D4-EdenPrairie5-5-11

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CURRENT minnlocal.com

Eden Prairie May 5, 2011 • V41.17

In the Community, With the Community, For the Community

Eagles remain unbeaten. Page 25

Online high school prom? And phy ed class? BY PAUL GROESSEL • SUN NEWSPAPERS It’s prom season for online students, too, you know. Prom for an online high school, as expected, is something that may need repeating. “They’re like, ‘You have prom and you do online school?’” said senior Clarissa Mings of Andover. She and roughly 40 other students enrolled in the online Insight School of Minnesota participated in a school prom on Friday, April 29, at the Brunswick Zone in Eden Prairie. Insight is part of the Brooklyn Center Public School system and enrollment is free. It started in fall 2008, and enrollment at the start of this year’s second semester was around 500 students, according to Head of School John Huber. There were 22 graduates the first year and around 30 the second year, Huber said, and this year, the spring graduate list is around 40 at last check. For prom, the school reserved a banquet room, decorated it and attracted dressed-up students who dined, danced and even played a video game projected onto a large screen. They expected to crown queen and king, too. Online High School programs work for students with a variety of schedules and backgrounds, said Sheila Verg, a physical education teacher with Insight. Yes, online physical education. Verg, who seems explain this a lot, said she has students keep a log of different activities that qualify for the class. That log has to be verified with another person, like a parent, and submitted each week. There is other work, too, but that settles

More than $30,000 in stolen equipment doesn’t help a homegrown business BY PAUL GROESSEL SUN NEWSPAPERS

Mings said. It can also be a good transition from home schooling for other students, Math teacher Nancee Gendreau said. Gendreau said teachers have live video of what would resemble classroom instruction. Those instructional videos are saved and posted online, along with assignments, information and other materials, so students can get to work whenever it’s convenient. “We pretty much say we’d like to see

Someone threw a hitch Jason Olsen’s lawn-mowing giddy up. Olsen, a 26-year-old Eden Prairie native, runs a serious lawn care business that he has grown since elementary school, but he ran into a snag this winter when more than $30,000 in equipment was stolen. Someone (or persons) made off with a locked 16-foot trailer and didn’t leave any breadcrumbs. This was disappointing to many who saw Olsen develop his company. One of them is his family’s neighbor, Jerry LaBarre. He saw Olsen’s business grow from the start. The summer before Olsen’s sixth-grade school year (he estimates), LaBarre was sitting in front of his garage like he often

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MOWED DOWN: TO PAGE 23

Students, from left to right, Erika Kline, Clarissa Mings, Asal Ramadan and Ashyante Gill enjoy their online school’s prom night in a banquet room at Brunswick Zone in Eden Prairie on Friday, April 29.They, and approximately 500 others statewide, are enrolled in Insight School of Minnesota, an online high school that opened in 2008. (Photo by Paul Groessel • Sun Newspapers)

For more on what online students are doing, see page 11. the activity portion, anyway. But, for the whole online high school idea, the reason it works for students and teachers is the flexibility, Verg and others explained. There are some other reasons, too. “There’s like no drama. It’s amazing,”

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