Parents Defend Ultimate Exclusive School

Donna Osmanson organizes her Saugus home with the efficiency of a schoolteacher. She should--for the past three years, she has taught her two sons there.

Donna, a former rehabilitation center administrator, and her husband Dennis, a 17-year officer in the Los Angeles Police Department, decided that when it came to educating their sons, Benjamin, 7, and Dustin, 5, the responsibility would be theirs, rather than a public school’s.

How many San Fernando Valley parents opt for home schooling is almost impossible to determine. Some attend Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, including the Osmansons, for whom it is a 20-mile drive from their Santa Clarita Valley home. For religious reasons, these parents believe it is their duty to emphasize fundamentalist convictions as they educate their children.

For the 1985-86 academic year in Los Angeles County, only 76 affidavits were filed by private-school operators with four or fewer students, something that signals home schooling. Of those, 19 were in the Los Angeles Unified School District, according to Donald Bolton, administrator of student attendance and adjustment services. But many parents simply ignore the bureaucratic requirements of operating a school in their home.

In 1982, Washington trend forecaster and author John Naisbitt estimated that there were 1 million home-schooling parents nationwide.

Psychologist and former school administrator Raymond Moore, who has written several books on home schooling, said California has the largest number of home-schooled students of any state in the nation. He estimates that the state has 150,000.

‘A Growing Problem’

“I think it’s a growing problem, especially in California, because no one is trying to analyze what really is the problem and challenge it,” said Delbert Royer, a consultant in attendance and administrative services for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

Bolton said that in the San Fernando Valley, “There is an issue, but we are not sure how large an issue. They only come to our attention when they are reported.”

A Valley support group called the Home Schoolers has a membership of 100 Christian families who gather for monthly field trips and meetings with guest speakers. Another 20 families in the Santa Clarita Valley meet monthly in a newer, as-yet unnamed support group.

The California Education Code provides two exemptions to the Compulsory Education Law that applies to youths ages 6 to 16: a child may be tutored by a credentialed teacher or taught by a “private school” operator who files an affidavit with the county superintendent of public instruction’s office and obtains a business license. But according to a 1953 Court of Appeal decision (People vs. Turner), the school must be in a location other than one’s home.

Jack Erikson, a consultant in attendance and administrative services for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, called the Education Code “weak” in that it does not define what a home school is. He views such schools as illegal, but said, referring to the code, “There is little or no enforcement.”

Bolton said that when an affidavit arrives from a new private school with only a few students, his staff of two investigators and several counselors will check its faculty, location and curriculum, and make sure it is following a calendar of three hours a day and 175 days a year.

Ann Shepherd, a counselor in student attendance and adjustment services of the unified school district, said that if an affidavit is suspect, the district investigates.

“The law is very loosely written on private schools and home tutoring,” she said. “School districts are pressing for tighter definitions of what goes on because none of the parents have teaching credentials--most did not even graduate from college.”

However, she said, “The ones I visited were seriously interested in having their children get an education.”

Shepherd would not guess how many Valley parents who have not filed affidavits are teaching their children at home, but said, “I’m sure there are a lot.”

Even the issue of whether children’s social and academic development are harmed by home schooling is moot. A recent Wall Street Journal article on the subject quoted Mary Pitman, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Cincinnati who has been studying home schooling, as observing, “These children are learning better than their counterparts in school, and they’re in no way damaged by the experience.”

Lost Revenue

Each child who stays home from a public school represents a loss of money to the district.

“The most significant source--and the largest single source--of funding is ADA (Average Daily Attendance) that comes from the state,” Bolton said. “Every day that a youngster is not here, we lose $13.23.”

To help clarify the home-schooling issue, consultant Royer will push for adoption of an amendment to the Education Code during the 1987 California legislative session. Under the amended code, a parent or guardian who tutors a child would have to be state-credentialed.

Donna and Dennis Osmanson graduated from Los Angeles Baptist College, now The Master’s College, in Newhall. Their Christian faith strongly pervades their 20-year marriage and their home teaching.

“In the Bible, in Deuteronomy . . . the father is to teach the children, not just in the morning or evening, but at all times,” Dennis explained. “If that is my responsibility and God gave it to me, then it is my responsibility to carry it out. That is the whole structure on which I base our education.”

Dennis, 41, who does not start work until 3 p.m., believes that, if he sends his sons to public school, “I have lost that time where we can have input into their lives.”

The family pays $400 annually for an independent-study program designed by the Illinois-based Advanced Training Institute of America (ATIA), a Christian home-education program. In addition, Dennis concentrates on teaching science, reading and social studies. Donna teaches math, history, English and conversational Spanish, along with biblical proverbs. She fills out a weekly report, then sends the ATIA her curriculum records. The Osmansons plan to home-teach their sons through college, Dennis said, noting that the ATIA offers courses through that level.

Along one wall of their spacious room is a ceiling-to-floor bookcase brimming with study outlines, phonograms (tapes to teach reading through phonics) and texts, and 300 16mm films, primarily science and history.

Nearby are newsletters titled “The Parent Educator and Family Report,” edited by Moore and his wife, reading specialist Dorothy Moore.

“Home schooling permeates our whole life,” Donna, 40, said.

Her sons, who were tested by an educational psychologist and found to be gifted, are self-motivated and rarely non-productive, she said. “They haven’t been burned out. Their imaginations haven’t been squelched.”

