Seventeen-year-old Alyson Young was thrilled when she heard about the Virtual Solutions online learning program being launched by Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13.

Young, of Narvon, became pregnant last October.

She wanted to stay close to her infant son, Darren, but she also wanted to complete her education at Pequea Valley High School.

Even before Darren was born this summer, she had been interested in cyber classes.

Now, she said, during her senior year, "I'll be home with my son."

And because Virtual Solutions is school district based, she'll be able to stay enrolled at PV, playing tennis and earning her diploma from the school next June.

Up to 40 more full-time cyber students from eight districts in Lancaster and three in Lebanon are expected to join Young during the program's inaugural year.

IU 13 adopted Virtual Solutions to give students innovative, high-tech education options and to stem the growing stream of district students and tax dollars to the state's dozen independent cyber charter schools.

The program is funded by management fees assessed to the schools, individual course fees and $20,000 in dedicated earned income tax credit from the Lancaster-Lebanon Education Foundation.

The Lancaster County Community Foundation is providing a $30,000 grant to spread word of the program to students and their families.

Virtual Solutions is exactly the kind of community betterment initiative the foundation seeks to support, said its spokeswoman, Tracy Cutler.

"The investment will benefit all of Lancaster County" ultimately, Cutler added.

Giving students and schools new educational tools "is something that's very needed, very relevant and very exciting."

'Best of both worlds'
Virtual Solutions courses are being offered to high school, middle school and advanced placement students in grades seven through 12.

Enrollees are assigned a flesh-and-blood district mentor who regularly keeps tab on their performance.

Kids get to keep their emotional connections to their school, said Pamela McCartney, IU 13 director of instructional services.

Sports. Band. Prom. After-school clubs.

It's the best of both worlds," McCartney said.

As of last week, Virtual Solutions had given out about 20 cyber equipment kits to students, including computers, printers, labs and curriculum materials that have been approved by the school boards and aligned to state academic standards.

More kits are waiting to be distributed.

Enrollment has varied widely, from zero in Lampeter-Strasburg to about 15 in the School District of Lancaster.

Penn Manor has five Virtual Solutions students, District Superintendent Mike Leichliter said. The district is aiming for an enrollment of 10 or fewer, he added.

"We want to start small and stay small for the first year so we can learn about it."

This is not the first public school foray into virtual learning.

The Solanco School District introduced its Solanco Virtual Academy in 2006, for example.

But school officials say Virtual Solutions is the first broad-based, collaborative project.

The program has been under development for a year, Leichliter said.

Janet Dubble, IU 13 instructional media specialist, briefed school district administrators about the program last week.

"It's not a cyber school" per se, Dubble said.

"The reason it's called Virtual Solutions is because it is not limited to full-time students," she added. "It opens up options" for students to take one or more online courses and blend them with traditional instruction.

Choices vary by district, however.

Pequea Valley, for example, is offering only the full-time option at the outset, Assistant Principal Jared Erb said.

The schools that have signed Virtual Solutions contracts under what IU 13 calls a "strategic alliance" include Lancaster, Columbia, Hempfield, Manheim Central, Lampeter-Strasburg, Penn Manor, Pequea Valley and Elizabethtown.

The Lebanon County partners are Annville Cleona, Cornwall-Lebanon and Lebanon.

Advocates say it's high time for public schools to augment their traditional bricks-and-mortar offerings with virtual alternatives, including on demand tutoring, streaming videos, flash-drive activities, podcasts, blog writing and text and voice discussion forums.

Virtual Solutions will help schools offer more courses at a time when education budgets are being slashed, backers add.

Dubble said EdisonLearning, a public school management group in New York, is providing the high school courses for the program.

Educators from Intermediate Unit 15's Capital Area Online Learning Association, the IU 13 virtual school counterpart in Harrisburg, are serving as mentors.

Virtual Solutions and CAOLA are among many online programs started recently by public schools nationwide, said Holly Brzycki, CAOLA supervisor of online learning.

"It took a while for public schools to understand the competition" posed by outside cyber schools, she said.

In IU 13, full-time enrollment in outside cyber charter schools more than doubled since 2007, from about 700 to 1,500 students.

The figure is not huge compared to the total public school enrollment of 89,627, Dubble acknowledged.

Virtual learning "is not for everybody," she explained. "It takes a different kind of capability for learning independently."

But Pennsylvania public education spending is high, approaching around $10,000 per pupil, Dubble said.

When students do leave to enroll in an outside cyber charter school, those tax dollars go with them.

Districts in the county paid $9.7 million in charter school tuition last year, according to the state.

So far, Dubble added, most of the interest in Virtual Solutions is from kids who already have cyber charter school experience.

But students and their parents are describing all kinds of incentives to enroll, she added.

One youth is a gymnast who needs a flexible travel schedule. Another is beginning bone marrow transplants.

Dubble said one mother told her that "her daughter really doesn't want to be in school [because] she can't take the drama."

The parents of a Penn Manor boy are interested in Virtual Solutions because the flexible class schedule would allow him to accompany his missionary grandparents to South America several weeks every year, Leichliter said.

"There's all kinds of various scenerios.

Contact Sunday News staff writer Jon Rutter at jrutter@lnpnews.com.