Policies

VTVLC views academic integrity as the foundation of education.  The goal of all VTVLC classes is for students to learn new things.  Plagiarism and cheating are generally used by students to avoid the work and the challenge of new learning and thus undermine the goal of education.  Students may turn to plagiarism or cheating because of time constraints or pressure to do well and these struggles should be addressed directly. All students are expected to submit original work to the individual student.  Any work submitted that is not original in content will be subject to disciplinary action per our Academic Integrity Matrix (see below).

Plagiarism is work copied or stolen and submitted as an authentic representation of one’s work without citing sources or crediting the original source.

Some examples include:

• Copying and pasting answers found online or in other sources for assignments and assessments
• Submitting a paper or portion of a paper taken from online or other sources
• Using quotations from another person’s work without citing the source
• Using a part of another person’s work and submitting it as your own, including paraphrasing, without citing the source
• The use of photos, graphs, drawings, facts, statistics, or other information without citing the source
• The use of artificial intelligence (AI) services to generate writing, images, or other work without appropriately attributing and citing the source

Cheating occurs when a student does not do their own work with information gathered personally.

Some examples include:

• Collaborating with another student or with artificial intelligence outside the parameters that a teacher has allowed. (If you are unclear, ask your teacher for clarification about specific examples for your class.)
• The use of an online translator for assessments and assignments, particularly in foreign language classes where the ability to translate is the skill being learned and assessed
• Using books, notes, examples, and/or internet resources to take a quiz or test unless clearly outlined as acceptable by the instructor  (Instructors may conclude that leaving a quiz or exam screen during a quiz or test is evidence of cheating.)
• Allowing another person to complete work for you
• Using another person’s work or allowing another person to use your work, including paraphrasing

Plagiarism and cheating will be handled as major misconduct per the RVTC Policies, and the consequences will follow the VTVLC Academic Integrity Matrix (below).

Disciplinary actions for academic integrity are cumulative by the student, not by class or year. 

VTVLC Academic Integrity Matrix

VTVLC Activity & Participation Policy (Traditional Enrollments)

Only through continuous communication, activity, and participation can students be successful in an online course. This activity is equivalent to attendance and participation in a traditional classroom environment. Within each course the instructor outlines the weekly minimum work requirements and students will abide by the following VTVLC policies:

1. 7-Day Activity: If a student does not actively participate in his/her course during a seven (7) day period, the teacher will notify via email the student, counselor, parent, and VTVLC Student Success Coach. The Student Success Coach will then initiate phone call(s) to determine the problem. Active participation is indicated by the student submitting the expected number of assignment(s) as indicated by the specific course calendar or pace chart.
2. 14-Day Activity: If after an additional 7 days, the student still has not actively participated in his/her course, the teacher will notify the VTVLC Principal via email. The Principal will communicate with the student, parent and counselor. These communications will clearly indicate that the student may be withdrawn from the course within a 7-day period from this communication if the student remains inactive.
3. 21-Day Activity: If the student still remains inactive in the course, the teacher will again email the VTVLC Dean of Students and also the VTVLC Director. The Dean of Students and Director will make the final determination regarding the course withdrawal.
4. In the event the student is withdrawn from the course, an official final grade report will be entered for the student and sent to his/her school.

VTVLC Activity & Participation Policy

• Students must progress through the course and have consistent communication with their teacher.
• Students must create a plan for completion of the course and send the instructor a pace chart.
• Students must complete Status Reports on the 1st of every month they are enrolled to remain eligible.
• Students may change their pacing during their enrollment but must complete all requirements before the course end date.
• Students who do not meet pacing or activity requirements for a period of more than four weeks or who do not submit completed Status Reports may be removed from the program due to non-participation.

Drop Policy (Traditional Enrollments Only)

Dur­ing the course request process, the stu­dent agrees to the fol­low­ing:

I acknowl­edge that dur­ing the first 28 days of being acti­vated into my VTVLC course, I may drop the course with­out penalty. Upon drop­ping a course after the first 28 days, a grade of WF will be issued. I under­stand that for each online course there is a min­i­mum num­ber of assign­ments that must be com­pleted each week. Fail­ure to sub­mit the min­i­mum num­ber of assign­ments on a weekly basis may result in my removal from the course and may result in a fail­ing grade being assigned to my aca­d­e­mic tran­script.

Dis­claimer: Local district/local school drop poli­cies super­sede VTVLC’s drop pol­icy. It is the respon­si­bil­ity of the student/parents to be informed of their local school dis­trict policies.

