(Anita) As school’s return-to-learn plans have been rolling out, Iowa Connections Academy has been seeing an increase in open enrollment applications.
Iowa Connections Academy is a fully accredited, tuition free, online public school that is operated under the CAM Community School District in Anita.
Dr. James Brauer, Principal of Iowa Connections Academy, said the uptick in enrollment applications is also due in part to some recent legislation that allowed a secondary open enrollment extension for cases in which a student, or a household member of a student, might have a pre-existing condition that puts them at risk of COVID-19. He said as a result of that, they ended up picking up over 300 open enrollment applications over a two-week time frame in July.
“So in total, the overall open enrollment application pipeline is one of the largest I’ve seen since we opened up our school in 2012-2013,” said Brauer. “We currently have just about 700-800 eligible students that may make this decision to open enroll for full-time virtual school and in total we’re looking currently at just over 80% higher enrollment this time of year compared to a year ago, so we definitely have seen a significant increase in of interest.”
Brauer said teachers will be reporting August 7th and they will spend time in professional development and a variety of different training to meet the needs of families, especially since almost half of their student enrollment will be newly enrolled students.
“And we have a challenge then because we know that many of those students may have not had that traditional schooling schedule for the whole last quarter of the school year, whereas the other half of our students we did continue a traditional schooling schedule for us. So, there’s some trainings that we’re going to have to do for all of our staff just like every school district across Iowa as we prepare to open up this new school year,” explained Brauer.
Brauer said these are tough times, but he remains optimistic. “I can assure families across the state of Iowa that we have so many passionate educators that really truly are wanting to do what is absolutely the best for students. This is unprecedented times and so naturally with that does come some uncertainty and that is where a little level of panic certainly starts to creep in, but I’m very optimistic for this upcoming school year. I think this is going to cause greater partnerships than ever before between students and teachers, families and educators and administrators, and I think together and collectively we’re going to overcome these times here and we’re going to end up strengthening the system as a whole. I just asked for grace from all of the families across Iowa and for educators and to have patients with families and vice versa. I think this has the ability for us to overcome in ways that we may not have anticipated early on.”
Classes at Iowa Connections Academy begin Monday, August 24th.
