Rewrite this text as a series of questions and answers. Put two questions with their answers in a numbered list.

RIO RANCHO, N.M. — When Ashley Daniels saw her second grade son earn a high score on a recent test, she knew he had just guessed the answers and gotten lucky. Daniels called his teacher and said he might need some extra support, despite his good performance on the test.

It wasn’t just a mother’s intuition. Daniels watched her son take the test from their dining room table.

The second grader attends SpaRRk Academy, a virtual learning program for elementary students created in 2021 by the Rio Rancho School District in New Mexico. Even as doors reopened to brick-and-mortar schools, administrators here saw the continued need for a virtual option in response to lingering concerns about Covid and to feedback from some parents that their children had thrived in online learning.

The district assigned 10 full-time teachers to provide live, online classes via Zoom. They also organized an in-person component: Once a week, students would gather in reserved classrooms in a local elementary school, for activities such as science experiments, project-based learning and reading groups. More than 250 kids signed up for SpaRRk.

On days when SpaRRk Academy students are learning virtually, the classrooms are empty except for teachers and administrators, who come into the office just about every day. Although students only came in once a week, there were plans to grow that number up to three times per week in the coming years. 
But, two years in, enrollment had dropped to 87 kids, a 65 percent decrease. Costs had soared to $11,327 per pupil, a 121 percent jump from the year prior and nearly $3,000 more than the average in this district of roughly 17,000 students. SpaRRk Academy’s future sat on shaky ground; the school board announced in late 2022 that it would hold a vote this spring on whether to shutter the academy altogether.

Prior to the pandemic, virtual schools were relatively scarce: 691 fully virtual programs enrolled nearly 294,000 students, accounting for less than 1 percent of national public school enrollment, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But after most schools shifted their classes online in early 2020, remote learning caught on with some families, including those who preferred to give their children the flexibility of learning from home, or whose children struggled with social anxiety in school buildings or hadn’t found success in traditional learning environments.

Some 41 percent of districts surveyed in August 2021 by the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonprofit think tank, said they had opened a full-time virtual school option during the pandemic, and 32 percent planned to maintain these programs after the pandemic subsided.
1. How did Ashley Daniels know that her second-grade son would need extra support even though he earned a good grade on the assessment he took on about the material? Where does Daniel's son go to school?

Daniel's watched her son as he sat at the dining room table and got lucky as he guessed the answers. The second grader attends a virtual school program in Rio Rancho School District in New Mexico. 


2. How did Rio Rancho handle the requests for online programming even after most students had returned to the school building? How many students participated in 2021 as compared to the present? 

The Rio Rancho School District assigned 10 teachers to serve the students in a program where students were in the building one day per week and online the other four days. When the program started in 2021, over 250 students were being served, however, in the past two years enrollment has dropped to it current level of 87 students. 


3. How did the virtual program called the SpaRRk Academy operate when it opened? How has the enrollment drop affected the operation and cost per pupil of the school? 

Even though initially the students came to the school only one day per week, the teachers and principal as well as other staff were in the school building almost every day, and initially planned to gradually increase the number of days students were in the building. With the enrollment dropping steadily for the past two years, the plans have not been fully implemented and the cost has increased 121% and nearly $3000 more than the average per pupil expenditure in the 17,000-student district. 

4. How has the school board reacted? How does Rio Ranch compare to the national landscape? 

The school board announced in 2022 that they would vote in the spring of 2023 on the school's status and whether the school would remain open. In 2021, a nonprofit think tank surveyed school districts with 41% of systems in the nation indicating that they would open an online school and 32% planned to maintain the program in the long term beyond the pandemic. 