GREENFIELD - There are two information sessions today for people who want to learn more about the virtual school that Greenfield will be opening in next month.

The school department will be opening the Massachusetts Virtual Academy at Greenfield this fall for kindergarten through grade eight. K12, a Virginia-based, for-profit online education company, will be providing the curriculum and other services for the school.

Greenfield had talked about and planned for the virtual school for about a year and needed a state waiver to open, which it recently received.

The two sessions will be at Four Corners School on Ferrante Avenue at 2 and 7 p.m.

Representatives from K12 and Greenfield will be at the event.

According to Superintendent Susan Hollins' online journal, the virtual school will offer half-day kindergarten and full-day kindergarten.

"Some children are sickly or have some reason the parents would like to wait a bit before beginning large-class school," said Hollins. "Now there's an option with a full, state-standards-compliant curriculum and a certified coach."

"In the older grades, the small number of children who would benefit from this type of school model would be children with immune disorders or allergies or other health concerns who cannot enter our schools or who have so many absences they almost don't benefit from their inschool schooling," she said. "Some parents who choose virtual schooling do so in response to social interactions that are a problem and interfere with learning."

She said people trying to understand the virtual school model ask: Are the virtual school students on a computer all the time?

"No - for high school students, the mix is 60 percent computer-based work and 40 percent projects, reading, research, etc. For the youngest children, their parents are using the computer to show the child is in attendance, see what the day's program is supposed to be, and log on the work that the child accomplished each day."

If Greenfield gets requests for students in grades nine through 12, they will try to accommodate them. The plan is to open up the virtual school to these grades in the second year.

Besides having the cachet of being the first to offer an online school, Greenfield gets free access to the cyber courses for its "brick and mortar" students and will be paid some portion of K12's income from the school - presumably enough to cover Greenfield's administrative costs but not necessarily enough to make money in the deal.

Any parent interested should write to Hollins at superintendent@gpsk12.org or Associate Principal Tracy Crowe (tracro1@gpsk12.org), who is helping to launch the virtual school.