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PARKERSBURG — Wood County Schools is getting ready to begin registration for open enrollment in April for the 2024-2025 school year and officials in the district provided an overview of the policies for registration and provided information about virtual learning options, as well.

Director of Elementary Education Heather Grant said open enrollment allows families to choose schools outside their assigned attendance zones with a few prerequisites

“There has to be classroom space. There has to be programs. If a child has an IEP (Independent Education Plan), there needs to be programs there that can accommodate their IEP,” Grant said.

She said parents are also responsible for transporting their children to the school, or to the closest bus stop for the chosen school, rather than all the way to the school itself. She used the example of a student who lives in the Emerson Elementary district who would like to attend Williamstown Elementary.

“Say there are parents who live in the Emerson (Elementary) school district out on Route 2, near the Briarwood addition area. Now, they choose to go to Williamstown Elementary, they don’t have to take their kid all the way to Williamstown,” Grant said. “They can go right there to the intersection of Route 31 and Route 2, and meet the bus there, because that’s a Williamstown bus, and their children can then ride the bus into Williamstown.”

Grant said parents will need to contact the Transportation Department once they have been accepted into the open enrollment program to get more precise locations for each school where they can drop their child off to ride the bus.

One key change Grant said that happened this year is that if a child is already attending a school outside their attendance zone, they do not need to reapply for open enrollment, as long as they maintain good standing.

“If a child is already attending that school, they do not need to reapply,” Grant said.

She said there is also a new policy regarding out-of-state transfers and Wood County Schools employees. Previously, any parent living out-of-state had to pay a $6,000 tuition fee for their child to attend a Wood County school. But now, if the parent is an employee of Wood County Schools, that tuition is waived, allowing their child to attend out-of-state for free.

“We have a lot of employees that utilize that,” Grant said.

She said the open enrollment application process will run from April 1 through May 30 and is done online with spaces awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. She emphasized the importance of applying early.

“Spaces can be limited at some schools,” Grant said. “So it is based on a first come first serve basis. You really want to sign up as early as possible to that April 1 deadline.”

In addition to open enrollment, Wood County Schools also provides virtual learning options.

Director of Curriculum and Instruction Candace Lewis said virtual learning allows students to have “the flexibility of learning at home” while still maintaining the benefits of public school, such as participating in extracurricular activities.

Lewis said the virtual learning model is self-paced, with students receiving “a pacing guide, which just tells them you need to finish this many lessons by this certain date.” She said when the student does their work is completely up to the parents.

“It’s very flexible,” Lewis said. “They can log in at any time during the day. They can log in on weekends, you know, whatever works with their schedule in order to get their work finished.”

While the instruction is delivered online through pre-recorded lessons and modules, Lewis noted that virtual students still have access to school resources that include sports, extracurricular activities and learning tools.

“They still have access to everything that the school would offer,” Lewis said. “They’re just learning at home.”

Lewis said the virtual school registration will open on April 1 alongside the district’s open enrollment period and that it is recommended for students to finish out the current grading period at their physical school before transitioning to virtual learning.

“If it’s in the middle of the nine weeks or towards the end of the nine weeks, I encourage them to stay in person until that grading period is finished,” Lewis said. “Just so that they can get their grades from their school for that particular nine weeks, and then they could start virtual school.”

She said that K-8 students should contact her directly to enroll, while high school students need to work with their school counselors.

“If a student wants to do virtual school or virtual learning, then K-8, they can contact me, and then I will enroll them in virtual school and get them all set up with that process, but they stay enrolled at their physical school as well,” Lewis said.

Both officials said with these flexible learning options, Wood County Schools aims to provide families with more choices to meet their educational needs in the coming school year.

Douglass Huxley can be reached at dhuxley@newsandsentinel.com