Low Response On Virtual Survey, 25 Percent Interested in VITAL

One in four Putnam County parents who responded to a system survey expressed interest in long-term virtual learning.

System Supervisor for Personalized Learning Sam Brooks said roughly 1,000 of over 11,500 families responded.

“If that 25 percent were to hold true, which I think it’s actually going to be lower than that,” Brooks said. “Then you’re talking 25 percent of the population in Putnam County was at least considering that opportunity to work through VITAL and to learn from home.

Brooks said as they’ve continued reaching out to families they feel the number will be in the 500-900 range of potential VITAL students. Brooks said they would like to have their enrollment numbers by mid-May but the hard deadline to enroll is July 1.

“We would like to have some pretty good numbers in hand by the middle of May, we want to really start doing our teacher applications and getting those out,” Brooks said. “Because that’s really the fair thing to do for a teacher. We don’t want to wait until after July for a teacher to find out where they’re teaching next year, especially if it’s in a virtual situation with VITAL.”

Brooks said VITAL does have a dedicated site at the Flex Learning Center, where teachers would work and even provide in-person help when needed. He said the pandemic and family dynamics are the leading reasons for families wanting to continue this learning method.

“Families that have a lot of travel, parents maybe actually work in different places, virtual learning ended up being very successful for them,” Brooks said. “They learned that their students were successful in that modality of learning at home. Parents found out they could be a little more involved in their education with the student at home. They actually liked that, so they wanted to continue that opportunity going into next year.”

Brooks said that when families feel ready to commit to VITAL, their enrollment will be transferred from their zoned school. Brooks said that parents with any question about how VITAL will work in grades 3-12 should reach out to the school system.