Boulder+Valley+School+District

Boulder Valley School District
Contact: Kurt LeVasseur (720) 561-6253

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**Program Descriptions:**

**Program 1: Boulder Universal Online School – Full- and Part-Time Online Learning Program** “Learning That Takes You Places”

This program provides students with an alternative to the traditional learning experience. The program serves students, grades 6 – 12, from various groups including: alternative learners, Advanced Placement students, home-bound students, students on short-term travel, extreme athletes and performers, and bullied or “school-phobic” students. Students can participate in Boulder Universal (BU) on a full or part time basis or as a summer school activity. BU provides a path to graduation and a BVSD diploma. Boulder Universal offers students a hybrid approach to learning that allows students to attend a brick and mortar school as well as the district virtual school.

Of particular concern to BU are students on the verge of dropping out of the school system. With these troubled students, BU takes a “ramp-up” approach to engaging the student, starting with a single course and, as appropriate, moving the student up to full time study. BU emphasizes flexibility in its program offerings to meet the students’ needs and offers more than 150 online courses.

The primary learning resource is the Aventa fully online system. Aventa provides students with solid academic content that is rich in rigor and relevance. Highly qualified Aventa teachers work with each student from “behind the glass.” Students’ work is self-paced using multi-media courseware which includes text-based, integrated audio/video, and full hypermedia presentations.

Along with the Aventa program, BU uses courses from Bridgewater Academy. Bridgewater allows additional flexibility for course assembly and delivery, making it possible for BU to offer highly customized programs for BVSD students.

BU students also have the support of BVSD mentors for additional student support. The BU staff takes an active role in keeping contact with BVSD Online students and their parents.

Boulder Universal allocates computers and connections as necessary to allow student access to the online content.

BU has 152 participating students.

Students participating in the BVSD Program are supported by district per-student funding.

**Program 2: Boulder Valley School District –Online Credit Recovery Program &Supplemental** This program provides a credit recovery program to students on a part-time, supplemental basis. The students, grades 9 – 12, participate in the program with the goal of graduating from BVSD on time. The district offers 20 credit recovery courses. Each student is expected to carry a full traditional course load along with the credit recovery course(s). Students take the credit recovery classes after school, at home (typically on weekends), or in library or computer labs in the students’ home high school. Administration, placement, and funding of the credit recovery program is handled by the individual high schools. The program is funded by the district.

Students work with the Aventa online system (as with the Boulder Universal program). The Aventa system provides highly qualified teachers to support student learning. The district credit recovery program will serve over 700 students in a calendar year.

The supplemental program has nearly 400 students taking 1-2 semesters of online coursework and/or at home or at their neighborhood school.

**Program 3: BVSD Blended Learning Model – OLL as an Experimental Resource** BVSD has the Brain Honey LMS as a hosted solution to allow individual teachers’ use. Under an Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) grant, BVSD is experimenting with use of the LMS in combination with Aventa courses and course materials from open educational resources

Aventa for is delivered via the web as a fully network-based resource. Aventa also provides student information system support and help desk support to students and faculty. The district pays $299 per license for regular courses and $329 per student per course for Advanced Placement courses. The district holds a fixed number of the seats for their credit recovery programs that are allocated to the high school as needed; the remaining licenses are used at the online high school.

Boulder Universal staff includes its Director/Principal at .5 FTE, it administrative support professional at .5 FTE and a .5 FTE registrar. The Assistant Director is dedicated full time to the program. Additional support, includes SPED (.2FTE) and psychologist (.1 FTE) professionals. 3.0 FTE Mentors support student progress in both the BU and credit recovery programs.