Available to GUSD high school students; younger ones must
transfer to other communities with independent studies
Gilroy – There are about 1.1 million school–aged children in the United States who do not attend school in the traditional sense. Instead, they are privately enrolled in homeschooling programs that teach to state standards and outside the public school curriculum.
According to a study released by the National Center for Education Statistics, the percentage of homeschooled students in the U.S. increased from 1.7 percent of school–aged children in 1999 to 2.2 percent in 2003.
While the number of parents electing homeschooling over public school education appears to be increasing nationwide, Gilroy Unified School District officials could not provide information about the number of homeschooled students in the district as of press time Tuesday.
However, in the past three years, there have been changes to the programs available to homeschoolers in Gilroy.
About three years ago the GUSD eliminated the kindergarten through eighth grade public independent study program, leaving parents with the option of filing an interdistrict transfer to another community that does offer the program. This program allows students to study from home, but count toward district enrollment figures.
Independent study programs are offered through school districts and entail having a credentialed teacher oversee the curriculum taught.
“The transfer has to be approved because Gilroy doesn’t have a program,” explained Cynthia Walker, a Gilroy resident who has homeschooled her children for that past 15 years.
While enrollment of students outside the district is limited, Walker said space is not usually a problem.
Currently, there is only a public independent study program available for high school students in Gilroy.
Other options parents going the homeschooling route can take are hiring a tutor with teaching credentials to serve as their child’s instructor or filing a R-4 form with the school district, stating that they are establishing a private school and taking responsibility for adhering to private school laws and maintaining attendance records, teacher information and course of study.
“You can fill a private school affidavit online with the (California Department of Education), but you must file with the district, too,” said CDE public information officer Pam Slater. “We do not have oversight of homeschooling … We have put the responsibility for homeschooling under the districts.”
According to GUSD’s Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Jackie Horejs, parents need to inform the district if they are going to homeschool their children.
“It’s really just a notification with Frank Valadez (GUSD’s Attendance Officer). But he doesn’t have the authority to approve or disapprove the affidavit,” she explained.
Morgan Hill Unified School District has a kindergarten through eighth grade independent study program and has started seeing an increase in the number of Gilroy students attending the various homeschooling programs, said Pat Blanar, MHUSD’s director of curriculum and assessment.
While the number of homeschooled children in Morgan Hill fluctuates, the figure varies between about 25 and 31.
Students enrolled in the public school independent study programs count towards a district’s Average Daily Attendance rate, a figure that determines the amount of funding a district receives from the state.
“(Homeschooled students) are required to complete work – that’s what allows you to collect ADA,” Blanar explained. They do not have a specified amount of time required to attend class, she said.
The California Interscholastic Federation recently ruled that homeschooled high school students were no longer eligible to play on their school district’s teams, unless they were enrolled in an independent study program. Homeschooled students who attend either private independent study programs, or who receive private tutoring are not allowed to play sports for the public high school teams.
“I think that from the state’s perspective, because they’re not participating at the school – there’s less accountability,” said Gilroy High School’s Athletic Director Jack Daly. “We stopped allowing it last year.”
