200-plus students enrolled in District 1 virtual academy

Over 200 students from throughout Wyoming are enrolled in the Cowboy State Virtual Academy, the school set up by Sheridan County School District 1 to provide online learning to students.

Pete Kilbride, District 1 superintendent, provided an update on the academy to the district’s trustees at a work session this week.

Kilbride said the academy students aren’t the only ones learning online this year.

Those are students who live in the district but whose parents opted out of allowing them to return to their regular classrooms because of COVID-19 concerns.

Kilbride said the students enrolled in the Cowboy State Virtual Academy can live anywhere in Wyoming. He said the district set a cap on enrollment in the academy, limiting the number to around 200.

He said the district wanted to keep enrollment small in order to provide a good education to those students that were accepted. He said the district turned away hundreds of students that had applied for enrollment in the academy this year.

Kilbride said one of the challenges the district has with the virtual academy students is to provide the WY-TOPP testing required by the State Education Department, as well as the ACT testing required for juniors.

He said the academy’s Director Angel Sparkman along with a couple of other teachers will go on the road at the appropriate times to administer tests to the virtual academy students.