How Virtual Schools Turned Nine Small Districts Into Statistical Boomtowns

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Omak School District^↗ enrolls 5,987 students in 2025-26, up 258% since 2009-10. On paper, this rural district in north-central Washington has grown faster than any comparably sized district in the state. In practice, only 1,545 of those students attend a school in Omak. The other 4,442 are scattered across Washington, logging into the Washington Virtual Academy from their homes, enrolled through Omak as a legal formality.

Strip out WAVA, and Omak has not grown at all. Its brick-and-mortar enrollment is down 7.6% since 2009-10, a net loss of 127 students over 17 years.

Omak is not an outlier. It is the most visible case of a structural pattern that distorts Washington enrollment data at every level: nine districts across the state host virtual school programs that account for more than half their reported enrollment, warping growth rankings, inflating COVID-era trends, and complicating any analysis that takes district totals at face value.

The host district playbook

The arrangement works like this: a for-profit education company, typically Stride, Inc. (formerly K12 Inc.), contracts with a small rural district to operate a statewide virtual school under that district's authorization. Washington classifies these programs as Alternative Learning Experiences. The state sends approximately $8,679 per full-time virtual student to the host district, which passes the vast majority to the operator and retains a small administrative oversight fee. Per testimony on SB 6320, Omak's WAVA contract alone is worth $24 million annually.

The financial incentive extends beyond the contract fee. Small districts that host virtual programs also qualify for more Local Effort Assistance from the state, a form of levy equalization tied to enrollment size. The Seattle Times reported in 2021 that districts like Omak and Quillayute Valley^↗ "could benefit in another way: With more students enrolled in their districts, they qualify for more 'local effort assistance' from the state."

Nine districts currently operate in this model, all with virtual enrollment exceeding 50% of their reported total:

Starbuck School District^↗ is the most extreme case: 32 brick-and-mortar students, 670 virtual students through Virtual Preparatory Academy of Washington, a virtual share of 95.4%. Starbuck appears to have grown 2,952% since 2009-10, when it enrolled 23 students. Its real enrollment has grown to 32.

Goldendale School District^↗ hosts Washington Connections Academy with 2,315 virtual students alongside 840 in physical classrooms, a 73.4% virtual share. South Bend School District^↗ hosts three separate virtual programs, Washington Digital Academy (1,054), Washington Online School (281), and Astravo Online Academy (128), adding 1,463 virtual students to a brick-and-mortar enrollment of 603.

Ranking contamination

The distortion is not academic. It corrupts every growth ranking produced from Washington enrollment data.

Of the 12 fastest-growing districts in Washington since 2009-10 (among those with at least 100 students), six are virtual host districts. Their apparent growth rates, ranging from 202% to 317%, dwarf the organic growth of districts like Sunnyside (+229.4%, driven by actual demographic change) or Ridgefield (+101.2%, driven by residential construction in the Portland metro exurbs).

The rank distortion is substantial. Omak's reported enrollment of 5,987 places it 48th among Washington's 328 districts, between Olympia and Walla Walla. Subtract WAVA, and Omak drops to 124th, a district comparable in size to Naches Valley or Cle Elum-Roslyn.

The COVID spike that wasn't local

During the 2020-21 school year, virtual enrollment statewide more than doubled, from 10,584 to 21,546 students, a gain of 10,962 in a single year. WAVA alone added 3,089 students, a 79.7% spike that inflated Omak's reported total to 8,514, making it appear to be one of the biggest COVID enrollment winners in the state.

The top four districts by absolute enrollment gain during that period were all virtual hosts: Omak (+2,881), Goldendale^↗ (+1,262), Mary M Knight^↗ (+381), and Valley^↗ (+305). Any analysis of COVID-era enrollment trends in Washington that does not separate virtual from brick-and-mortar enrollment will misidentify these districts as pandemic boomtowns.

Virtual enrollment peaked at 25,313 in 2021-22 before dropping by 6,570 the following year. But it has since climbed back. At 21,730 students in 2025-26, virtual enrollment has recovered most of its post-COVID losses and sits roughly quadruple its pre-pandemic level of approximately 5,200 in 2009-10.

The outcomes question

The financial structure has drawn sustained criticism. Georgetown University education-finance professor Marguerite Roza posed the core question to the Seattle Times:

"If they were getting spectacular outcomes, would we care about the profit? But that's not really been the case at all."

According to the Seattle Times' 2021 investigation, a 2018 state audit found that Washington's education department was not collecting reliable information on online students' outcomes. Available data suggested students at some Stride-operated schools performed far below state averages.

Oversight has been a persistent concern. Omak's superintendent at the time, Diana Reaume, told the same investigation that her role was limited: "My role isn't to track down the money once it's gone to the contracted services." State officials, the Times found, do not keep an official record of what districts pay for-profit companies each year.

The legislative response

The 2025-26 Washington legislature has taken notice. SB 6320, introduced in January 2026, would prohibit the state from approving for-profit entities as online education providers, require rescission of existing for-profit approvals by August 2026, and exclude virtual students from the enrollment counts used to calculate Local Effort Assistance.

The bill drew sharp testimony. Omak reported that the change would displace 4,800 students and 130 certificated educators in its WAVA program. Quillayute Valley's Insight School of Washington, which enrolls 3,087 virtual students, would face the same disruption.

The bill's passage is not certain, but the mere fact of its introduction signals a shift. For a decade, the host-district model operated with minimal legislative scrutiny. That era appears to be ending.

What this means for data users

Virtual enrollment in Washington now totals roughly 21,700 students, about 2.0% of the state's 1,096,285 students. That share is modest in the aggregate, but it is concentrated in nine districts where it accounts for 70% to 95% of reported enrollment.

Any analysis of Washington district-level enrollment, whether for policy, journalism, or research, needs to account for this. Growth rankings, decline rankings, COVID-impact analysis, and per-pupil comparisons all produce misleading results when virtual enrollment is folded into host-district totals. The data is not wrong. The students are real, the enrollment is real, and the funding is real. But the geographic attribution, the notion that these students belong to Omak or Starbuck or Goldendale, is a fiction that the data alone cannot correct.

If SB 6320 or similar legislation passes, nine of Washington's apparent boomtowns will revert to what they have been all along: small rural districts, some growing modestly, most in slow decline, serving the students who actually walk through their doors.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.