The Baltimore City Board of Commissioners will vote Tuesday night on whether to close Charm City Virtual, a pandemic-era online learning program, at the end of the school year.

The proposal, recommended to the board by CEO Sonja Santelises in November, would stop offering virtual learning programs to elementary students, and combine two existing programs into one school for middle and high schoolers.

If the board votes in favor of the single-school conversion, the proposal will then be forwarded to the state department of education for approval.

In a November letter sent to Charm City Virtual families and staff, Santelises said the program ran largely on federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, which are set to expire in the summer of 2024.

The letter also said that “there are not enough elementary students within the program to sustain a program with their unique needs,” and that younger students have “heightened developmental needs for movement and engagement in the classroom” that would be better fulfilled by in-person instruction.

But Charm City second through fifth graders say the individualized virtual classes improve their academic performance and well-being.

“In my old school, I kept getting a little bit distracted,” said third-grader Keylin Vaquez Ferrufino in a student government meeting last week. “I was having a little bit of bad grades.”

Charm City Virtual was one of two Virtual Learning Programs (VLP) established as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, designed to provide “equitable learning opportunities for students who have excelled in the virtual setting,” according to the school website.

Charm City Virtual and Port Virtual Learning Program are also specifically catered to serve students “who have health limitations and those who are continuously impacted by the coronavirus,” the website says.

Multiple students said they switched to a virtual learning option to avoid getting sick in in-person schools, especially when they have conditions that make them immunocompromised.

Many also said they joined Charm City Virtual after experiencing bullying and violence at in-person schools.

“Charm City virtual causes me to sit at home and not deal with all the shoot-outs and fights,” said fifth-grader Judaea Greene. “And when I went to in-person school, I used to get bullied a lot just because I had a rare disease called sickle cell.”

Families will go through “a specialized placement process” beginning in March to find the right in-person placement for their students, the November letter said.

Journey Jeffries, a fourth grader, said Charm City Virtual is an overall “better environment” for her than any in-person school.

“I'm not sick anymore. I'm not behind in my classes. And I'm not bullied, like I used to be,” she said.