As thousands of Upstate children hopped in big yellow school buses and headed off to big brick schoolhouses last week, the state's virtual schools hit the "on" button and booted up another year of cyber education.
South Carolina was ahead of the curve six years ago when its first three online schools went into operation through the statewide Charter School District. The state attracted national attention from the North American Council for Online Learning for its "virtual big bang."
The virtual schools started in 2008 with 2,175 students. This year, there are twice as many virtual schools and more than four times as many students enrolled in them.
The results have been mixed.
For some students, like Jonathan Sessions, a seventh-grader who is starting his seventh year in the South Carolina Virtual Charter School, it's been great, according to his mother, Karen.
"He's learning much more in the virtual school," she said during a start-of-year "school social" at Cleveland Park late late week. "Having older children that went to a traditional school, I can see a big difference – much more learning taking place."
She put Jonathan and his older brother, Nick, now a student at Greenville Tech Charter High, in the virtual school so they could go at their own pace, she said.
Jonathan says he doesn't mind not going to a regular school every day like most kids.
"I haven't been bothered by it because I've done a lot of other stuff like at the YMCA," he said. "But I've also met other students and gotten to know them."