If they can figure out how to maintain a household, (contract a loan, pay a mortgage, find contractors, etc) they can figure out how to home-school their kids.
If their kids are a priority (and they should be, it's the No. 1 function of a parent), they can figure this out.
Do away with the grown-up toys and cushy vacations, shop for bargains - that's how our parents managed it.
Stop blaming the victim. FReepers, who are of course perfect themselves and would never find themselves in any such difficulty, are very good at that.
These people are paying taxes for a service they are not receiving and are being prevented from receiving. Public schools may be lousy, and parents should have objected long before now, but they’re an established institution, especially in smaller towns where they are not as bad as they are in the big cities, and this is probably the first time anybody has even seen them as the adversary.
Homeschooling is not something you throw together at the last minute. Some states prohibit it or make the requirements - in terms of curriculum, testing, etc. - so difficult that parents are confused and intimidated. And then there’s the issue of sports and social activities: are you going to pull a kid out of his sport and tell him he has to stay home with mama from now on? FL permits homeschooled and private school kids to participate in public school sports, but many states do not.
If the parents are lucky, there may be a homeschooling network in their town, something that enables parents either to hire a teacher who can teach a group of children in their home, or provides support in terms of curriculum and techniques so that the parents themselves, if they are able to stay home, can do the teaching. But these are by no means widespread and take a lot more organizing than just “pulling your kids out.”
People need to fight back. Supposedly the Great Leader is about to announce all sorts of bizarre “mandates” for children in his delirious ravings tonight, and this is going to become a massive problem all over the country.
Easy for you to say.
My wife, a former early elementary years school teacher at a highly regarded private school home schooled our daughter until middle school, but at that point my wife judged she had neither the experience or training to properly continue. Instead, my wife went back to work at a parochial school, and we put our daughter in the middle school of the same church. Wifey’s pay is beans and parochial schools in lowish income areas are tightwads in other ways, too. Teachers end up pulling money from their own pockets quite a bit. My wife considers it part of her obligation to God. At least we do get a bit of a discount on tuition. It helps pay for the gas: School is 25 minutes away when the work zones are not too clogged.
I would add, too, from some observation, not to mention my own H.S. experience, teaching well, esp. a high school curriculum to a highschooler(s), requires real skills, and a temperament not necessarily the same as typical parenting. These do not come naturally or well to everyone.
Anyway, fast forward a few years to today: My business is in tatters (Covid damage), and while my wife’s income is a little better (moved up 3 grade levels, which pays a bit better) it is still far below public school pay. The workload is tough: She gets up @ 5:15 am, gets home around 5 pm most days, takes an hour break, eats supper, and is usually doing lesson prep, grading, etc., until 10 pm or so.
Most people have better incomes — if they only have 1 or two kids, both parents working and putting the kids in private school probably makes more sense than home schooling. Arguably, we should have done that. We’d have been money ahead during those elementary school years, and with more years’ experience, my wife’s pay would be somewhat better now. Retirement would be looking better, also.
OTOH, quite a few people are hurtin’ too. Many are in transitions where they need schooling or training to take on new jobs: A lot of the good jobs available out there require up to date / specialized training. I thought about dumping my business, a move that’d lose me a couple hundred thou in inventory, at least. And then I get to retrain at over age 60 and start at the bottom, competing against 23 y/o’s. Righto.
“Do away with the grown-up toys and cushy vacations, shop for bargains”? Well, I’ve always done the latter. Our best car is 12 y/o, with almost 220k miles on it, and I do as much of the maintenance as I can. My biggest “grown up toy” is a pretty decent stereo that I built much of myself, and took me 40+ years to get where it is now. Market value is maybe $2.5k. Maybe. (The speakers alone are much, much better than that, but, self-built stuff is hard to re-sell for a lot.) Cushy vacations? I suppose you refer to our 20 y/o pop up camper (bought used, still in fairly good shape) which we take to a state park about 70 miles away, hopefully twice a year for 3-day stints. Except that our 13 y/o (purchased used at a steal) SUV got totaled by an inattentive driver pulling out in front of my wife, and the insurance nowhere near covers the currently bloated price of a replacement. So, when fall break arrives, maybe we’ll do a short day trip.
This is not a complaint. Our daughter is a good kid & gets good grades. We are warm in winter and cool in summer (mostly), own our home outright, no debts, eat good food (my wife and I are both decent cooks), the stereo sounds great, etc. I’m just pointing out that a lot of people have real constraints. Not everything is tidy and fits into a certain perceived box in the real world.
And now that we have resources like Khan academy there’s no excuse for parents to not be home schooling their kids except that they need to work because they sold themselves into indentured slavery and have to use the schools as daycare for their children.