Real Life Experiences with K12, Georgia Cyber Academy or Online Charter.

My daughter attended a K12 virtual school for 7 years. As a learning coach, I was expected to know what classes she was in, communicate with teachers as needed, and attend parents' or coaches' occasional meetings. My daughter needed much more from me (due to medical problems). I didn't need to supplement the curriculum, but one term she found out she liked a particular elective and wanted to get some outside classes to further her interest, so we did.

I thought the electives offered a lot of flexibility. Of course, it's not going to be like being in the school band or chorus since it's virtual, but it does expose the kids to the basics and you can add in lessons as you want. And there were small groups of many interests that met locally. Of course, there's no Bible study but that could be done within your family separately. And my daughter and I could discuss what she was reading in real time. We believe in Biblical Creation, so when the course talked about the world evolving 20 billion years ago, we were able to immediately talk about it between ourselves, just pausing the lesson, from our perspective, instead of after school many hours later when it's not on the front burner, so to speak.

I learned that at the beginning of my daughter's years in K12, a high percentage of the students attended due to distance considerations, medical problems, elite athletic training, etc., and during her last year or two there, it seemed to be a little different. There were many more kids who had left traditional schools because of bullying, social problems, etc. It made the K12 kids more compassionate, welcoming, and understanding, and I appreciated their kindnesses to each other. Just an observation, not a scientific theory, of course.

It's nice to be able to replay the lesson later, or attend the class later that day or week if the schedule prohibits attending the live lesson.

The one criticism I had was with the curriculum itself. The staff was wonderful. The curriculum seemed a little ... sloppy. It wasn't the content, it was the basic spell-check, the grammar, the errors. For example, a math problem had the correct terminology, the correct procedure to follow in order to solve it, but at the end there was a really basic error. The answer was something like 4 x 15 = ? but instead the proofreader had failed to check and the problem was written 4 x 51 = ?, so when the student wrote 204, it was marked incorrect as they were looking for 60. But 4 x 51 is 204. There were many little errors like this. In one lesson about a computer something, they meant to use the word "tier" but misspelled it "tire" more than 6 times in the lesson. I don't think a day went by without a similar error. These were in the national K12 curriculum lessons, not anything produced locally. That was distressing to me. Fortunately, my daughter is a good speller and we could overlook the errors and understand what the lesson meant, but a student who struggled with spelling and grammar would be confused. We decided that due to the excellence of the staff and teachers, the benefit of such support outweighed the negatives of spell check problems. But it's something to know. There are some online reviews that complain about this.

But, as I said, my daughter desperately needed an online school, and the staff was compassionate, developed a 504 plan to accommodate her medical needs, and encouraged her every day. If you're looking for a compassionate and supportive education situation, it could work well. And some of us just don't feel qualified to homeschool in the advanced math or science subjects. I appreciated having knowledgeable teachers to teach my daughter those things. And I definitely think you could add in whatever is important to your family. Some of my daughter's classmates traveled internationally to compete in tournaments, some had frequent surgeries, etc. It shows how a virtual classroom can allow a student and his/her family to deal with what they want to or have to deal with, and still get an education.

Hope this helps.

How old is your child?
We did GCA a couple of years ago with both our kids (at the time a 5th grader and an 8th grader). It depends a lot upon the child, and where you live, to be quite honest.

My 5th grader did wonderfully well, and as a tested and recognized "gifted" student, she was allowed to take Latin (her pick of several foreign languages) and special once a week classes as supplemental education. She was able to complete everything within about 4 hours a day. And she used her martial arts classes and piano lessons as supplementals as well.

My 8th grader had it harder. He is not as driven as my daughter, so I had to stay on him to do the work. And keep him from cheating (writing down the responses and then redoing the tests). The level of work (algebra and science in particular) really required that he participate (watch) all the live classes online. And that was a serious time commitment. You "can" watch the recordings later at your convenience, but then you are behind and it becomes difficult to catch up to "live" ones again. And sometimes there are recording glitches or the teacher is slow to upload the recording so that you can't access it immediately.

There was quite a bit of prep/practice for standardized testing (much of it in online quarterly testing). And the kids didn't like that.

