Florida, a longtime a leader in virtual education, exports K-12 classes all over the globe. Now, it’s also home to a newcomer targeting a faith-based niche.
This spring, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Academy quietly launched Episcopal Virtual and a sister operation, Anglican Virtual, with backing from its parent church and the Diocese of Central Florida.
The goal is to make online K-12 classes available to the 80 million members of the Anglican Communion, which encompasses Episcopal and Anglican churches.
The new private virtual institution wants to give Episcopal and Anglican schools a new avenue to offer courses (like Latin) for which they couldn’t otherwise afford full-time teachers. The school will also give homeschoolers around the world a new way to take accredited courses steeped in their faith.
Perhaps it’s fitting that the project is launching in Central Florida, the region that gave birth to Florida Virtual School, which has long offered online classes beyond the state’s boundaries.
“The whole field of online education is exploding,” said Tim Nunez, Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese of Central Florida.
Nunez, who serves as chief of staff to Bishop Gregory Brewer, said brick-and-mortar Episcopal schools also serve children of other faiths. And because of the Anglican Church’s ties with the British Empire, the new virtual courses have a potential for global reach, including Africa and Southeast Asia.
“Because it’s virtual — it doesn’t have any walls and doesn’t have any borders — other Episcopal schools could use it to supplement what they’re doing,” he said. “A kid in Nigeria or Singapore or somewhere could take these same classes online.”
The school is being run from Fort Pierce, where Trina Angelone has spent two years revitalizing St. Andrew’s with a blended learning curriculum and a broad transformation that turned the entire waterfront town into an extended classroom. (We’ll have more on that in the coming weeks.)
The online Episcopal school is being incubated by Virtual Schools of Excellence — a new effort Angelone launched a few blocks away from the St. Andrew’s campus — until it’s able to stand on its own. The school has spent the past few months in a soft launch, training teachers and enrolling a small number of students. But now, St. Andrew’s is looking to enroll students for courses they’ll take over the summer.
“We’re hitting that market hard right now,” Angelone said. Students “can be in the backyard or the beach or anywhere else, but they’re still doing their online classes.”
Original story at www.redefinedonline.org/2016/04/virtual-school-episcopal/.
Travis Pillow is editor of redefinED. He spent his early professional career reporting on the inner workings of state government for a variety of news organizations and became immersed in Florida’s education policy debates while covering schools and the legislature for the Tallahassee Democrat. A product of Seminole County Public Schools, he received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida in 2010. Reach him at tpillow@sufs.org or (407) 376-3105. Also, follow him on Twitter @travispillow.