Public High School to Homeschool – A Big Decision (2021)

December 4, 2021 by soLing

Just do enough research and planning to understand the homeschooling framework and what adjustments you and your child will need to make, so that you can decide whether to move forward with it or not. After making the decision to homeschool your child, you can plan the details or jump right in!

Below are links to what I’ll touch on today:

• Our Story
• Considerations for a Homeschooling Decision
  • Criteria for the School
  • Possibilities in Homeschooling
  • Legal Requirements for the Public School and Homeschool
  • Public School to Homeschool Transition
  • Homeschool Budget
  • Negative Comments About Homeschool
• Continuous Improvement
• Lessons for Dumber Self
• Next Step for You

Now let’s go back to when our younger son started Kindergarten:

Our Story

Our younger son was able to attend the same K-8 school as his older brother due to sibling priority. For the three years before starting school, he began to integrate into the school environment since he was there to drop off and pick up his brother, play at the jungle gym, and attend school functions.

On his first day of Kindergarten, he looked a little hesitant, but nothing overly extreme. When asked afterschool what he thought of Kindergarten, he said this:

Was that his polite way of saying he disliked school? Was that a sign to consider homeschool back then?

Our son did well academically for 9 years, but the time for high school was here. He started in the same high school that his older brother went to because of the safety, independent study program, small school environment, and possibility to graduate early. Previously, our older son was able to arrange his schedule with Fridays off and still complete all his requirements in under 2 1/2 years.

The first day of high school started with returning to on-site learning after a little over a year of distant learning. Soon after, we started to learn that the curriculum was changing. Not only had the course options decreased, our son was only scheduled for four classes. Only after requesting a heavier course load was he allowed a second elective. Also, due to when the classes were offered, having Fridays off was no longer an option.

The decrease in flexibility was one of the reasons we started looking into homeschooling.

What should be included in the homeschooling decision process? There are many items to consider depending on your situation. We reviewed the following areas:

Considerations for a Homeschooling Decision

1. What we wanted in a school
2. Whether homeschool would meet our criteria
3. What legal steps there were for the public school and homeschool
4. What the transition process for the family would look like
5. How the change would impact our finances
6. How we would address concerns from others

Criteria for the School

Here’s what we wanted in a school for our son:

1. Safety
2. Small teacher/student ratio
3. Flexible schedule for extracurricular activities
4. Challenging and practical subjects
5. Structure that allowed for early graduation

Possibilities in Homeschooling

There are many types of homeschools out there. Seven of them are nicely documented in TheBestSchools.org’s article, Homeschooling: Which Model Is Right for You? It also includes pros, cons, when a model might work in a particular situation, and additional resources.

Also, Time4Learning summarizes ten models in the Types of Homeschooling article, seven of which are the same as the ones mentioned in the article referenced directly above. However, for each approach the article links to a dedicated page with more details, which was was helpful.

By combining the Eclectic and Roadschooling methods, it seemed like we would be able to achieve our goals.

Legal Requirements for the Public School and Homeschool

Each State has its own requirements for switching a child from public school to a homeschool. Below is what we needed to do for our State:

1. Withdraw our child from the public school
2. Complete the annual Private School Affidavit for the homeschool
3. Track each time the child is absent for half a day or more during the school year
4. Document the subjects offered in the homeschool curriculum
5. Record each teacher’s name, address, and qualifications
6. Keep written proof of the above records

Public School to Homeschool Transition

When we were seriously considering moving our son to homeschool, it was within the first couple weeks of high school when he hadn’t started all his classes yet. Since our child had not already bonded with any new friends, it would probably be easiest if we withdrew him from school as soon as possible.

From the parental perspective, there was already one parent available, qualified, and willing to instruct and oversee the learning process each school day, so the transitional impact would be minimal from that side.

Homeschool Budget

In terms of spending money for homeschooling, we planned to continue to use the library, the internet, and existing equipment. Seeing all the free or low-cost resources listed in HSLDA’s articles Homeschooling on a Budget . . . or No Budget? and Looking for Free or Inexpensive Curriculum and Resources? made me hopeful that homeschool can be affordable. Also, part of the travel budget for our off-season road trips could be allocated to educational homeschool activities as well. Lastly, material and other expenses could be paid for with the savings earmarked for education.

Negative Comments About Homeschool

If we receive non-supportive comments from well-meaning family, friends, or strangers about homeschool, here are some of the benefits that we can share with them about homeschooling:

1. The teaching style can be adapted to the student’s learning style.
2. Learning is not limited to the physical location of a school. Students can regularly travel to another city, state, etc.
3. The amount of time spent on the material can be based on what the student needs to understand the information.
4. Instruction can be easily scheduled to take advantage of opportunities, even if it’s outside traditional school hours.
5. The topics taught can be customized based on the student’s interest.
6. For other ideas, we can reference HSA’s article 8 Amazing Benefits of Homeschool vs Public Schools.

In the interest of making a decision quickly to improve our son’s education, I think we did a decent job researching and planning, so that we were comfortable moving our son from public school to homeschool. First milestone completed! What we can continue to enhance now are the areas listed below:

Continuous Improvement

1. The curriculum so that it works best for our son
2. The budget so that we can use as many quality resources as possible for free or at a low cost

Reflecting back on our younger son’s experiences, I think he benefitted from the language immersion program in his K-8 school and the comfort of learning through his older brother’s experiences ahead of time. However, since he has a personality that’s opposite of his older brother’s, I think I could’ve done more of the following:

Lessons for Dumber Self

1. Introduce activities that our younger son was less comfortable doing while encouraging him to continue what he was strong and interested in to help him be a more rounded person and grow into his true self.
2. Before taking the same actions that we did for our older son, evaluate whether they would have been helpful for our younger son or if we would have needed to modify them.

What will you do now?

Next Step for You

1. Research more about homeschooling?
2. Plan for homeschooling?
3. Start homeschooling?
4. Read another post on this site? (Go to the menu at the top of the page.)

It’s your choice!