Next fall, the Norwin School District will try out a new system for expanding class offerings. But the new classes won't entail any new teachers or classrooms.

That's because district officials have decided to participate in Westmoreland Intermediate Unit's e-Academy, a program that will use the Internet to help add new courses.

Timothy Hammill, supervisor of education technology integration services at the IU, said the program came out of discussions with a number of school officials in the county.

Officials at the IU and local districts wanted to be able to compete with charter and cyber schools, but at the same time they had concerns about the quality of the education those schools offered.

"A learning environment that is strictly cyber or strictly brick and mortar is not working today," Hammill said.

He said that offcials had found that when their students left for cyber schools and later returned, the district had to spend extra time on them to bring them up to speed. At the same time however, cyber schools offered a wider variety of courses, particularly in areas like technology.

The e-Academy would combine the strengths of the two approaches. Norwin students would stay at Norwin, but they could take classes online on subjects Norwin did not offer.

Another benefit came in the form of the teachers that would administer the program, Hammill said.

Students would have access to teachers within the district, and the courses would be created by the IU, other districts and Norwin teachers.

"We have the best professionals in buildings across the county. They're the people who should be teaching our students," Hammill said.

He emphasized that, unlike with cyber and charter schools, students would stay at Norwin, so the district would not accrue additional costs as they do when students go to cyber schools.

As part of the e-Academy, Hammill said the program would initially place a large focus on training teachers in the program's use, particularly in how teachers could create courses for it.

"We're teaching teachers to work in the online environment and giving the tools to be successful there," he said.

Tracy McNelly, Norwin's assistant superintendent of secondary education, said the program could help the district win back students who had already gone to cyber schools, and might help students and their parents decide not to leave in the first place.

Hammill agreed. "If we don't start doing something of our own, in our own schools, we will continue to loose more," he said.

Superintendent John Boylan said the e-Academy also had benefits for students uninterested in cyber schools. He pointed out that, especially with upper level classes, scheduling conflicts often prevented students from taking all the classes they wanted.

With the e-Academy, students would be able to take the class at anytime, allowing them to take exactly the classes they wanted.

School board vice president Rebecca Gediminskas said she felt the program would be an asset to Norwin, and in order to make sure it benefited students and teachers the district had to make sure to let people know it existed.

"This generation of children, they know how to use a computer, they know how to do this, this is their world. And I feel like we would be remiss if we're not looking into this," she said.

At their June 16 meeting, school board members voted unanimously to participate in the e-Academy for a three year period.