VTVLC Refund Policy

Refund eligibility depends on the type of enrollment. Please call our main office  (802-855-8331) if you have questions regarding this refund policy.

• Traditional enrollment (Fall, Spring or Year-Round courses) – Students must drop within the 28-day drop period in order to qualify for a refund.
• On-demand enrollment (PASS and/or Open/Rolling courses) – 50% refund will be granted between if withdrawal occurs between the start date and 10 days. No refund will be granted if withdrawal occurs after 10 days.
• No refunds for parent-facilitated, home study, or course leasing after the first day of class.

In accor­dance with Fed­eral and Vermont state reg­u­la­tions, stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties may not be denied access to VTVLC as an edu­ca­tional option. VTVLC has guide­lines regard­ing access for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties. Indi­vid­ual stu­dent fac­tors are taken into con­sid­er­a­tion along with the student’s request to enroll in desired courses. All rea­son­able and appro­pri­ate requests for accom­mo­da­tions within the VTVLC online learn­ing envi­ron­ment will be care­fully reviewed. Request for accom­mo­da­tions may include access to acces­si­ble instruc­tional mate­ri­als (AIM). Students iden­ti­fied as hav­ing an Indi­vid­ual Edu­ca­tion Plan (IEP) or hav­ing a 504 Plan, will be afforded accom­mo­da­tions in com­pli­ance with these guide­lines and cur­ricu­lum for VTVLC. Edu­ca­tional ser­vices may not remain at the same level as is doc­u­mented on the cur­rent IEP or 504 Plan. There­fore, a vir­tual meet­ing will be held upon appli­ca­tion and/​or enroll­ment to VTVLC to dis­cuss ser­vices and accom­mo­da­tions requested by the student.

The coun­selor, case man­ager and team from the sending school must sup­port the student’s request to take a VTVLC course. The school-based team will ver­ify that the course(s) meets the aca­d­e­mic needs artic­u­lated in the student’s edu­ca­tion plan. Sim­i­larly, any request for course con­tent accom­mo­da­tions will also have to be ver­i­fied by the school-based team. This process will be required for a stu­dent with a dis­abil­ity only request­ing accom­mo­da­tions via an IEP or 504 plan. The VTVLC pro­gram per­son­nel and the con­sult­ing VTVLC spe­cial edu­ca­tion coor­di­na­tor will con­duct an indi­vid­ual review regard­ing each request for access or con­tent accom­mo­da­tions. This review will deter­mine if the request is rea­son­able, appro­pri­ate or fea­si­ble within an online learn­ing envi­ron­ment. The send­ing school team may deter­mine the need for addi­tional school-based ser­vices beyond those pro­vided in the vir­tual learn­ing environment.
Depend­ing on the nature and the extent of those addi­tional ser­vices the VTVLC per­son­nel, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the send­ing school per­son­nel, will deter­mine if VTVLC is a good match for the student.
It is impor­tant to note that in gen­eral, access to course con­tent for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties, may be fur­ther enhanced by the expec­ta­tion that VTVLC courses may offer stu­dents alter­na­tives such as: mul­ti­ple means of rep­re­sen­ta­tion so that learn­ers have var­i­ous options for acquir­ing infor­ma­tion, mul­ti­ple means of expres­sion so that learn­ers have alter­na­tive ways to show that learn­ing has occurred, and mul­ti­ple means of engage­ment to increase moti­va­tion and tap into stu­dents’ interests.

The fol­low­ing list pro­vides sam­ples of pos­si­ble accom­mo­da­tions for each of these three dimensions.

Mul­ti­ple Means of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion
Con­tent pre­sented in video, audio, slide show
Read­ing mate­ri­als with AIM resources (text-​to-​speech, high­light­ing, large font, etc.)
Trans­la­tion for non­-na­tive speak­ers (ELL stu­dents)
Graphic rep­re­sen­ta­tions such as con­cept maps and graphic orga­niz­ers
Illus­tra­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tions such as dia­grams and simulation

Mul­ti­ple Means of Expres­sion
Alter­na­tive forms of text input: (speech-​to-​text, switches, touch pads, etc)
Media-​based assign­ments (draw­ings, maps, dia­grams, videos, etc)
Reduced text assign­ments (out­lines, con­cept maps, tables, graphs, etc)
Sup­port­ive tools: spelling and gram­mar check­ers, draw­ing pro­grams, out­lin­ers
Acces­si­ble social net­work­ing options (acces­si­ble twit­ter etc.)

