Home schoolers and the public schools they long derided have been forging new alliances that provide bonuses for both.
Parents who teach their offspring at home can increasingly pick and choose what they want from their public schools, whether membership in the band or a weekday field trip. Schools get the state funding they otherwise would have lost, without having to find another pupil a seat in already brimming classrooms.
Thus, a San Clemente kindergartner sounds out words from a brightly illustrated primer at his kitchen table, then heads off to his local public school for music lessons. Irvine siblings absorb basic lessons at home, but take their standardized tests at school, as well as participate in the campus science fair and spelling bee.
"It's a movement that is becoming more and more mainstream," said Sheree Denee, principal of the Orange County Home Education Program, a charter school run by the county Department of Education and designed to help 1,500 home-schooled students. "Public school support is attempting to become the mainstay or the accepted way of home schooling."
There are at least 30,000 home-schooled children in California. That figure does not include thousands more students in the 25 or so home-study charter schools statewide and those whose parents have not notified authorities of their existence.
About 2,000 of those home-schooled students are in Orange County, and the numbers are growing, leading more schools to offer them educational goodies.
Irvine Unified and the county Department of Education launched their home-education programs about 10 years ago. This past summer, the county program gained charter status, creating a more centralized program and enabling it to serve more students. Capistrano Unified also piloted a program this fall. And a handful of other districts are piggybacking on these programs.
"Some kids spend 80%, 50% or as little as 10% of their day at their local school," said Capistrano Unified Supt. James Fleming. "We see it as a way to reach out to an ever-changing constituency."
One Laguna Niguel mother sends her sixth-grade son to a Capistrano school for three-fourths of the study day.
The 12-year-old attends school for physical education, science, band and almost every subject--except language arts and social studies. Because the boy struggles in those two subjects, his mother said she wants to work closely with him on those.
