Telecommuting is very popular in the Washington area. As are 4/5 day work weeks - work 9 hours per day, get to take Friday off every other week. A few folks do 4 10-hr days per week, but many employers don't like missing one day per week of professional staff. As an employer, I wouldn't go for it - it would make it very difficult to get all our work covered - which by necessity happens over the course of five days each week - without hiring more staff.
But most folks still have to go to the office most days most weeks.
“The first thing I would explore with 5 or 6 kids is teaching at the parochial school in exchange for reduced or no tuition.”
Catholic school teachers do receive reduced tuition here. But not everyone can be a teacher. Not saying they can't do it. But in a school of 300 kids, they don't need 50 - 75 teachers. And the schools can't hire all parents of their students.
Even if they could, though, my son's high school has a faculty of about 60, but has 1,000 students representing in the range of about 800 families.
I can assure that tuition represents a burden for more than 15% of those families.
“It's my experience that most folks whine without moving heaven and earth to DO something (and sometimes you need to move heaven and earth).”
Well, I've seen enough folks make enough effort that I'm not so willing to assume that most are in some way derelict. Remember, too, not everyone has the same amount of: intelligence; courage; heart; will; strength; energy.
Some folks are blessed with an overabundance of all of these. Most aren't.
sitetest
Of course, not everyone can teach, but in the lower grades anybody who can manage children efficiently and keep them amused can do so -- and a mother of 6 or 9 is eminently qualified! I'm not a good child manager, but I have a strong theatrical background and as a substitute I kept them off balance and entertained . . . . Private school loved me, when I was between jobs I applied to the public school to work as a sub, but they didn't want me, no edumakashun degree. Idiots.
And tuition is ALWAYS a burden, especially with paying all the inflated public school taxes too. That's why we moved to a county with lower school tax millage rates (and a very favorable sliding scale on taxes for older citizens, a category we are approaching more rapidly than we like).
If your employees showed you how they could have the work covered and have the necessary staff on call without hiring more folks (or maybe with having the ladies with children at home job-share) you might go for it. We are all professionals, too, and we get our work done. In fact, our department is leading the pack in meeting our goals (and we have absolute deadlines that cannot be fudged) although ALL of us telecommute two days a week.