Veritas Opens As Online School

One week after closing to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 virus, Veritas Academy has reopened as an online school, with plans to continue fully operating online to serve local families until the end of this disruption.

A few months ago, Veritas hired Bruce Etter as its academic dean. Etter, a national leader in online education, formerly taught at Veritas Academy and then went on to lead two of the largest online classical Christian schools in the country.

Etter led the preparation of Veritas's faculty and staff.

Veritas made its decision to close earlier than many other local schools. Administrators, sensing the impending government-mandated closures and taking advantage of the school's unused snow days, decided to use the week of March 16 to train and prepare faculty to become online educators and announced this to families the morning of March 13. The credit for this critical decision goes to school nurse Hannah Barry and school physician Dr. Susan Mellinger.

Still, the move to online education is a big change for Veritas.

In order to help all of its families take advantage of this online education, Veritas delivered Chromebooks to any family that indicated a need. These laptops were part of the school's typing program. Veritas installed the necessary software on each machine so students can access classes and complete their work.

As the teachers and students become comfortable with this new way of learning, Veritas is now looking ahead for ways it can serve the greater community by offering classes to students around Lancaster County while schools remain closed.

Veritas will also allow students all over the county to audit some of its classes for free during this quarter. One of these offerings will be Etter's great books class, called Omnibus, in which students will work through "The Aeneid" and other literary masterpieces while discussing history, civics, theology, and more. Veritas plans to offer free educational content for other grade levels as well, including elementary.

For more details on these auditing options, readers may visit http://www.veritasacademy.com.