Morrisville schools discuss cyber school option
Posted: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 5:15 pm | Updated: 7:45 pm, Wed Feb 13, 2013.
Posted on February 13, 2013
A group of parents this week got a glimpse into the possibility of Morrisville High School becoming a cyber school.As part of the Morrisville School District’s Education Committee monthly discussion series dealing with the district’s future, the panel of four touched on how such a move could fit into Morrisville.
Currently there are a number of students who attend school outside the borough.
The three school board members and the superintendent who make up the committee touched on the following issues in a conversation with a group of 14 residents at the Tuesday night meeting:
The committee has been discussing the future of the district since November. Since then, members have come up with nine options. Each month, they discuss the pros and cons of each. For now, there's no hard deadline as to when changes might happen once the district decides on a route.
The options are:
The summer school program is based on a curriculum developed by the district’s faculty and implemented with the use of Compass Learning software, officials said.
“The use of cyber courses have enabled us to assist students in graduating and provided the opportunity to try new programs and work out the problems,” said school board President Damon Miller said. “Therefore, should we decide to increase the use of cyber courses to reduce the cost of our high school students we are confident we can provide a variety of options to our students.”
Ferrara explained that the summer school model would be implemented in any year-round program, but not all features would be used.
In cyber summer school, students take a test at the beginning of the program and a follow-up test after the program has ended. A student must score 70 percent or higher on the post-test to receive credit for the course.
A teacher is available at the school once a week to meet and assist students with the course work during summer school. Students also can e-mail teachers if they face difficulties during the week.
To add to the district’s cyber experience last year, Morrisville became a member of the Bucks County IU Bridge Program, a county-wide cyber school.
Additionally, four home-based students in three years have been placed in Morrisville's cyber alternative school.
The first student was unable to function in a normal school setting and remained in cyber alternative school in her junior and senior years. Since then, three other students have done the same.
A parent at Tuesday's meeting asked if science would be taught as a cyber class, resulting in the elimination of hands-on experience of lab time such as dissecting an animal.
Ferrara explained the district is already moving into virtual labs, a move that would eliminate the material costs, therefore saving the district money.
He added that cyber classwork would be geared at the pace of individual students, and wouldn’t be offered in a period-by-period style.
Because previous committee meetings were poorly attended by parents and residents, before delving into the cyber school option, the committee rehashed last month’s discussion on tuitioning out students to other districts.
A parent asked how the committee is determining the pros and cons of each option.
Miller said that it’s based on “what we feel.”
Another parent asked if merging was an option.
Yes, Miller responded, adding that Morrisville would have to find another district it is willing to merge with.
“It would get more students back to our schools,” Superintendent Bill Ferrara said at this week's meeting. “It would reduce the cost per student. In the long run it changes your operating cost.”
The three school board members and the superintendent who make up the committee touched on the following issues in a conversation with a group of 14 residents at the Tuesday night meeting:
- Cyber classes could be offered at home or at school
- Students may or may not be provided with computers
- Costs per student would be lower
- Cyber classes would cover core subjects, and maybe a few others such as health and foreign language
- Classes could be offered as early as the beginning of the 2013-14 school year
The committee has been discussing the future of the district since November. Since then, members have come up with nine options. Each month, they discuss the pros and cons of each. For now, there's no hard deadline as to when changes might happen once the district decides on a route.
The options are:
- Keep the status quo
- Go to a five-period day (currently, the high school runs with six periods)
- Bring in cyber courses
- Increase the number of students attending Bucks County Technical High School in Bristol Township
- Send borough high school students to another district by paying their tuition to enroll
- Increase dual credit enrollment with Bucks County Community College
- Engage in a complete merger with another district
- Go to a split schedule (staggering school entrance times)
- Enroll students in multi-district cyber courses (a pool of districts offering a variety of online classes)
The summer school program is based on a curriculum developed by the district’s faculty and implemented with the use of Compass Learning software, officials said.
