Everything that I know about virtual schooling is based on my experience in Suttons Bay. There the district entered into a consortium with two other districts that each did their best guess on how many students that they could bring into the consortium. The budget was based on that guess and Suttons Bay was relying on that budget to balance their brick and mortar budget. Not only was there an over estimate of FTEs, but the pupil accounting requirements that are a different standard than that of brick and mortar schools was not fully followed through on and there are some discrepancies with the teacher - student contacts which caused several of the pupil log ins and contacts to not count the students for FTE money purposes. This also created an issue for me, as the district went into deficit and wasn't going to make payroll in a couple of months, they had to make deep cuts. One was me. So I see the back end administration of the issues with virtual schools.
The kinds of students that I have personal experience with leaving for virtual school from my current district are not typical students and usually are struggling students in some way-usually socially or behaviorally. Some who- in my opinion are in the biggest need of face to face social interaction and need the practice with positive peer relationships. The lack of face to face social practice that can happen if parents' of home schooled and virtual school students do not make a major effort to ensure that their students keep live social interactions.
I am sure that my experiences do not define virtual school students. I am excited to find out more about the virtual school experience.
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