The one drawback, Donna admitted, is “if the mother doesn’t get some time off for herself, she’ll go crazy.”

Her Sons’ Opinion

Her sons agree that they enjoy being taught at home, but Benjamin admitted he recently was embarrassed when a child in the neighborhood asked him where he went to school. “I just said, ‘The Pioneer Academy,’ ” he said, using the name that his father devised.

Even though they have not filed an affidavit, the Osmansons do not think they are breaking the law. “We are not hiding from anyone,” Dennis said.

Donna has notified the Saugus School District of her teaching and considers herself “legally above-board and honest.”

Charles Helmers, superintendent of the Saugus School District, agrees. Although he said the district follows the state guidelines requiring that a credentialed person conduct home teaching, he makes exceptions for what he called “legitimate correspondence schools.”

“We discuss with them their responsibility for the curriculum and make sure they understand that the child be assessed for progress by a normal, public school scale,” he said. If assessing an ambiguous situation, he defers to the county office of education.

Reseda residents Johanna Woolsey, 39, and her husband, Dave, 48, an electronics technician for Continental Airlines, have kept their 13-year-old daughter, Nancy, home since her third week of kindergarten.

Each year, they file an affidavit with the county on behalf of their private school, the Buckingham School, whose student body of one attends class in the kitchen or at a bedroom desk.

Nancy studies all the basic subjects, plus German, art, typing and “a bit of electronics,” Johanna said. “She can learn faster and easier at home,” she said, “and what she learns, she retains.”

Unlike many home schoolers, the Woolseys are not fundamentalists and do not include Bible study in their program. To enhance Nancy’s “real-world” education, Johanna takes her on field trips and involves her in a hand-sewn wallet business.

Dave Woolsey acknowledged that he was skeptical at first about the home-schooling concept, but changed his mind because, he explained, “There is more emphasis on genuine learning. The emphasis in public schools is on passing the tests and, after that, you can forget it. In home schooling, the attention they get is so much more intense.”

Learning to Play Violin

Like Benjamin and Dustin Osmanson, Nancy receives weekly private violin lessons. An avid reader--she read 104 books last summer--she also volunteers at a local library. Her father plans to buy a computer to help her develop word-processing skills.

Nancy and her mother attend weekly outings at a Valley park that draws many other local home school parents: some who also file affidavits for private schools but who teach only their own children; some who conduct independent study under a church school’s umbrella, and others whom Johanna dubbed “the underground people,” those who simply keep their children home.

So far, Nancy has not been formally tested for scholastic achievement. She would like to obtain a general equivalency diploma (GED) in several years.

Johanna, who completed two years of trade school after high school in Europe, is undecided how long she will teach her daughter, but thinks it will be through high school. “I will know when the time comes.”

As for career plans, Nancy’s at the moment do not require formal education. “I would like to own a small store,” the soft-spoken teen-ager said.

Dustie Snyder of Lake View Terrace has taught her 7 1/2-year-old son, Jesse, at home since he was 4. Dustie, 30, and her husband, Phil, 33, an electronics technician at Lockheed Corp., annually file an affidavit that lists them as operators of the private school Jesus Loves You, located at their two-acre Little West Ranch.

The Snyder home was inspected last May by counselor Shepherd. Dustie empathizes with public school administrators who disapprove of home schooling. “Some home-teaching parents have been using it as an excuse to not do anything,” she said.

“It’s a way not to have to get up at 7 o’clock in the morning and pack your child’s lunch and get your child up and get him to school by 8.

“That is the horror story behind home teaching. It’s an excuse not to schlep your kid to school in the morning. The mother can sleep in. ‘Oh, I can teach my child this afternoon.’ Well, you can’t. It really does have to be a morning thing. My son goes to bed at a certain time because he has school in the morning.”

Dustie said the skills she acquired during 12 years as a horseback-riding instructor have helped her teach her son.

Since the Snyders are Christians, some theology is included in their curriculum. For most subjects, she buys textbooks second-hand.

Question of Values

Dustie believes that public schools don’t teach much about the value of the family unit. “Jesse understands what home is, what working together is--that is what children learn in a home-teaching situation. In school, it is survival.”

Like most home-schooling parents, Dustie is convinced that the advantage of keeping her child at home is the absence of negative behavior patterns she believes are prevalent in public schools. “My son has no foul language, no peer pressure. He doesn’t sneak behind my back. Kids at school learn how to cheat and sneak,” she said.

Dustie says she tests Jesse on all subjects, regularly giving him math problems to tackle and vocabulary words to spell. But she says she never rushes him. “It doesn’t benefit him to do it fast. It benefits him to do it right,” she said.

To help her son visualize an abstraction like a fraction, Dustie often pulls out a cookbook and has him measure and mix ingredients. If an error occurs, “it’s not wrong,” she said, adding, “It’s incorrect. And we make it correct.”

His socialization skills have not suffered from being home, Dustie maintained, because the ranch is surrounded by families with children.

Dustie, who is an English major at Los Angeles Valley College, emphasizes phonetics and writing skills, while Phil concentrates on math, gives Jesse guitar lessons and shares in Cub Scout meetings.

“People say, ‘Why do you do it?’

I say, ‘Because nobody is going to care about my kid like I do.’ ”