Maine already has one virtual charter school, the Maine Connections Academy, which opened this fall. It is far too early to add another virtual school to the mix.

This is the third time that the second virtual charter school, called the Maine Virtual Academy, has applied. It withdrew its application the first time and was rejected the second time.

Maine Connections Academy, which is associated with Pearson Education, a textbook manufacturing company that has been furiously writing digital curriculum for the last couple of years, at least has the cachet of being run by people who write the textbooks that are being used in Maine’s and many other states’ schools today.

The Maine Virtual Academy, on the other hand, plans to contract its academic services from K12 Inc., of Hendon, Virginia, which has, to put it mildly, a checkered track record.

K12 Inc. manages charter schools in 29 states, and in a class action lawsuit filed against the for-profit company in 2012, former teachers and workers claim that K12 Inc. used tactics to hide high student turnover rates at the company’s schools which were detrimental to school performance and quality. The lawsuit says that the company knowingly enrolled students who would be a bad fit for online education and pressured sales people to close sales, even when they knew it wouldn’t be good for the students. In addition, they said there were lax grading and attendance policies, and very high student to teacher ratios.

Students who were enrolled in K12 Inc. programs had significantly lower test scores than children in regular classrooms or even in other virtual schools.

And this year, investors went after K12 Inc., saying that they were misled, and the only person who made money was the former CEO, Ronald Packard, who sold 43 percent of his personally held stock when it appeared that poor performance of students at K12 Inc. was about to send the price of its stock plummeting.

It is possible that a virtual academy is necessary for students who, for any number of valid reasons, cannot thrive in an ordinary public or private school setting. But the state must be very careful about the kind of organization that runs a virtual school. K12 Inc.’s model and business practices have raised enough red flags to outfit a hurricane on the Gulf Coast.

The state has many other options for charter schools. We still have no performing arts academy, for instance, even though there is a crying need for one in the greater Portland area. A charter school for agriculture, perhaps connected with Unity College and MOFGA would be a nice addition. A green energy charter school in the Mid-coast? Why not?

And perhaps, in time, Maine will need a second virtual charter school, especially for younger students. Maine Connections Academy only works with middle and high school students, currently, and caps its enrollment at 297 students.

But Maine Connections Academy should be given time to sort out whatever glitches — technical and otherwise — may occur before the search for a second virtual charter school begins. And we must fully investigate the company behind the charter school. In the case of K12 Inc., we can learn from other states’ experience without making the same mistake ourselves.