience.

Cox says it is likely some students will actually be taking some classes online while they are in the school building.

The district doesn't have any full-time teachers assigned to the program, instead, they are using the term adjunct where a teacher may choose to teach one or two classes online in addition to their regular in-person teaching. He says they have about 25 teachers signed up for that.

The learning model is somewhat on the student's own schedule where teachers post about a week's worth of material ahead of time and the students can control their own pace.