BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge Parish School System is expanding its virtual learning academy to all grade levels. The expansion is intended to provide another learning option for parents to consider next school year.

Superintendent Dr. Sito Narcisse says some students who are virtually learning now will remain in virtual learning next year. The district is trying to expand its EBR Virtual Learning Academy to accommodate all these students.

"We've had to adapt like other districts across the country," Narcisse said.

Following a year where a lot of school districts altered the way students learn, Narcisse says the school board will ask to consider a request for the approval of the expansion of the EBR Virtual Academy to provide for grades Pre-K through 12th. It would expand learning levels from 9th to 12th.

Right now, the school system says a third of the 41,000 students attending schools in the parish are learning virtually. Narcisse says the option to have virtual learning is necessary, and so a survey was sent out this week to gather feedback from families. 

"We're looking at curriculum, how we better streamline our curriculum for our teachers. We talked to our teacher advisory council and got feedback around that," he said. "There will be some shifts and changes."

One of those changes includes how teachers are assigned to classrooms.

"Some teachers said they had some challenges between working in-person and on the computer," Narcisse said. "Teachers will focus on one particular area."

With the EBR Virtual Academy expansion, teachers would exclusively be teaching in-person or virtually. Narcisse says it'll benefit everyone involved.

In a unanimous decision, school board officials voted in approval of the notion during a meeting Thursday night.