“The use of cyber courses have enabled us to assist students in graduating and provided the opportunity to try new programs and work out the problems,” said school board President Damon Miller said. “Therefore, should we decide to increase the use of cyber courses to reduce the cost of our high school students we are confident we can provide a variety of options to our students.”
Ferrara explained that the summer school model would be implemented in any year-round program, but not all features would be used.
In cyber summer school, students take a test at the beginning of the program and a follow-up test after the program has ended. A student must score 70 percent or higher on the post-test to receive credit for the course.
A teacher is available at the school once a week to meet and assist students with the course work during summer school. Students also can e-mail teachers if they face difficulties during the week.
To add to the district’s cyber experience last year, Morrisville became a member of the Bucks County IU Bridge Program, a county-wide cyber school.
Additionally, four home-based students in three years have been placed in Morrisville's cyber alternative school.
The first student was unable to function in a normal school setting and remained in cyber alternative school in her junior and senior years. Since then, three other students have done the same.
A parent at Tuesday's meeting asked if science would be taught as a cyber class, resulting in the elimination of hands-on experience of lab time such as dissecting an animal.
Ferrara explained the district is already moving into virtual labs, a move that would eliminate the material costs, therefore saving the district money.
He added that cyber classwork would be geared at the pace of individual students, and wouldn’t be offered in a period-by-period style.
Because previous committee meetings were poorly attended by parents and residents, before delving into the cyber school option, the committee rehashed last month’s discussion on tuitioning out students to other districts.
A parent asked how the committee is determining the pros and cons of each option.
Miller said that it’s based on “what we feel.”
Another parent asked if merging was an option.
Yes, Miller responded, adding that Morrisville would have to find another district it is willing to merge with.
28 comments:
its sandy gibson and einstein all over again. cant trust anyone.
I know, right? You can't trust those SOC people. They recruited and elected Gibson and celebrated her victory.
This is horrible. Cyber schools are a bad joke. Please tuition out our high school kids so they have a chance at a real education.
Just to clarify, this would be for the district to offer some cyber classes, in addition to traditional "bricks and mortar" classes, to increase offerings and provide more scheduling flexibility. It wouldn't be a total conversion into a cyber school. I can see where the article might give that impression, bur that's not how it has been discussed at these Education Committee meetings.
Y'all are a bunch of Vezzini's in here.
Dunno what that means. Should we be flattered or insulted?
2 Words
CYBER SUPERINTENDENT
Cyber contract
Cyber salary
Cyber benefits
"Please tuition out our high school kids so they have a chance at a real education."
Some questions/concerns I have about tuitioning are...
Tuitioning out could backfire on the Morrisville community. We would be paying school taxes, that ultimately must increase as well as increasing tuitioning taxes/costs.
Having given up our district's ability to educate a portion of the community's youth could leave our town at the mercy of tuition costs that have the potential to rise even past any point that we thought they would if the children were still here.
What would happen to our community's children if at some point in the future the tuitioning school decides they no longer want to educate Morrisville's children?
We are a walking district. If some of our students receive bussing, do we have to pay the costs of now bussing all of our children?
Are we willing to give up our sports teams?
What would tuitioning do to the future of real estate? Would families purchase property within the borough if they knew that there children would be bussed to a different school district?
I realize this is not the place for answers to these questions/concerns. I'm just putting this out there as part of the conversation.
All really good points. Thank you for posting. I think most, if not all, of these have been raised at the Education Committee meetings. I'm not saying that to diminish it. I mean, there are some common themes here that various people have brought up, even in the course of just the first few committee meetings. I think it definitely helps when more and more people provide feedback.
Regarding tuitioning out, Superintendent Ferrara said Tuesday night that ZERO surrounding districts have been contacted about it to date.
Someone mentioned at Tuesday night's Education Committee meeting that it's a big assumption that surrounding districts are interested in and would contract with Morrisville to accept our High School students. I'd say that's true, because there's no real evidence to say one way or the other. No other districts have even been contacted yet.
I'm not against looking into it more, but a lot more info needs to be collected and evaluated, and there are a lot of loose ends.