Where we live (south part of the state) there aren't that many who are in it, so there was precious little in the way of social activity, and what there was wasn't matched very well by age/grade category. MOST of the kids were younger elementary, and mine weren't. I understand that up around Atlanta there is a WIDE network of social activities and events that you can participate in. A lot of the teaching staff is up that way, too, and so come to some of the ice cream social type events or museum trips, etc... and you can meet them face to face. Not so much where we are.

Everyone was super nice, but it wasn't for our family long term. My son, especially, hated it. He is a very social kid, and he HATED being at home on his computer alone all the time.
He also complained that during the live classes there were so many kids in them (over 50-75, like some college classes) that the teachers didn't get to everyone's questions. And if kids misused the chatbox (the way they asked questions) rather than booting the troublemakers, the teachers would sometimes just turn off that feature. :(

They learned a lot though.
If you have a self-starter/go-getter kid, and in particular if you only have one kid you are managing/guiding through it, then you can be quite flexible. Not totally flexible, but way more so than public school in a brick and mortar setting. My daughter could be done by late lunch and have the afternoon free for other things, but we were often stuck at home anyway b/c my son had a class he had to view until after 3:00.

It was very nice to have the entire family home at meal times. My husband works a regressive shift schedule, and it was nice for him and the kids to actually get to see each other every day, which isn't normally the case when they are in brick/mortar school.
But, it also included a certain level of stress for me, as I felt overwhelmed and very stressed with my kids some times, and there was no escaping each other to get a break from each other to regroup.

If you have a kid that you have to stay "on" to get their homework every afternoon after school, imagine being in the mindset/relationship ALL DAY. Constantly "on" them.
If you have a kid that comes home and does their homework (or has none b/c they already finished everything at school) without protest/complaint or procrastination... then you can do a lot while they are working independently. For my 5th grader, the only time I really had to sit WITH her, was for Language Arts. Because the grammar portion really wasn't taught and the teacher guide is where everything was explained to her. Her portion/books for the grammar section were just worksheets without explanation of how to do it. Like diagramming sentences. I had to teach that to her, her books on that were just worksheets to practice. And the online classes focused more on the reading/literature side, not the grammar.
Lucky for me I am a grammar freak. ;)

also, a good local source would be the homeschooling group near you.
ours has a directory showing every family and what curriculums they have used. There is a book sale and a training plus social times.

My daughter did GCA 2nd and 3rd. I'm traditionally homeschooling her now because I did not care for all the test prep vs actual learning that occurred in 3rd because of the CRCT's. We always had time for extras, but she is an advanced reader and usually grasps things quickly. We hardly ever participated in the class connects because they are a huge time drain. While in GCA, my daughter did ballet, scouts, and took some classes with a homeschool group. The classes were for a few hours one day a week. The only times we got "behind" with GCA was when she was in a theater production, but we always caught up.
This year my son is in 1st with GCA. He only does GCA work 4 days a week because one day a week my kids are in a fine arts program. He is on track with GCA's schedule and he plays soccer.
From what I hear from other parents, the older a student gets, the less flexibility you have in GCA. There are several Facebook groups for GCA and K12 you can check out.
I live in Gwinnett and the homeschool groups around here have never excluded us from activities because of using online public school.

How old is your kid? Mine is 14 and in 8th grade. I signed up for it in Aug for her after she was getting bullied and behind in 7th grade public school. She has Asperger's and ADD so they tweaked the classes some for her. But you as the parent have to quite a bit more work than I thought I would. She did it from Aug to Jan and then I moved her back to public school. She's doing better there. She was really missing the "social" aspect of school and k12 didn't offer much in that sense. Everyone kept telling me I could contact the "real" homeschool moms, but they sort of look down on the online school moms like we aren't "really homeschooling". So it was difficult for my 14 yo to just sit at home all day on the computer. I like the "thought" of it, but it just didn't work out for us. Most of it being my fault for not being organized enough and staying on top of her like she needed. I thought she would have to take 8th over but they said no, she would just pick up where the other one's were and she's done much better. So that was just our experience. Yes, you have time to do other things and it's flexible so it may work for you. Good luck.