Homeschooling Attracts Many Key Peninsula Families

Homeschooling on the Key Peninsula and across the nation skyrocketed in 2020 when COVID-19 hit the nation. In 2019- 20, there were 199 local families and 361 students homeschooling. The next year there were 514 families and 802 students. Although the number of families choosing to homeschool has fallen significantly — last year to 278 families and 479 students — the baseline remains higher.

The percentage of Peninsula School District families who homeschool is double that for the state overall, triple that for Tacoma, and similar to the number for the South, Central and North Kitsap School Districts.

Ashley Murphy, PSD Chief of Finance and Operations, said that one reason there are more homeschoolers is that the district is relatively affluent, and families can afford to have a parent stay home to take over the responsibilities of educating their children. Rural areas tend to have more homeschooling families than urban areas. The proportion of families choosing private schools in Gig Harbor and Tacoma is also higher than the state overall.

“When we were all home together during the pandemic there were families who realized ‘I can do this, get a little help online, and our families are together,’ ” said Michael Farmer, PSD Chief of Schools.

“As someone who has spent my career in public schools, I would advocate for people to put their kids in public schools,” he said. “We are professionals. We are all highly trained. We can provide really good experiences for kids.”

“There is also something to be said about the socialization and hearing from people you might not meet otherwise,” said Danielle Chastaine, communications coordinator for PSD.

Losing students to homeschooling or private schools has a significant fiscal impact. “A simple way to calculate, when you look at what we get prototypically from state funds and from levy funds,” Murphy said, “is that for each 100 students, the district gets $1 million.”

Some homeschooled students attend PSD schools part-time to participate in sports, get special education services, and take classes for which the district gets some reimbursement. But, Murphy said, the reimbursement doesn’t reflect the fact that the activities homeschoolers select are not core curriculum and are more expensive to provide.

Some choose to homeschool on religious or political grounds. Some have children whose needs can’t be met in a classroom setting. Some families on the Key Peninsula started homeschooling during the pandemic. Others decided to homeschool before they had their first child. Some were homeschooled themselves or had issues during their own educational experiences and wanted to shield their children from similar experiences.

Jenn Shanks and her husband planned to homeschool before they had children.“Both of us felt we would have thrived if we had had a chance to be homeschooled when we were younger,” she said. “Both of us did well, but we would have done better if we had learned in the way that worked best for us. We felt like the social constructs got in the way of the learning part of it.”

Her children, ages 7, 10, 14 and 16, all have different learning styles, she said. “My oldest learns very differently from his younger sister. He is very independent, works on his own timeline. His younger sister needs a little more one-on-one. She is dyslexic and artistic, and she needs more hands-on, manipulative activities. My 10-year-old is autistic, so that is completely different.” Her 16-year-old son is enrolled in Bates Technical High School for his junior and senior years.

Shanks has connected with other families through programs at the YMCA and the Harbor Christian Homeschool Co-op, which includes about 80 families from Port Orchard, Key Peninsula, Gig Harbor and Fox Island. The co-op offers classes from preschool through high school, mostly taught by parents, once a week at Heart Church on Fox Island.

“A lot of people say that homeschoolers are not socialized but we are out all the time,” Shanks said. “We meet at parks, do field trips, and do some classes together.”

Some members of the co-op mentioned Writing Home as a resource. “We are a tool, not a school,” said Kim Baumgaertel, one of its founders. Their website said it offers classes taught from a Christian perspective in math, chemistry, biology and language arts. It serves about 100 students in middle and high school with classes taught twice a week.

Baumgaertel teaches the biology course and said she focuses on topics like cell structure and biochemistry. She said that the textbook she uses, from Christian faith-based Apologia, “assumes God created the heavens and Earth for background.” It includes a chapter on Darwin that she doesn’t teach, though students may read it on their own.

The Key Peninsula Homeschool Co-op was formed four years ago. Holly Baker, one of the founding members, who lives in Lakebay, said the group has focused on socialization for the students and mothers. Most of the families have elementary-aged children and Baker said that as the kids get older the group plans to organize more structured group learning.

She will consider what comes next as her children get older, but there are things about public schools that don’t excite her.

“I don’t particularly love the things that schools are teaching anymore,” Baker said. “I don’t think school should have any politics in it at all. I don’t appreciate the focus on gender and race. It should be the parent’s job.”

Amy Parker was working as a Montessori teacher when the family moved to a small town in Oregon. Her son was in the third grade and the only school in town had two lawsuits pending over teacher misconduct. She decided to homeschool.

“He really enjoyed the freedom of being able to control his time of being in school,” Parker said. “It was successful, so we kept doing it when we returned to the Key Peninsula.”

She was in charge of his curriculum through middle school but to be sure he had a more traditional transcript, he attended an accredited online high school and participated in the Running Start program at Olympic College. Now 21, he is beginning an MBA program.

“We revisited the decision to homeschool every year, and as long as he was doing well socially, academically and emotionally we stayed status quo,” Parker said. “He was in a lot of activities — sports, scouting, swimming lessons — so he had a friendship base. Schoolwork was separate from social life.”

For more information, go to the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and PSD websites: www.ospi. k12.wa.us or www.psd401.net.