Alyson E Mitchell

Hello, and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for education leaders and practitioners who are making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained.

I'm Seth Fleischauer, founder and president of Banyan Global Learning, and my co-hosts are Alyson Mitchell and Tami Morring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

[lips smack] Our guest today is Dr. Nicole Lemon, the executive director of Virtual Learning and Strategic Planning at Springfield Public Schools, where she started SPS Online in 2011 and grew it into Launch Virtual Learning, now serving roughly 23,000 students annually across more than 400 of Missouri's districts.

Launch is the only statewide K-12 virtual school in the country operating at this scale inside a public school district.