Central Pennsylvania Digital Learning Foundation student Bailey Maurer works with teacher Dina Morrissey at the Altoona Learning Center.
Courtesy photo
Efforts began 25 years ago to create the Central Pennsylvania Digital Learning Foundation.
Today, the cyber school has about 200 students from across the state and hopes to continue to grow.
The Central Pennsylvania Digital Learning Foundation is an online K-12 school approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Education that serves the entire state. It is a public school funded through local school district dollars. This means every child in Pennsylvania is eligible to attend and receive individualized attention, regardless of income, technology access and test scores.
According to its website, CPDLF offers customizable and flexible cyber education with certified instructors and caring Learning Guides.
The school has provided personalized experiences for learners for 20 years. Learners are actively involved in developing their own path of learning. Each learner is given the necessary tools to meet his or her future goals. The school also empowers its learners by providing the relationships and opportunities they need to learn and grow and become career- or college-ready.
“Our focus is to provide opportunities for kids who need something different than the traditional model,” said CEO Madalyn Maurer, who came to CPDLF in 2015 after serving as founder and former CEO/principal of the HOPE for Hyndman Charter School.
“We are completely cyber. We don’t have a tax baseline and don’t have a canned curriculum. Our teachers develop the curriculum and content,” Maurer said.
Maurer said programming makes CPDLF different.
“We have learning guides, all of (whom) have a caseload of students they are responsible for making progress and getting support. It is not just academics but about life,” Maurer said. “We look at the development of the whole child, not just the academics.”
The school has drop-in centers at CPDLF headquarters in the Logan Valley Mall and in Stroudsburg.
“We are not permitted to instruct them in person since we are cyber. We offer tutoring and help. We have paraprofessionals to provide tutoring; they also can get tutoring online,” Maurer said.
Maurer said CPDLF is an asynchronous school. Asynchronous learning refers to students accessing materials at their own pace and interacting with each other over longer periods.
Maurer said learning materials are available 24/7.
“They have a morning meeting at 9 a.m., we stress that they show up. Each day has special lessons, they have access to their courses every day. Teachers design small group discussions,” Maurer said. “We see them through Zoom, we strongly suggest they turn on their cameras, if you look at the leaders report, 98 percent who are present have cameras on.”
Local roots
CPDLF was the brainchild of the Altoona Area School District, said David Piper, who proposed the idea to then-Superintendent Dennis Murray in 2001.
While discussing issues with shelling out money to other cyber schools, Piper, assistant to the superintendent at the time, sarcastically suggested, “we should start our own school.”
“Murray said that’s a great idea. My sarcasm got me into it,” Piper said.
The first step was to begin the process. He said the application process was arduous and was completed in 12 months to get chartered.
“The goal was to find a more attractive alternative to having our students sent to other cyber charter schools. We thought since other schools were doing it, we could do it. The hard part was trying to figure out how we would make it happen,” Piper said.
Piper was the CPDLF’s first administrator when it started up during the 2002-03 school year but he left early in 2003 to accept a teaching position at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
“CPDLF has a unique story and its creation was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life in public education,” Piper said.
Today, CPDLF has about 40 teachers, an administrative staff, operations staff and paraprofessionals for tutoring.
CPDLF is governed by a school board composed of active and retired superintendents.
“It is harder getting active superintendents. We now have three active superintendents and five who are retired,” Maurer said.
Maurer said some superintendents are cooperative, while others see CPDLF as competition.
Board member Jason Moore, superintendent of the Central Cambria School District, does not consider the cyber school to be a competitor.
“I think if there is any animosity from traditional schools, it is a result of the bad actors, the larger cyber charter schools that spent huge amounts on advertising and hoarded money into gigantic reserve funds, robbing the traditional schools of valuable resources,” Moore said. “For a retail analogy, the others would be the big box stores, whereas CPDLF is the mom and pop store that has great service.”
Meanwhile in 2009, the Altoona Area School District established the Altoona Cyber Academy, a K-12 comprehensive virtual and hybrid option for the students of the Altoona Area School District.
Since 2017, Altoona Area School District taxpayers have paid more than $7 million for AASD students to attend CPDLF. Meanwhile, enrollment in the Altoona Cyber Academy has grown to nearly 500 students annually with a yearly operational budget of less than $400,000. Altoona Area School District currently has 49 students enrolled in CPDLF, said Superintendent Brad Hatch, who views CPDLF as competition.
“Our ‘relationship’ with CPDLF is the same as it is with the other 13 public cyber charter schools and that is that their ‘viable option’ for the students of the Altoona Area School District has less accountability, flexibility, programming and opportunity than district provided cyber and hybrid options.” Hatch said. “We are confident that we can meet the needs of our students better and in a more fiscally responsible way.”
Meanwhile, Maurer is pleased to see the CPDLF reach 25 years.
“That is a major accomplishment in today’s society. To survive when you are this small, we need our enrollment to grow, that is our plan. We need to be a viable option for kids, the only way we can do this is to keep our doors open,” Maurer said.
Maurer is optimistic about the future.
“We’ve stayed small on purpose to be able to develop the whole child. You can’t do it if you have thousands,” Maurer said. “I would like to open another center. I am not sure when or where. We’re waiting to see where the need comes up.”
Mirror Staff Writer Walt Frank is at 814-946-7467.
