“Virtual charter school enrollment soars after caps are lifted”
by Sarah Ross
Oregon Capital News
December 8, 2011
Enrollment in Oregon’s two largest virtual charter schools has jumped, following the removal of a legislatively imposed enrollment cap that limited the number of students each school could accept.
The Oregon Virtual Academy (ORVA) has more than doubled its number of students since the cap previously held enrollment at 600 students. ORVA now has over 1,300 students and two additional grade levels, 9th and 10th grades. The school was previously capped at 8th grade.
The Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA) has reached a student enrollment of 3,000 students, with 700 to 800 students who are pending enrollment or who have started the enrollment process. Last year, the school was capped at 2,574 students.
Laura Dillon, an elementary school teacher and the outreach liaison at ORCA, said that not all students pending enrollment will finish the process for various reasons.
Dillon and Jim Moyer, head of schools at ORVA, both agreed that lifting the enrollment cap on virtual charter schools directly affected the increase in students experienced by each school.
“Families know that they are not going to be put on a waiting list and they don’t have to wait to be enrolled in our school,” said Dillon.
Both Moyer and Dillon agreed that an increase of such magnitude is unlikely to be repeated over the next few years.
“I don’t think we’ll continue to grow next year as we did this year,” said Moyer, adding he would be shocked if the school’s enrollment grew as much in the next year.
While the legislative enrollment cap placed on virtual charter schools in 2009 was lifted in a legislative session earlier this year, there is still a cap on school districts.
Each school district is limited at sending 3 percent of its student body to an online charter school. Once this 3 percent limit is reached, students must seek their home districts approval to attend an online school.
For ORVA, lifting the cap was not the only contribution to an increase in students. Another part of the legislation passed earlier in the year allowed parents to withdraw their children from their home school district without that district’s approval. Moyer added that this probably had a larger impact on the school’s enrollment than the actual cap did.
Around one percent of public school students in Oregon attend a full-time online charter school, according to Dillon.