In 1858, Abraham Lincoln studied law entirely on his own. Like, literally on his own… with no law school or formal coursework except for a copy of William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England and the will to figure it out. He taught himself, passed the bar and built one of the most recognizable legal careers in American history.
Most district administrators thinking about launching a virtual program could use that same energy.
Dylan Hoffman, our VP of Operations and Customer Success at Subject, has guided dozens of districts through this exact process.
His verdict after hundreds of those conversations: the biggest thing standing between a district and a working virtual program is the assumption that budget and staffing are far bigger obstacles than they actually are.
When district leaders come to Dylan with interest in a virtual program, the conversation almost always starts the same way. Leaders walk in convinced that budget, staffing and technology are standing between them and a launch. Dylan's job, in those first few minutes, is to walk them through why that assumption is usually wrong.
Oftentimes I feel like districts feel the barrier to start something like this is really high.
Dylan says. "They believe there's a lot of effort required and a lot of resources that have to be expended. When in reality, that's often not the case."By the time most districts start that first conversation, the need is already past the theoretical stage. Virtual school enrollment has been accelerating nationwide. Texas alone saw a 1,200% increase in full-time virtual enrollment over the past decade, with nearly 62,200 students enrolled in 2024-25. In many districts, students have already started leaving for external virtual programs, taking their per-pupil state funding with them.
Dylan has seen this pattern repeat across states. "Oftentimes what we find is districts are in a bit of a precarious situation where they have students of a specific demographic that are already clamoring for this, or in more extreme cases, actually leaving the district to go find a virtual option that better fits their needs," he says.
That enrollment bleed is often already underway before anyone in the district has started scoping a virtual program. The assumption keeping programs in perpetual planning mode tends to sound the same across districts:
“We need to hire new people first”
“We need to pick a vendor first”
“We need to solve the technology question first”
Most of those decisions can actually wait — and waiting on them is exactly what makes the launch feel impossible.
The four-step discovery process Dylan has developed across hundreds of these conversations works through those questions in a different order, and much faster.