Brandywine Community Schools joined other area school districts widening their educational opportunities to prospective students with the hope of increasing enrollment with its recent announcement it would offer an online public high school.

The district’s board of education recently voted to enter into an agreement with Job Skill Technology, Inc. (JST), offering a K-12 brand of educational software to students — essentially opening up the doors to the district’s first virtual high school.

“This gives students in our community and in surrounding communities who are not attending our regular high school an opportunity to take classes and obtain a quality education,” Supt. John Jarpe said in the district’s announcement.

The new program would not cost the district any money, thereby not affecting its current budget.

Students who take part in the program, Jarpe said, enroll as Brandywine students. A portion of the state funds received for students would go to both the district and JST.

More than just online learning, Jarpe said, the program offered by JST would give students opportunities to interact with instructors.

“A lot of times when you just do the online work, everything is online, you don’t have instructional materials, you don’t have opportunity to interact or ask questions of an instructor, that sort of thing,” he said.

Brandywine’s program would include textbooks, lab kits and other materials sent to students.

“While other districts offer online classes only, Brandywine sees the future by offering a full virtual state-aligned curriculum with instructor contact and instructional materials to students it does not currently service,” said Gary Kughn, vice president of JST of Auburn Hills, Mich., which represents K12 Inc. in Michigan.

“It’ll have opportunities for the students and the instructors to interact, not always in person but whether it’s online or over the phone, anything like that,” Jarpe added.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Jarpe had not received an estimate on how many if any enrollments had come from the program, but he said he hoped to see many take advantage of it.

“That would be great, if we could do this and get 20-some students out of the Niles, Buchanan, Edwardsburg area,” he said.

For more information or to enroll in the program, contact JST at (800) 783-5780 or Brandywine Community Schools at 684-7150.