Two things come to my mind:
1. Involve parents – you can usuually find one or two incredibly knowledgeable and committed parents who want the child to embrace and sail through an online education. Some will volunteer during activities and some will help with techie stuff and some can speak to school administration to help you politically.

2. Along with joining a community is the vision to use a model that someone else is using. Like Youth Voices, but something I could show my IT staff so that they might grasp what I wanted to achieve. My district IT folks had good hearts but limited resources. It wasn’t until I built my own Moodle and got my classes and some others on it that they started to grasp it’s power.
(Thanks to DC who talked me through setting up my demo Moodle, 4 years this month>)