With an eye toward educating home-school students wherever they’re found, Lawrence Virtual School officials have begun a statewide recruiting drive.

Gary Lewis, the online school’s principal, is traveling across Kansas to conduct a four-month series of 40 open houses in Colby, Coffeyville, Wichita and other Kansas cities.

Julie Meyer, Lawrence, works with her children, Trysten, 7, left, and Allen, 5, on their schoolwork at home. Meyer home-schools her sons under the guidance of the Lawrence Virtual School. In its first year the school has 144 students and will likely expand to offer grades nine through 12 next year. The school principal, Gary Lewis, will travel across Kansas to recruit new students this spring.

The aim is to explain virtual schooling and clear up any myths. “I want to make it very clear,” Lewis said. “You’re not just going to be put your child at a computer and say, ‘Here’s school.'”

The state provides a minimum $3,863 to the district for each full-time virtual school student — the same it pays to educate a student in a traditional school from within the district’s boundaries.

Lewis said he talked recently with officials from another district that wanted to start a virtual school as a magnet for the state aid that follows each student enrolled in a district.

“I think hopefully I’ve deterred them,” Lewis said, declining to identify the district. “We didn’t start a virtual school to make a profit.”

But the state aid would be essential to maintain the virtual school once its three-year, $318,000 federal grant to open the school is played out.

Pupils statewide

In its first year, Lawrence Virtual School has attracted 144 students and has already found pupils in Paola, Manhattan, Kansas City and Wichita.

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The state has about a dozen virtual schools, officials said. The largest and oldest is the Basehor-Linwood Virtual School, which has about 350 students.

The Lawrence Virtual School offers courses for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. But the district is expected to add grades nine through 12 in the coming year.

Offices, and classrooms for parents who want to use them, are at the former Centennial School.

Students in the virtual school, who mostly work from home, are provided a computer to stay in touch with teachers but also use traditional materials such as books, worksheets and art supplies. Parents also must have regular parent-teacher conferences, whether by phone, in person or by e-mail.

Julie Meyer, of Lawrence, said the virtual school was allowing her two sons to work at their own pace, unlike a traditional school.

“They’re not having to wait for the other kids in the classroom to get done with their work,” she said. “It makes it a lot more fun to them not to have to sit and wait.”

Competition?

Lewis said he couldn’t estimate how many students the school would have next year. The school gets five to 10 requests a day for information, he said.

Despite Lewis’ statewide travels, Kansas officials said they weren’t concerned that Lawrence would poach students and funding from other districts. Dale Dennis, the state’s deputy education commissioner, said most parents preferred their children to be in a traditional classroom with other children.

And it’s difficult to know whether Lawrence Virtual School is more cost-efficient that traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Its $750,000 budget sits between the $670,000 budget at New York School and the $830,000 budget at Cordley School, which have similar enrollment numbers.

But New York and Cordley have higher overhead costs, educate fewer grades and have different programs than the virtual school.

Despite the apparent cash advantage to virtual schooling, Lewis again emphasized that profit wasn’t a motive for the district.

“It’s about providing quality education,” he said. “It appalls me that people come in saying, ‘We’ll start a virtual school so we can save money and we can make money.'”