State OKs Charter for Home Schooling Program

Orange County’s home schoolers are getting a boost from an unlikely source: the State Board of Education, which on Friday unanimously approved a charter school for their needs.

After a four-year effort, the county’s Home Education Program will combine its six resource centers for home-schooled children and their parents into the Orange County Charter School.

The centers provide computer labs, libraries and curriculum help--including teachers--for the county’s 1,500 home schoolers who are under the guidance of county public schools. Teachers aid home schoolers in meeting statewide standards and help fix problems with instructional methods.

Charter school status now means parents and teachers will be free from most of the state-mandated paperwork.

“It allows more time with the child and the family,” said Sharon Kohout-Lawrence of Laguna Niguel, who home-schools her 13-year-old daughter.

“Some paper will still need to fly back and forth,” said Sheree Denee, the program principal. “But we want to be more project-oriented, more creative.”

Becoming a charter school also loosens curriculum requirements. For example, a professional musician may teach music instead of a music teacher with state credentials.

What charter school status won’t do is cost taxpayers any more money, Denee said. Financing for the school is based on the number of children home-schooled.

Attendance is voluntary and home schoolers are not required to participate in any school programs, she said.

The charter school will be the second in the county; the other is Santiago Middle School in Orange. Statewide, there are an estimated 130 charter schools, said Laurie Gardner, the co-director of the Charter Schools Development Center at Cal State Sacramento.

It may seem contradictory that parents who prefer their children to learn at home instead of in a classroom would want the county to apply for charter school status. But the philosophy underlying charter schools is an obvious match with the flexible, creative instruction methods of home-schooling, Gardner said.

“The whole idea [of charter schools] is to come up with different ideas about education,” she said. “In this case, we’re redefining schooling to see if maybe we don’t even need school.”

School districts in other counties, including Los Angeles, San Diego and Riverside, have already established charter schools that are devoted, at least in part, to home schoolers, Denee said.