Even when all the data is collected and evaluated, you'll still be left with a bunch of pros and cons to consider in making a decision.
yea anonymous above thats usually how it works. evaluating options and making decisions based on facts
What? No rebuttal to King Hellman's self-serving opinion piece in today's BCCT? As is usually the case, his idiocy is on full display for any thinking person to see. It becomes glaringly obvious why his devotees are all folks like Marlys, that is to say, folks with limited cognitive abilities and mean spirited myopic perspective.
I didn't see it until now. Here it is below. I hope this little bit of extra attention is therapeutic for him.
No tax hike? Get it in writing!
Posted: Friday, February 15, 2013 6:00 am
The Bristol Township School District officials claim they can build three new school buildings and renovate existing school buildings at a cost of $152 million. My experience is the price tag goes up and when all is said and done the cost will probably be higher.
The sales pitch is that there would be a zero tax increase for residents for this $152 million project. Anybody who believes this, I have land for sale in Florida; just don't look at it.
I do not know the details of this proposal but as former president of the Morrisville School Board, I would ask the architecture group, school board members (who vote for it) and administration that since they claim there will be no tax increases are they willing to pay for any and all tax increases as of the result of this project? I advise all Bristol Township residents to get this guarantee in writing.
The Bristol Township School District already has the highest school tax millage in Bucks County. (Morrisville has the highest combined borough/school tax millage in Bucks County, even after substantial tax decreases by the Morrisville School board of 2007-2011).
The news article stated there were pictures of portable boilers, decaying windows, etc. This reminds me of the pictures shown here in the Morrisville School District back in 2006, when that school board tried to build a new high school. We all know how that ended. Remember, the higher the cost of the project, the higher are the architectural and other fees.
These liberal groups are all the same: tax, spend and borrow. This is evident in the federal government (with over $16 trillion in debt, growing larger every day) all the way down to local governments such as in Bucks County. They believe the solution is to constantly throw more money at public education and that will solve the problem. Get it in writing.
Bill Hellmann
Morrisville
OK. Hellmann has proven he can write letters. Dimwitted letters, but letters nonetheless. Can he write out a check for his overdue garbage bills, or will he continue to make all the rest of us pay his tab?
I guess the only time Hellman makes sure the CPA tag is there when he talks for the Mo'ville folks.
King Emperor of the Deadbeats, C.P.A.!
So there's heat, hot water, and electricity in his bunker?
Funny, Hellmann didn't mention that some of those Morrisville pictures of decaying school infrastructure were of the M.R. Reiter elementary school furnace, and that he personally tried to scuttle doing repairs on this furnace in July 2008, about 4 months before it exploded. Or that the ensuing emergency was "good".
"Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due."
-- Dick Cheney
That's right, Bristol Township, get that guarantee in writing. That way, it would become a written agreement of sorts, like a contract or a lease or articles of agreement, that could never just be arbitrarily broken by self-righteous zealots on a school board, leading to costly lawsuits that leave local taxpayers holding the bag.
do I smell a Hellman run with his Besty Marlis for the up coming seats on the School Board.
I read alot of what should be done but don't see a whole lot of people turning out to any meetings
They've got my votes ... as worst most divisive hypocritical lying a$$ jerks in town.
It's one thing to have fundamental philosophical differences about how best to achieve cost effective quality public education.
Divisive menaces like Hellman and Mihok are a whole other ballgame.
I don't want to go back to their brand of so called "leadership". Their occasional, deliberately dishonest letters to the newspaper are bad enough.
Read up on what makes Bill CPA tick. You can learn valuable insights about him from this. He cannot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person)
What were Hellman, Marlys, Worob, Buckman and all their pals doing about maintaining our schools in the 20 to 30 years leading up to Reiter's explosion?
The record reflects them complaining about taxes, losing lawsuits, and winning and losing elections, but nothing about fixing anything.
"All their pals"? Who? Where? They barely have themselves. People caught on to what they're all about.
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