When the 2026-27 school year opens, Arlington ISD will see some new beginnings.
The school district, which is facing declining enrollment and a budget shortfall, will introduce two virtual school options at the high school level.
Sarah McMurrough, the school board president, said she is excited to see the new programs take shape and that they will help the district better serve its students.
“The virtual options will provide just another pathway for families seeking more flexibility without sacrificing quality,” McMurrough said.
The programs are split: one focused on building an early college pathway and the other offering a hybrid learning experience for juniors and seniors.
The early college option is run through the Arlington College and Career High School and built for incoming ninth graders.
Arlington College and Career High School operates one of the district’s early college high school programs that allows students to earn both a high school diploma and an associate degree from Tarrant County College.
The new virtual option would be completely online and allows students to learn from teachers at the same pace as on-campus students and receive the same counseling services.
The hybrid experience is called Arlington ISD Online Learning. Juniors and seniors take one or two classes online each semester at their own pace, while coming to campus for other classes.
Applications for the early college online program are now open, while the Arlington Online Learning applications will open closer to the fall, according to the district’s website.
The instruction for Arlington ISD Online Learning will come via Edmentum EdOptions Academy, a virtual learning firm. Currently, Edmentum is used at roughly 6,200 school districts across the United States, according to the organization’s website.
Steve Simpson, director of AISD’s Technology Integration and Innovation Department, said the hybrid option will feature lessons from Edmentum that are aligned with the state’s standards.
“We want to make sure that, curriculum-wise, students are experiencing the same learning outcomes as students in a traditional face-to-face environment, and we’re ensuring that by leveraging the third-party experts as we’re getting started,” Simpson said.
The new options come at a time of change for virtual schools in Texas.
In 2025, the Legislature passed a law allowing any public school to submit an application to create its own virtual option. Previously, the Texas Education Agency limited the number of public virtual schools.
Districts across the state have already begun creating wide-ranging virtual school options in response to the change, Simpson said, but Arlington ISD’s focus was to create a sustainable program for the future.
“We don’t want to rush into something and basically provide options we can’t implement well,” Simpson said.
The idea of creating a virtual school option is one that has been tossed around by trustees and district staff for months.
Rocky Gardiner, a demographer for the Southlake-based firm Zonda Education, told trustees in April about the growth some districts have seen from their virtual schools.
“Virtual enrollment, I believe, is becoming a bigger story than even homeschool in some cases,” Gardiner told trustees.
McMurrough said she can’t forecast what the options will do for the district’s enrollment, but that the demand for a virtual learning option is “here to stay.”
“It’s something that is a growing need locally, statewide and nationwide,” she said.
If interest in Arlington ISD’s virtual options are high, it could help the district fight against both its enrollment decline and budget issues. More students means additional dollars from the state since Texas funds schools based on attendance.
However, there is a caveat.
In May, trustees received another long-term enrollment projection from Kris Pool, director of planning at College Station-based Population and Survey Analysts.
In presenting it, Pool said she fears that students may begin bouncing back and forth between schools as more virtual options become available due to the new law.
“I’m hearing a lot of my clients say we’re starting a virtual program, hoping to bring students in, but their neighbors are starting a virtual program,” she said.
McMurrough said she knows that districts across the state are also exploring what the law means, but that Arlington ISD isn’t focused on what others are doing.
“It’s more about being responsive to the evolving needs of our students, while ensuring the programs we offer reflect high standards that our parents and families expect of us,” she said.
As for how Arlington ISD’s virtual options may grow in the future, Simpson said the first year of the program and community input will drive any future expansion.
“We understand that, to continue to meet the desires of the community, we are going to consider how expanding virtual options makes sense going forward,” Simpson said.
Chris Moss is a reporter for the Arlington Report. Contact him at chris.moss@arlingtonreport.org.
At the Arlington Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org/2026/06/25/arlington-isd-launches-new-virtual-school-options-this-fall-could-it-mean-more-students/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://fortworthreport.org”>Arlington Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/fortworthreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/cropped-favicon.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https://fortworthreport.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=630648&ga4=2820184429″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https://fortworthreport.org/2026/06/25/arlington-isd-launches-new-virtual-school-options-this-fall-could-it-mean-more-students/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”//cdn.parsely.com/keys/fortworthreport.org/p.js”></script>