Virtual charter school uses smaller district for bigger money
They ran perpetually throughout the summer — TV ads for schools along with other hot-weather spots for fast food and beach wear. Engaging young professionals, standing next to engaging middle-school versions of themselves, explain how their studies at Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA) readied them for success in life.
The spots are part of a promotional build-up that has helped explode the enrollment of the online, for-profit school past 4,000, making it a respectable-sized Oregon school district — virtually. The Legislature has increased the permissible number of online students, and ORCA and other virtual schools are approaching that level.
But if Oregon Connections is expanding and remodeling its virtual address, it has dramatically changed its — you should excuse the expression — physical address, and notably changed its residential expenses.
Oregon law requires online schools, like other charters, to be sponsored by a school district, which stores the online school's records — apparently the Legislature wasn't comfortable just having them in the cloud — and, at least in theory, provides some oversight. For its decade of existence, Oregon Connections has had its mailing address — as opposed to its emailing address — at Linn County's Scio School District, with a student body of 650, considerably smaller than the online enrollment it oversaw. In exchange, ORCA, collecting the per-student Oregon state payment, passed 10 percent per K-8 student and 5 percent per high school student on to Scio, which split the money with the student's home district.
But Oregon Connections has now found a better deal. For this year, it has switched its sponsorship to the yet-smaller Santiam Canyon School District in Mill City, about 30 miles east of Salem, with a 2012-2013 enrollment of 528. Explained now-departed ORCA School Board Chairman Jeff Kropf, a founder of the online academy and a former state representative, "The ORCA board is truly excited to be able to offer new educational opportunities for our students by establishing a new partnership with the Santiam Canyon School District."
Whatever the new educational opportunities, there is one clear attraction to the new sponsor: According to the ORCA-Santiam Canyon contract on file with the Oregon David Sarasohn: Virtual charter school uses smaller district for bigger money (OPINION) | OregonLive.com: