Posted on 10/25/2007 4:20:32 PM PDT by wagglebee
If we had that option of good, affordable, private schooling available, we likely would have chose it ourselves. Public schooling was out completely because of the welfare community we lived in and some school board decisions that had been made concerning curriculum.
The major problems were cost and distance traveled in NY’s snowbelt. We can get horrible snow in this area and the thought of trusting a school bus driver to do it on those roads in conditions I wouldn’t even drive in ( and I’ll go through about anything having been raised in the area) was what pushed us to homeschooling.
My husband and I will homeschool when we have kids, even though tuition-wise, we could have 10 kids and send them to private school, most likely, and come out ahead on my salary. But it’s not worth it. When you cut out extra taxes, money on meals out, better wardrobe for one parent, extra wear and tear on cars... to say nothing of childcare after school... the amount left over from the second salary isn’t that much.
I’d gladly give up thousands of dollars a year to raise my kids the way I want. Fortunately my husband is supportive (though I think he would rather be the one to stay home!)
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking your decision at all.
When I read that, I wondered why Hartline had waited so long to get involved, since he apparently had known of the situation for some time.
How has he been getting away with it for years (openly enough for the media to glorify him) unless a whole bunch of parents were either uninformed or uninterested or too indifferent to get involved?
The other option that occurs to me is that the area is generally liberal and many of the parents were not offended by and/or supported what the teacher was doing.
It didn’t seem like you were.
Homeschooling was just getting a foothold in our area when we started. Several families with kids our kids age were starting it so we also had a great support network. We were pretty apprehensive about it, between choosing the curriculum and wondering just how long we could do it.
Not many people start out as die-hard homeschoolers, they just become them after a number of years. I would guess that that is going to change as the generation of kids who graduated from homeschooling start having families of their own. It’ll be interesting to see what becomes of the second generation of homeschoolers.
Contrary to popular belief, many homeschool families are headed by two working parents or single/divorced/widowed parents. Some bring their kids to work with them; others have relatives to watch their kids; still others work split shifts (like my husband and I used to do). That doesn't mean I think everyone should do that. It's tough. But it can be done.
For the record, I view homeschoolers and private schoolers as all in the same boat. We're all paying out of our own pockets for our children's education, while forking over school taxes at the same time. Some homeschoolers switch back and forth between private/parochial school and homeschool. So, I'm not trying to talk you into homeschooling. In fact, if we could afford the tuition, we probably would try private school.
At least $10,000 per year for a private Christian high school in San Jose, California. We have 3 kids that would all be in high school at the same time, so that’s $30,000 a year. That’s a lot of money.
That’s why we’re not sending my son to private school.
My daughters are in private elementary school, and they’ll stay there until high school.
I don’t want to homeschool, but I may opt for it for my special needs daughter. However, she does better in school.
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