Central Facility Will Help Simplify Home Schooling

Orange County’s burgeoning home schoolers are by definition a tough bunch to help with their children’s educational needs.

They are scattered all over the county, eschew formal classrooms, reject one-size-fits-all structures, have diverse values and often teach by doing as much as by talking.

“In home schooling, what you want to do is unleash the resources around you,” said Steve Stafford, 46, a San Juan Capistrano certified public accountant who home-schools his 17-year-old son. “There are so many ways to learn.”

Stafford said he has taught his son about computers by dismantling one and then rebuilding it. Writing lessons are sometimes based on business principles he uses in his own work, he said.

Now county education officials, with much parental support, have decided that the best the way to add flexibility and innovation to their program for the county’s 1,450 home schoolers is to create a charter school for them.

Orange County’s population of home schoolers has grown 15% to 20% each year for the past 10 years, officials said. The county Department of Education already has six resource centers to help those students meet statewide standards, providing field trips, lectures, computer labs and curriculum services.

Charter school status would free home schoolers from a flow of state-required paperwork and would allow the county to bring in, say, a professional musician to teach the children music instead of a state-credentialed music teacher.

The Orange County Home Education Program already has submitted a petition to the state board of education and is awaiting approval to turn the six resource centers, scattered throughout the county, into a charter school. The state board is expected to vote on the petition next month.

“For 10 years, we have treated home school kids in an independent study program, and it’s like fitting a square peg in a round hole,” said program Principal Sheree Denee.

By contrast, officials at home schooling programs around the state that became charter schools say they now have the flexibility to serve their students.

“Now we don’t have to spend a whole lot of money tracking our adult contacts with students. We can spend more of the money how we please,” said Patricia Golding of Hickman High School in Hickman, near Modesto.

Her school contracts for services separately from the school district, Golding said, offering a pick-and-choose curriculum for parents and students. It often invites artists, astronauts and other experts who lack a teaching credential to instruct the students.

Home schoolers are not required to participate in school programs, and attendance at the charter school also will be voluntary, Denee said. But students who do attend will have individual learning plans designed for them by their parents and the site teacher and will take standardized tests as well as ones designed by their parents and teachers.

The charter petition process took four years, Denee said, and its completion neatly coincided with the Legislature’s recent vote to lift the state cap of 130 charters. Gov. Pete Wilson signed the bill into law May 8 and it takes effect Jan. 1.

About one-quarter of the 130 charters issued by the state are for programs that have either a home schooling component or are entirely devoted to home schooling, Denee said. Los Angeles County already has such a charter school.

Home schooling programs for students whose parents have eschewed the public school system are not without controversy, said Eric Premack, director of the charter Schools Development Center at the Institute for Education Reform, Cal State Sacramento. Some people object to public funds going to what often are religiously based home instruction programs or see it as taxpayer support of private schools.

Gaining charter status for the county home education program will bring in additional state funding for the program, Denee said.

“This was never about money, it’s about fine-tuning the existing services,” Denee said.

The new school would be Orange County’s second charter and should garner interest among educators, Premack said.

Santiago Middle School in Orange is the county’s only charter school. Los Angeles County has 20 charters, San Diego County has 17, and Riverside County has five.

For some parents who use home schooling centers, the charter status would finally grant them the freedom they have been seeking for years.

Home schooler Stafford applauded the proposed change. “We’ve been stuck in the mold of a classroom setting,” he said of the existing county program.

“I think having the charter will mean that we can be even more flexible and creative--and that’s really what home schooling is about.”