Portage launching virtual school for Northwest Indiana

Chicago Tribune

15-04-2025

Portage Township Schools is launching PACE Virtual Academy, aiming to draw students from across Northwest Indiana for online courses.
The Portage Township School Board approved the plan Monday.
'This will be technically our second high school that we'll have here at Portage Township Schools,' Director of Communications & Communications Melissa Deavers said.
'This could be a really good option for kids in Northwest Indiana,' she said.
The PACE (Personal Academics and Customized Excellence) plan calls for students to take four-week courses one at a time, earning the same number of credit hours as a semester at a traditional high school.
Online instructors would be backed up by mentors at Portage High School to offer in-person support to help the students keep on track to finish one-fourth of the coursework every week.
'It's not just a virtual school. It's something that we're going to take very personally,' Director of Instructional Technology Tim Pirowski said.
'There is a little bit of a stigma with virtual education,' he said, but PACE Virtual Academy is being set up differently.
'A lot of these virtual schools set these kids up and say go, then they forget about them. We're not going to do that,' he said.
With virtual schools, a common pitfall is to enroll students in six courses at a time, setting them up for potential failure, Pirowski said. Having them take one course at a time encourages deeper engagement.
Beverly Hills-based Subject.com is providing the actual teachers for the course, with teachers available 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. to help students and homework help available online 24/7, Associate Superintendent Michael Stephens said.
Staff at Portage High School will serve as mentors, not instructors. 'What they are is a real Portage touch place for these kids so they know they have someone they can reach out to,' Stephens said.
'They kind of make it more of a human relationship than an instructional relationship,' he said. Mentors will be available to motivate students who seem to be struggling or provide advice.
Students will have a separate entrance at Portage High School to meet with mentors or to have a comfortable space to do coursework, Superintendent Amanda Alaniz said.
That's the primary reason the virtual school is targeted toward Northwest Indiana students. Driving to Portage from southern Indiana to meet with a mentor would be too burdensome, Deavers noted.
Portage High School has lost about 300 students to other virtual programs in recent years, Pirowski said. Recapturing some of those students is one aim of the program.
'Education is not one-size-fits-all,' Alaniz said. 'PACE Virtual School meets students where they are and empowers them to learn at their own pace while still achieving and earning their high school diploma.'
Offering flexible options, including hours, online makes graduating from high school more feasible for students who might not be able to complete their schooling at a traditional school. 'Life happens, whether it's kids that need to support their families and work' or care for younger siblings, Pirowski said.
Pirowski went to virtual school graduations in Michigan. 'A lot of those families didn't even think it was possible to happen for them,' he said.
'Sometimes we expel these kids, they don't come back,' Pirowski said, so keeping them engaged with virtual instruction is a good option.
'We want to serve our kids, and we want to keep our kids here in Portage,' Pirowski said.
Some Portage High School students are already taking classes online. 'It's a completely different model that we have going on here,' Pirowski said.
'We went with Subject because it's a more engaged platform,' he said. 'They want to be storytellers. They want to be known as the Netflix of education.'
Subject.com provides flexibility for accommodating special education students with individualized education plans, including eliminating one of the options on a multiple-choice quiz, Deavers said.
'Subject does have all their own teachers. They do all their own grading, they give all their own feedback,' Pirowski said.
Subject.com courses are unlike some competitors because assessments tend to be more dynamic than just multiple-choice questions, he said.
Multilingual opportunities are available as well.
School Board member Matt Ramian asked if PACE students would be eligible for athletics. No, Pirowski said, because there could be some issues with engagement after their sport's season is over.
Deavers expects to begin a marketing campaign for the new virtual school on May 1. The first day of school is set for Aug. 18.
'I think this is really going to take off,' she said.