District 300 Votes Down Charter School Proposal

On Monday, District 300 school board members voted down Virtual Learning Solutions' proposal to form an online charter school, according to the Northwest Herald. 

Virtual Learning Solutions is a nonprofit group that had formed to create the charter school, but which intend to contract with K12 to educate the students. K12 is the nation’s largest virtual school company, operating 48 full-time virtual schools as of July 2012.

The district stood to lose between about $535,000 and $907,000 annually in tax dollars if it moved forward with the online charter school while other board members said K12 Inc.'s "spotty track record" when it came to student performance was their reason for voting down the proposal. 

K12 has drawn criticism for its for-profit status while seeing low student achievement and high turnover rates of its teachers, according to the New York Times.

Virtual Learning Solutions is proposing its online charter school to 18 school districts throughout the area.

St. Charles District 303 also voted down the proposal this past Monday, but the president of the non-profit organization told St. Charles Patch he would appeal Monday’s unanimous vote by the St. Charles Community Unit School District 303 Board of Education.

The Geneva School District 304 Board of Education also unanimously rejected the charter school proposal Monday. 

Virtual Learning Schools plans to go to take its proposal to the Illinois Charter School Commission if any of the 18 schools districts vote down the online charter school, according to a past Northwest Herald article.