VLLA Members

Illinois Virtual Schools and Academy

Illinois Virtual Schools & Academy is the ideal full-time online learning solution for districts challenged with meeting the demands of today’s students. Our comprehensive online school model is user-friendly, flexible, and academically robust with a fully aligned curriculum, certified teachers, and student support services. Illinois Virtual Schools & Academy is the ONLY approved public provider in the ISBE Virtual Course Catalog and is administered by the Lake County Regional Office of Education.

Projects and Highlights:

  • Supplemental Course Solutions:  The Illinois Virtual Schools provides supplemental online course options to districts, schools, and students. We offer over 400 different course options, including Advanced Placement, honors, core and credit recovery courses.
  • Teacher Shortage Solutions:  IVSA provides solutions to address teacher shortages and staffing challenges. IVSA offers synchronous and asynchronous instruction options for full classes. We work with districts to ensure students have more choices for electives, world languages, higher level math and sciences and even core courses.
  • Full-Time ACADEMY:  The Illinois Virtual Academy is a new approach to full-time virtual school. Students don’t simply log in to online courses. Instead, they are part of an active learning environment that provides daily, real-time support, live instruction, and rich applied learning options. IVSA employs over 80 full and part-time licensed teachers to deliver instruction to students in both synchronous and asynchronous formats.
  • Tutoring:  IVSA provides tutoring services to students in grades K-12 in an online format using Varsity Tutors.
  • Support Services: IVSA offers a variety of support services to its students. Each Full-Time Academy student is assigned their own Student Success Coach, as well as a school counselor.
  • HELPme:  IVSA partners with STOPit Solutions to offer the HELPme app and website to their students. ​Delivered on a highly configurable mobile platform, HELPme provides support and resources to students, families, and staff using a customized interface. Students are able to find resources in their county, access a crisis helpline, or submit an anonymous report.
Illinois Virtual Schools & Academy
Learn More About the Program

Melissa Lundgaard

Executive Director

Melissa serves as the Executive Director of Illinois Virtual Schools & Academy, where she oversees the Supplemental & Credit Recover Solutions, Full-Class Solutions, and the Full-Time Academy. Melissa has worked in the education space since 1994, having served various leadership roles in the high school mathematics classroom in Ohio and New Jersey, ran a tutoring business in Georgia, was an adjunct faculty member at Arapahoe Community College in the Mathematics Department in Colorado. After that she served on a Leadership Development team onboarding and training new teachers and school administrators and most recently worked in the corporate world at Aon in Chicago. Melissa’s academic background includes a B.S. in Mathematics Education from Miami University, a M.A. in Education from The College of New Jersey, in addition to MBA courses over the last few years.

Melissa Lundgaard