“If you do, then all the hard work you are doing at home is being undone by their government teachers.”
I can’t afford to do otherwise; I live in one of the highest-taxed regions of the country, and this past year the last Catholic school in my town closed anyway (when I was growing up we had five Catholic grammar schools and a Catholic high school - 30+ years later ALL are closed). My children attend government schools with a lot of imported “replacement Americans” from Asia and Latin America; there isn’t even an attempt to assimilate them. Too many have cultures (and fathers) to prevent it.
You make your choices. Apparently living in that region is more important to you.
Public schooling is a form of welfare, not to mention a hallmark of socialism.
Homeschooling is neither a hardship nor a luxury.
Regarding the true cost of public education:
The following video is by the Cato Institute. What ever your school district states is the cost of educating a child in the public schools, you should double or triple that number to get the true cost. The video is very short but depressing, (a mere 2 minutes and 50 seconds).
Re: Homeschooling
It is **amazing** how many people manage to successfully homeschool with situations that are **far** from being ideal. Your local Catholic homeschooling group will be able to help you with this. Please, please, please do not eliminate homeschooling as an option unless you have **ALL** the information. Please don't make your decision on what you may **think** homeschooling is without have the **facts** and thoroughly investigated this option.
Re: Government schooling
Government schooling is godless schooling and the statistics for children remaining Christians after exposure to government schooling is **abysmal**!!! The Barna Foundation reports that only 15% of children from **highly** active evangelical homes remain faithful in their religion 2 years after graduating from high school. In contrast, 95% of homeschoolers will remain active in the faith of their fathers. ( I can provide a link if you doubt me.)
Please remember that children in godless government schools **must** think and reason godlessly just to cooperate in the classroom, read their godless textbooks, and complete their godless home assignments. Those hours take up the major portion of a child's most alert hours of his day, leaving mere crumbs of time available to the parent to undo the damage.
Re: Independent Catholic cooperatives
Some conservative Catholic families are joining together to hire a teacher. They are essentially running a one room school house. I don't have links for this, but perhaps you could do a Google search for more information.
Re: Paying taxes for services.
Government schooling is spiritual poison. Would you feed your children cyanide because you pay taxes for it? I doubt that you would.