Megan Navarro
WIMBERLEY — Katherine Anne Porter School (KAPS) is seeking community input and looking into the possibility of offering virtual learning to better serve its students.
Founded in 1998, the tuition-free public charter school aims to be an environment for all students to thrive and explore self-expression. Its namesake — Katherine Anne Porter — was born near Brownwood in 1890 and moved to Kyle in her early childhood. She is known to be one of the state’s best and most famous writers, though the majority of her works were published outside of Texas, and she went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The school serves students in eighth through 12th grade and they all reside within a 30-mile radius from Canyon Lake, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Dripping Springs, Wimberley and other surrounding areas.
While KAPS has an arts and humanities focus, it’s not a requirement attendance, as they welcome all students, including those who may not succeed in the traditional school setting, said superintendent Mariah Ingram.
“We get a lot of marginalized students enrolling here for different reasons. Some students may have been bullied at their previous campus and don't feel safe going back. Some students [were] the bully at their previous campus and they cannot go back,” she explained. “We have students who just don't perform well in a school with 1,500 kids and, [at] our school, right now, we are sitting at 77 for our enrollment. We're usually around 95 to 100. We have a wide range of students who actually want to be here.”
KAPS is looking at potentially adding on a program, where sixth through eighth grade students can have classes completely online, as well as running two parallel programs — in-person and online — for ninth through 12th grade.
These options would meet the needs of the students who are transitioning from homeschool to an in-person campus. Ingram explained that KAPS lost 30 students this year who enrolled, but, for various reasons, could not continue attending in person.
“It would be a way for us to recapture those students who had a hard time transitioning to the brick-and-mortar campus and allow them to work at a flexible pace ... For us, a third of our population receives special [education] services and it's just like any normal [school district],” Ingram said. “A lot of our secondary or high school students struggle with stress or depression or anxiety and that's why they're not in a regular school because it's overstimulating. There are days where they're overstimulated here and if they had the option to work from home or be online and still feel part of a school community and have access to a school community, I think it would meet a lot of different students’ needs, even students who aren't currently considering KAPS.”
This would also help maintain the school’s goal of being more inclusive and allowing various opportunities through increased enrollment. Ingram explained that KAPS’ “funds are severely limited and where other school districts get $40 million allotted for different things, we just don't. So, the increased enrollment would allow us to offer more things. At this time, we need to be able to offer AP classes; we need to be able to offer credit recovery classes and dual credit classes. Those are things we're struggling with this year because I can only afford seven teachers and that limits my master schedule, electives and opportunities for students and that's not what we want to do.”
If it moves forward, this program would be accredited, providing students with high school credits needed for college, which Ingram said is something that families who participate in homeschooling have found challenges with when applying for higher education.
“A lot of homeschool programs and some online platform programs are not accredited through the state of Texas,” the superintendent shared. “Parents put in the time, the energy and they think it's not that big of a deal, until about high school, when they start realizing, ‘Oh my goodness, you're going to want to go to college and you have no credit. You're starting high school. We need to get you to an accredited school, so you can earn your credit and apply to college.’ Otherwise, you apply to college without an accredited transcript.”
The cost of the program would be covered by KAPS; the families would not have to pay for anything.
Ingram noted that they would like to designate a specific computer lab on campus with a teacher for the families with students who would fully do their courses online, but be there for afterschool activities.
“Let's say parents have a meeting with an attorney, a funeral or something and they need their student to go to school, they can still sit in a computer lab with a teacher and do the virtual school, but where parents don't have to worry about ‘I've got to leave my two kids at home because we have these adult things going on,’” she said. “It will allow the students to come do their online platform, but also have in-person support.”
Currently, the design of the prospective program is not set, as KAPS still needs to select a provider, but Ingram explained that it could be where some students choose to do all seven class periods online, while others select to do some online and the rest in-person. The provider will help build a program based on input that will be given by families through an online interest survey, which has received more than 30 responses so far.
Ingram explained that she is awaiting confirmation to see if they would need to apply through the Texas Education Agency in order to run an online school in conjunction with the brick-and-mortar campus.
Ingram is pushing for the program to be implemented for the 2026-27 school year, with discussion possible at an upcoming board meeting.
Learn more about KAPS at www.kapschool.org. Families can fill out the KAPS Virtual Learning Interest Survey at bit.ly/4l42UBQ.
