As Coronavirus Changes Education, Enrollment Goes Up At Untraditional Carmichael Charter School
CARMICHAEL (CBS13) — A virtual charter school in Carmichael is seeing enrollment go up as the coronavirus pandemic changes education.
The number of students enrolling in the non-classroom-based charter school has maxed out.
"We say we were built for this time, said Superintendent Jody Graf.
Graf says, over the last few months, they added 400 students and are now maxed at 7,200.
"We had to hire 30 more staff members to accommodate that growth, through counselors specialists, teachers," she said.
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Their building in Carmichael houses the staff to serve families across the area.
"We are broken into communities: people who live in a certain geographic area will have the same principal vice-principal and a host of teachers," Graf said.
Visions in Education has been around for two decades, but their educational model has grown in popularity as parents struggle to figure out distance learning amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
Molly Blum enrolled her kids.
"We are home schooling this year to have stability for our kids," she said.
The school's homeschooling department is full, but they are still accepting high school students for independent study.
"We know this is the right time to give back, so I just want to extend an invitation to collaborate and try to figure this thing out," Graf said.
School leaders say they are built to meet this challenge, but know it's hard on everyone. They hope to be an incubator of innovation.