By Jason Starr
The Colchester Sun

Colchester High School Principal Amy Minor was discussing elective possibilities with a student last week when she pulled out a Virtual High School course listing.

“I said ‘if we had this, what would you take?’ and the student just started circling course after course,” Minor recalled during an interview last week about the non-profit online class service. “I said ‘do you think you have friends who would want to do this?’ and of course the student lit up and said ‘absolutely, this is really cool.’ So I’m excited about it.”

That much was clear during Minor’s presentation to the Colchester School Board seeking funding for a membership to the service. A basic membership would cost $8,500 and come with 20 spots for Colchester students.

A glance at the course offerings provides a good argument for the value of the service. With a membership, Colchester High School would instantly add 140 new courses to its catalog, including specialty programs like environmental chemistry, pre-veterinary medicine, advanced web design – among many others – that the high school could never afford to offer on its own.

Virtual High School would also expand Colchester’s foreign language offerings beyond its current Spanish and French.

“This isn’t a way to decrease or eliminate programs we already offer,” Minor said. “We’re offering the minimum programs that a high school should have. This is going to help us offer more programs.”

The courses would be especially useful to upperclassmen as they begin to think about college majors and career paths.

“It’s nice when students can have the opportunity to dive deeper into a content area,” Minor said.

Burlington and South Burlington High Schools are members of Virtual High School, and Minor has been in touch with administrators there about the service. The key to success, she’s been told, is to make the right student-to-course matches.

“That goes back to making sure you pick students who are motivated and engaged,” Minor said. “Many of the courses are very rigorous, so you just have to make sure it’s the right student with the right course.”

Membership requires the school to train a “site coordinator,” and those duties would fall to employees already in the building, Minor said. All the school’s guidance counselors would learn the Virtual High School course listing, and the school’s library staff would be called on to offer guidance for students taking online courses.

The school board did not give an immediate indication whether it would support membership for next school year.

The $8,500 membership is not in the proposed fiscal year 2011 budget, but money for the program could come from students tuitioning in to Colchester High School from Grand Isle County, Minor said.

The school has 26 Grand Isle students in this year’s freshman class and is currently recruiting for next year’s freshman class. Each student comes with $11,500 in tuition money.

“I think (the board) is definitely trying to be fiscally responsible,” Minor said. “I think they agree that we need this and it would be a great opportunity for our students. But I think right now they’re really trying to balance the budget so I think their only hesitation is the cost.”