A small and shrinking school district near Los Angeles has come up with a novel way to stem its enrollment loss: Set up a virtual school and enroll students from faraway Roman Catholic schools.
But those students have continued to attend their Catholic schools full time while also being counted as full-time enrollees in the 5,000-student Lennox district.
Lennox partnered with St. Francis Parish School in Bakersfield—more than 100 miles away. Students were supposed to log into their public online school daily, although it appears they rarely did. Lennox officials reported to the state that the Bakersfield students were attending its virtual school full time and received extra money from the state. By enrolling students in Lennox’s virtual school, St. Francis got a cut of that money as well as free Chromebooks.