Mul­ti­ple Means of Engage­ment
Threaded dis­cus­sions
Brain­storm­ing activ­i­ties
Peer/​Team inquiry projects
Online (vir­tual) exper­i­ments

Addi­tional Possible Accom­mo­da­tion Options
Captioned video resources with tran­script avail­able.
Text tran­scripts for audio resources.
TTS and/​or high­light­ing soft­ware.
Minimization of unnecessary graphics.
Alter­na­tive pre­sen­ta­tions, including graphic pre­sen­ta­tions of instruc­tional con­tent.
Alter­na­tive nav­i­ga­tion tools.
Web resources eval­u­ated specif­i­cally for accessibility.

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact:
Melissa Sargent Minor, Consulting Special Educator
802-591-3723
msminor(at)vtvlc.org

VTVLC stu­dents and employ­ees shall use all equip­ment and pro­grams for the intended edu­ca­tional pur­pose. VTVLC is com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing its stu­dents and employ­ees from bul­ly­ing, harass­ment or inap­pro­pri­ate uses of VTVLC com­put­ers or pro­grams to par­tic­i­pate in bul­ly­ing behav­ior. Bul­ly­ing and harass­ment will not be tol­er­ated and shall be just cause for dis­ci­pli­nary action.

Con­duct that con­sti­tutes bul­ly­ing or harass­ment, as defined herein, is pro­hib­ited.

Bul­ly­ing, harass­ment, and cyber­-stalk­ing are defined as inflict­ing phys­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal distress, and/or communicating words, images or lan­guage using elec­tronic mail that causes emo­tional dis­tress and for which there is no legit­i­mate pur­pose.

Any action by a stu­dent, par­ent or employee deemed inap­pro­pri­ate will be fully inves­ti­gated by the appro­pri­ate school admin­is­tra­tor.

Con­se­quences for stu­dents for actions that vio­late the pol­icy on bul­ly­ing and harass­ment shall be deter­mined by the admin­is­tra­tive staff of VTVLC and may include:

Student/​teacher/​parent conference
Sus­pen­sion of email privileges
Iso­la­tion of stu­dent in a sep­a­rate shell where there is no access to other students
Removal from access to VTVLC courses

Con­se­quences for employ­ees for actions that vio­late school pol­icy on bul­ly­ing and harass­ment shall be deter­mined by the direc­tor and/​or the super­in­ten­dent. The con­se­quences may include: ver­bal or writ­ten rep­ri­mand or ter­mi­na­tion of employment.

Pre-Expulsion

If a school dis­trict has found prob­a­ble cause for an expul­sion but has offered the stu­dent an alter­na­tive pro­gram, Ver­mont Vir­tual Learn­ing Coop­er­a­tive may be uti­lized as solu­tion for pro­vid­ing instruc­tion for said stu­dents. Such requests to utilize VTVLC in this man­ner shall be made by the dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent or his/​her designee. Requests shall be made to the VTVLC Direc­tor, and approved by, the super­in­ten­dent of the River Val­ley Tech­ni­cal Cen­ter.

VTVLC reserves the right to deny enroll­ment depend­ing on the nature of the mis­con­duct that resulted in the stu­dent being con­sid­ered for expul­sion. All place­ments will be made on a space avail­able basis.

Expulsion

If a stu­dent has been expelled from a pub­lic school, the super­in­ten­dent of the dis­trict may request that said stu­dent be enrolled in VTVLC. Only requests from the super­in­ten­dent or his/​her designee will be con­sid­ered.

Stu­dents who have been expelled from a Ver­mont pub­lic school and who sub­se­quently attempt to enroll in VTVLC as either a home study stu­dent or through enroll­ment in a pri­vate school pro­gram may be denied access to VTVLC.

VTVLC reserves the right to deny enroll­ment depend­ing on the nature of the mis­con­duct that resulted in the stu­dent being expelled. All place­ments will be made on a space avail­able basis. All requests shall be made to the VTVLC Director and are subject to approval by, the River Val­ley Tech­ni­cal Cen­ter superintendent.

The Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability in admission or access to, or treatment or employment in, its programs and activities. Any person having inquiries concerning the Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative’s compliance with the regulations implementing Title VI, Title IX, Section 04 or other state or federal non-discrimination laws or regulations is directed to contact:

Ashley Newton
VTVLC Assistant Director
(802) 591-3015
anewton@vtvlc.org