GREENFIELD — Students in Indiana public schools would be required to take an online class before graduating high school under a bill considered by the Indiana General Assembly.

Senate Bill 179, written by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Columbia City, passed by a Senate vote of 38-12 this week and now moves to the House for consideration.

If it is signed into law by the governor, every Indiana high school student will have to take at least one online course before graduating in the spring of 2017. It would start with the freshman class of 2013.

The bill was backed by Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and requires schools to offer online at least three courses required for a regular high school “Core 40” degree.

“This is exactly the type of innovation we need to expose our students to,” Banks said.

School district administrators in Hancock County are on board.

“We’re supportive of that,” Mt. Vernon School District Assistant Superintendent Mike Horton said. “Our kids are already pretty computer and Internet savvy anyway so this won’t be any new ground for us.”

Not only will working with digital learning prepare students for future jobs, Banks said it will make students better equipped for moving forward with higher education.

“It will give them the opportunity to build skills that will matter,” he said.
According to Banks, over 70 percent of schools in Indiana already offer some type of virtual online learning for students.

Greenfield-Central High School recently expanded its credit recovery program to offer full courses in its Cougar Academy, which focuses on online school work.

“It will be available for students in the middle of February, so we’re doing this anyway,” G-C Principal Steve Bryant said.

He said administrators give every incoming freshman and their parents a four-year plan and will now factor in requiring students to take an online course.

“We have 20 online classes in our Cougar Academy and we’ll probably end up with about 25 with some electives. The ones we have (now) are all required courses,” Bryant said.

While defining exactly what the state says officially qualifies as a virtual class remains to be determined, Banks said virtual classes won’t be an added burden for schools.

However, educators say they will wait and see.

“There is a lot that still needs to be flushed out or clarified, like what is an online class?” Eastern Hancock High School Principal Dave Pfaff said. “Will there be a list of providers? Will there be an online curriculum that we have to buy? Or is this something where one of our teachers could create a course online, in-house?”

Those details will be ironed out by the Indiana Department of Education in the coming year, Banks said.

“We have Ivy Tech that wants to be a partner and they’re providing their resources, but every school will be different,” he said.

Banks said there should be no additional cost for districts, which will use part of the general fund money already given from the state to support the venture.

However, according to Banks, there is an aspect of the bill that will charge every school district to conduct an audit of its computers and Internet technology to get a better idea of its capabilities over the next few years.

Despite some uncertainty on how exactly the online classes will be administered, Pfaff admits it’s an exciting time for educators and students living in the digital age.

“It’s a whole new world. The traditional textbooks we all carried in high school are gone,” he said.

While Eastern Hancock High School is like many around the county already working with one-on-one computing for most teaching and learning, Pfaff said the shift in how school is now taught is an eye-opener.

“We’ve been seeing the future and hearing people say there is going to come a day when textbooks are obsolete and they’ll have a computer, and now we are there,” he said.

Banks said he was approached by Bennett to support the virtual initiative and at first disagreed, feeling Indiana schools had already come under too much reform the past few years.

However, after researching the benefits of online learning, he found the new mandate would be proactive for students.

“While this is an innovative idea exposing high school students to an innovative way of learning, we’re not talking about an innovative new type of technology that is any more than simply logging on to a website,” Banks said.
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