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The Broome-Tioga BOCES Advanced Course Access program represents the collective commitment to develop a robust online learning environment as it is envisioned by 10 predominantly high needs districts representing 19,000 students K-12. The participating districts do not currently offer any advanced courses for students in an online format and have demonstrated a need to do so due to scheduling challenges, teacher shortages, and district capacity (supervision and implementation of program). The participating districts have also identified a need to offer students access to an online course in order to better support and prepare them for their college experiences.

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The program will offer students four additional advanced electives in Year 1with an additional four to choose from in Year 2. A total of 240 unique students will participate in the project over the two-year project period. The courses will be taught using the Schoology Learning Management System and will be scheduled on a semester schedule. During the two-year project period, there will be three total semesters for students to access the courses (Spring 2022, Fall 2022, and Spring 2023).

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Broome-Tioga BOCES will hire a NYS certified program administrator. New York State certified teachers from the participating local districts will also be hired by the BOCES to design the course content and teach the courses as an additional duty during the school year. Courses so designed will be shared across multiple districts and offered consortium-wide to high school students grades 9-12. The teachers will receive a stipend for designing the courses, teaching the courses, and participating in ongoing professional learning opportunities throughout the semester. All courses will be taught as concurrent enrollment courses through Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3) and end in college credit.

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The Broome-Tioga BOCES plans to continue to provide the advanced online course opportunities for students beyond the grant period. The BOCES has an approved Distance Learning (DL) CoSer, where they used to support synchronous distance learning classes. This support ended at least ten years ago because of scheduling challenges of synchronous courses across the region. The DL CoSer still exists and the BOCES operates a service supporting Edgenuity, an online learning program, which is used by component districts for credit recovery purposes. Districts within the Broome-Tioga BOCES region are interested in expanding the DL service by offering advanced online courses, and hope that the ACA funding can help establish the program in the region.