Cashwell: Virtual learning likely to continue in various forms post-pandemic
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After nearly a year of virtual learning for most Henrico students, it may feel like the format is here to stay forever.
And it just might be.
Henrico Schools Superintendent Amy Cashwell indicated this week that school system officials are evaluating the ways in which they can use virtual learning in a post-pandemic world – perhaps even on a full-time basis for some students.
Addressing the Henrico Board of Supervisors and School Board during a joint work session Feb. 23, Cashwell suggested that virtual options could help close learning gaps for some students and reduce travel time for others.
For example, Career and Technical Education students who take some classes at their home schools and others at the county’s ACE centers perhaps could instead take some or all of their classes at just one location, she said.
In other instances, unique high school courses that may have only a handful of interested students at certain schools could be taught at one school and streamed virtually to the interested students elsewhere, she said.
And some students have demonstrated an ability to thrive with virtual learning in ways they didn’t during in-person learning, making that a potential long-term option for them, Cashwell suggested.
“Certainly, we’ve seen the increased use of virtual to get us through the pandemic bring forth many wonderful lessons about how we can continue to leverage virtual when it comes to reaching more students, increasing access and opportunity,” Cashwell said. “We think about students at the secondary level, or really all levels, who may benefit from more of a fully virtual option. The state’s done a number of pilots with that through Virtual Virginia [an online learning program] and some full-time programming that they offer. So we continue to see how that might benefit some of our students.
“[We] look forward to growing what we do virtually to make sure that we’re . . . increasing opportunities for all students and really making sure that we’re meeting student needs.”
