EXPLAINED: Why Olathe schools closed the virtual school and how that's affecting families

“I hate to be cold and financial about a school, but the staffing that it takes to run that school versus the 300 students it attracted is not sustainable,” he said at a budget information meeting earlier this week. 

The virtual school was a new K-12 model for education in USD 233 in its inaugural year in 2022-2023. Students enrolled had to live in the district's attendance zone and were not permitted to participate in any interscholastic athletics or activities. Other school districts, including Lawrence schools, have had success running K-12 online learning platforms pre-pandemic. However, Olathe had a hard time making it work. 

“The challenge was replicating a really high quality school in the virtual setting,” Hutchison said. “We were trying to do it right, copy what we do in our schools in a virtual setting. … We just couldn’t identify a fix for it.” 

Part of the problem OVS posed for Olathe schools was how students are counted and the way money flows into the system. The district received roughly $4,500 for every student enrolled in in-person learning and the district gets extra money through a weighting system that identifies needs for certain students in the system, such as at-risk and bilingual weightings. For virtual school students, the district receives a flat rate of $5,000 per enrolled student, but qualifies for no additional funding for weightings that could be applied. 

Hutchison said a lot of the students who qualify for those various weightings enrolled in virtual school, which ended up costing the school district extra money. About 40% of the student body in OVS had some kind of weightings. From the at-risk weighting alone, the district lost about $1.5 million, Hutchison estimated. 

COMMUNITY CONCERNS 

One of the key sticking points is that this decision was not made in a public Olathe Board of Education meeting or with any input from the community but by district administrators. 

“It’s not transparent,” Pete Hausen, an OVS parent, said Tuesday. “We’re going to close the first school in our district … that’s sad.” 

Some parents said the decision was “insulting.”

“When you say you would have to have a long conversation to close a school in one breath, and then you close Olathe Virtual School without a mention in the board meeting, that is insulting to our families,” said Nikki McDonald, a parent to two OVS students. 

Hausen also pushed back at the district’s claim that the decision to close school would come down the line when the district had already decided to close OVS — a nontraditional school but a school nonetheless. 

“You’re up there saying, ‘Well, we could look at closing schools.’ You already did,” he said. 

‘IT’S KIND OF LIKE A BIG F-YOU’ 

Other families and community members, in front of the school board and elsewhere, have also criticized the district’s decision on similar grounds. Families were informed by an alert through a communication system sent by the school’s director of blended learning TJ Ulmer and coordinator Ryne Huff. 

"Creating meaningful learning experiences through OVS has been important to us as we know that many students in the district thrive in a virtual learning setting," the email to families reads. "Making this decision was not taken lightly and we are committed to helping all of our families find the best learning environment for their children, whether that is through our outstanding traditional school settings or other virtual options." 

Wendy Hoch had planned to continue sending her fourth grader to Olathe Virtual School next year because of some family health concerns. She was under the impression that it was all squared away for next year since she’d received an email saying current OVS families were already enrolled for next year. 

Hoch said she felt like the rug had been ripped out from underneath her and was “shocked” to see the plans her family had made for next year dissipate. Now, she feels like they’ve forgotten to consider the needs of families outside of the “normal” population. 

“It’s kind of like a big F-you ,” Hoch said. “We aren’t offering you the option to stay safe anymore, we’re taking that away from you. … We’re forgotten because we’re the ‘others.’”