If you don’t know me well yet, I want to share my bias right up front. I love freedom and I am passionate about education. As of 2017, I have been homeschooling for seventeen years – a combination of those two principles. So, with that right out front, here is I want to say about charters…
When my family moved back to California fourteen years ago I knew I had to get creative with our finances. I had four boys I was homeschooling at the time and it was important to me that I was able to afford to continue doing that. But homeschooling can be expensive – especially when you have kids taking music lessons. Before we moved I spent several months researching homeschool charter schools. There weren’t many to choose from back then but enough to have a choice and to find one that shared my philosophies. We stayed with that charter for years. I was a vendor for them, teaching classes out of my home as well as teaching at their local learning center. I even collaborated with teachers from other centers and they helped me get additional training. I loved that school. Until their philosophy changed and our teacher went to a different school. We followed her. The next school only lasted one year. Then it closed. We followed our teacher to another school. With each school, I felt like we had been losing some of our freedoms. Our fourth son I homeschooled without a charter for high school. When he was done, I decided I was done with charters. I only had one kid at home and I could just do it by myself. And then a school came along that changed my mind. It is the school I now work for.
I share all this because I want you to know that I have been involved with (homeschooling) charter schools for years and in many different capacities: parent, vendor, and now an employee. I have gotten to know the people who run these schools. I have an idea of the systems that are used to make these schools run.
For those of you reading this that may not know how a homeschool charter school works, here is a quick explanation. Basically, the parents are responsible for most of the day to day learning that goes on or at least making sure it happens. These schools can offer independent study programs where the students are taking classes almost exclusively online or they can allow a lot of freedom for parents to choose curriculum and activities for their own kids. Some schools offer hybrid programs where student attend school for one to four days a week and study at home the rest of the week. In all of these programs credentialed teachers are working with parents to help them.
My husband and I decided that it was important for me to stay home and homeschool our kids. It is a huge responsibility and we take it very seriously. One reason we live where we live is the cost of housing is lower than other areas in Southern California. For years I cut our kids hair, cooked everything from scratch, and our kids wore hand-me-downs and thrift store finds. Our vacations, when we had them, were to locations where we had family that was willing to put us up for a few days. But we didn’t want to scrimp on our kids’ education.
Charter schools help with that. One of the reasons we started homeschooling was we wanted our kids to have things like art and music. I also wanted to provide our kids with experiential learning – field trips. Because of the homeschool charter school system, our kids have attended things like whale watching, historical re-enactments, science centers, museums, PE classes, and much more.
The way it works is the homeschool charter school monitors the students work, looking over samples and collecting them each month, giving grades, etc. and they also provide funds that can be used for activities, curriculum, classes, and supplies. The amount of funds varies depending on the school. The first school our kids attended 14 years ago we received about $800 a year per student and if we didn’t use it we lost it. The current school gives $2600 a year per student (K-8) and $2800 per student (high school) and if you don’t use it, it rolls over to the next year.
Before I took my current position as a teacher with the charter school our youngest son is enrolled in, for years I was a vendor for a charter school. I taught at their learning center and I taught classes out of my home. One of the wonderful things about charter schools that many people overlook is the small businesses they support. I’m just one of the many homeschool parents that have started a business that targets other homeschoolers. I have friends that saw a need in the homeschooling community for organized field trips. They put together amazing field trips where not only do homeschoolers get to have fantastic experiences but they also get to network together and grow a community. And my friends help support their family by helping their homeschool community.
As a teacher in the charter system, I have gotten to know the people in charge. I have a good friend (a former homeschooler) who helped get a charter school started. She was recruited by the main organizer because he loved her educational ideas and wanted to incorporate them in his new school. He was a teacher who was disillusioned with the current system and wanted to make a change that would offer students choices. Their school has done well and has been growing each year.
The school I work for attracts a lot of teachers who want more for their students and themselves. I’m not talking monetarily. Charters pay less than traditional public schools. But charters give more freedom. I have a friend still teaching in a traditional public school who told me one time that she was required to be “on script” whenever her principal visited her classroom. It didn’t matter if her kindergarten class was ready to move on to another subject or not. Teachers want to teach their students and know their students better than any curriculum designer. They are professionals that should be treated as such. Teachers coming to charters are willing to give up some pay for that additional freedom and professionalism.
Charter schools also offer flexibility that other schools may not have. I have witnessed my school making changes to meet the needs of their students and families on a regular basis. They ask for feedback from teachers, families, and students and act on it.
Recently my husband has been telling me about ads he has been hearing on TV and the radio vilifying people who start charter schools saying they are just in it for the money. In my experience as a parent, vendor, and teacher, that is so far from the truth! The people I personally know have given up a lot to make a more positive learning environment for their students and teachers. They listen and care. They are not in it for the money. This is their mission in life. This is their “genius” that they are sharing with the world. I’m so grateful that I’ve been the recipient of it!