School Next Year

I found out a couple of years ago that there was a Texas Virtual Academy at SouthWest. But, it only covered the Houston area. This is a virtual public school. The kids stay home as if they are homeschooled but they have classes through TVAS that uses the curriculum of www.K12.com.

Since it is a public school everything is free. They send you a loaner computer, software, all class materials, access into k12.com, and a stipend for your internet service. They also say they can cater to gifted children more so than a regular public school b/c the child can work up to 2 grades ahead.

This year I found out that extended the school to include the Dallas area and parts of East Texas. Mount Pleasant is now in there zone. I started checking into them more and found out that they don't start taking kids until they are 3rd graders. I called and talked to them about Zachary. They said he was too young this year but I really wasn't interested in signing him up for 3rd grade this year. I asked them about next year? He will technically be the age to start 2nd grade but he is now working on a 2nd-3rd grade level. Could he enroll into 3rd grade next year? This would mean he would on paper skip 2nd grade, but he is not skipping the material b/c we have already covered it or we are covering it this year. They said they would accept him next year as a 3rd grader.

They start enrolling for the following year in Jan. or Feb. So, Mark and I have to decide if we want to try this type of public school or not. The pros are that it is free, we wouldn't have to dish out a lot of money to school him at home. We could get a stipend for our internet. It would be more stuctured. He can still work at his own pace. And if we decided to put him back to MPISD he would go in with a one year grade skip. MPISD would have to accept the skip and the trasfering grade placement. The cons are that our interent goes down doing bad weather and we couldn't get online. I don't know if he would like learning from a computer (only 25% if from the computer the rest is through textbooks). If they allow the one grade skip does that count towards the only can work 2 grade ahead? What if he is working more than 2 grades ahead, will they allow him to move forward or hold him back? And i'm sure there are more.

Or do we just not do this at all and continue doing what we have been doing this year? We have a lot to think about in the next few months.