Defense Department Awards Virtual Learning Grant

The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) Educational Partnership has awarded a $2.9 million Virtual Learning grant to the San Diego Unified School District.

The project is titled Operation Student Virtual Learning and will be implemented over a 3-year period. The focus of the grant is to provide military students with expanded access to online courses to help address course deficiencies that often arise due to differing course requirements in other school districts, as well as to allow for accelerated learning.

The grant will support transitioning military dependents by providing expanded access to online courses that will help students complete the district’s core subject and career-readiness requirements, as well as fulfill the University of CA a-g college admission requirements.

Specifically, the grant will provide:

• Expanded access to online math, English and social science core courses for fulltime and dual-enrollment students
• Expanded access to online Advanced Placement (AP) and world language courses for fulltime and dual-enrollment students
• Expanded summer program to include math, English, social science, science and world language courses
• The development of 15 online introductory/intermediate career technical education courses to help fulltime and dual enrollment students meet the new career-ready high school graduation requirements
• Expanded outreach to transitioning military families and collaboration with military school liaisons to ensure that military students are aware of the fulltime and dual-enrollment online opportunities available to meet their educational needs

In recognition that the needs addressed by the grant also apply to non-military students, the grant provides that at least 65% of participating students be military dependents, but allows up to 35% of participating students to be non-military.