Menasha's Fox Valley Virtual School is here to stay, and ready to grow with a recent $650,000 grant
MENASHA - When the Menasha Joint School District started Fox Valley Virtual School, it was in response to the pandemic temporarily closing the doors of schools across the state.
But pandemic aside, there was significant interest from families — so much so that, at one point, it was the largest elementary school in the district, with more than 400 students.
"There was interest to continue the virtual option post-COVID, and so we worked really hard to get a governance board up and a charter school application run," said Renae Braun, Fox Valley Virtual School's principal and the district literacy coordina.
Enrollment isn’t quite where it was during the height of the pandemic, dropping to fewer than 100 students last year, but the 4K-through-eighth-grade virtual school is now a charter school and a permanent fixture in the district.
And thanks to recent grant money, it's expanding its environmental education, getting new curriculum materials and trying to reach new families.
In June, Fox Valley Virtual received a little more than $650,000 in a federal grant distributed by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Braun said. The money needs to be spent over the next three years, and school leadership already has plans for how to use it.
Largely, the money will be spent on the school’s partnership with Heckrodt Wetland Reserve. Currently, students get one environmental education unit that incorporates field trips to Heckrodt. The grant money will triple that.
Each grade level does different projects with Heckrodt that include fourth-graders learning about how to prepare for natural disasters such as flooding and second-graders studying the importance of pollinators.
The money also will support curriculum development for word study and literacy with the help of Teachers College at Columbia University and professional development for teachers.
Braun, who has worked in the district 11 years, said a chunk of money will be spent on improving the school website so it can better reach students across the state. The website revamp will also add Spanish translations to better support and attract families.
"We really want to keep our diversity," she said.
Almost a quarter of students at Fox Valley Virtual are Hispanic, with another 11% of students identifying as two or more races, according to 2021-22 data from the DPI. Nearly 60% of students are white, while a little more than 3% are Black and almost 4.5% are Asian.
When refining the school, Braun said, staff wanted to take what they loved about in-person school — a sense of community, hands-on activities and workshopping — and mesh it with the flexibility and freedom afforded by a virtual education.
To make sure they can continue to serve their diverse students well, Braun said, they hope to enhance those hands-on components with some of the grant money.
Heckrodt is a main way to create community for students and provide a hands-on activity, but the school also mails supplies for physical education, art and other subjects to students’ homes monthly.
With the model Fox Valley Virtual uses, some lessons are pre-recorded by teachers so students can work through those at the times that work for their schedules each day. But there's also time spent working in small groups and one-on-one conferences with teachers to give students more individualized instruction.
"We really focus on that personalized learning so that we can meet the needs of all students," Braun said. "Whether they're above or below grade level, we really want to try to help students accelerate their learning."
Reach AnnMarie Hilton at ahilton@gannett.com or 920-370-8045. Follow her on Twitter at @hilton_annmarie.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Fox Valley Virtual School plans to expand environmental learning
