Homeschooling in Different States

 This is a post a little different than my usual posts. This post is about my personal life with my kids. I have homeschooled my kids on and off for years and years. This time, we're on year 4 for some of my kids and year 5 for some of my other kids. I'll explain that in a minute. 

When my oldest child was in early elementary school, I was frustrated with the school system. Then the whole Common Core bullshit started, and I decided to start homeschooling my daughter, who at that point, was my only kid in school. I homeschooled her for a few years, until she was going into fifth grade, and wanted to try public school again. She remained in public school for a couple of years, then agreed to let me pull her out again, because we didn't agree with what the state was trying to force on public school kids. At that point in time, we lived in New York State, and they were trying to mandate the HPV vaccine for all middle school students. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, why the hell do kids need that to go to school? Kids shouldn't be having sex in school! So at that point, she was the last kid in our house still in public school, so we all agreed to pull her out too. 

My oldest son has a different dad, and his dad wanted him in public school, so he went to public school and had all sorts of issues with his teachers and the school for several years. At that point, I had put some of my kids back in public school for my own mental health. My oldest son eventually went to go live with his dad in a different school district, and almost immediately did better in school. We still think that it was the school district that was the problem. He's now in high school, and hasn't had any of the problems he did in the school district that I lived in. 

My middle son ended up having so many problems in kindergarten, that I ended up pulling him back out of school, because the school just wouldn't do anything to correct the problem. The teacher refused to care that he was the youngest kid in his class, so he was "behind" constantly, and was punished for it. To this day, I feel like the teacher had it out for him. My older son had had the same teacher the year before, and had the same problems with the teacher. So I had my middle son repeat kindergarten, and demanded a different teacher the next year. No problems that year. The bullying began the next year, and just got worse for him every year. When he was in second grade, his teacher knew he was getting bullied, but "never saw it happen", and only saw his retaliation. The school's solution was just that he needed to learn to just ignore his bully, that he should be telling the teacher every time the bully started her crap. And that never worked. Then, at the end of the year, I got a message from a different kid's parent, saying that she was going to have her son beat my son up. I emailed the teacher immediately and told her what was said, and that I didn't feel like my son was safe in her classroom. She tried to insist that her classroom was perfectly safe and that my son shouldn't miss the last few days of school. I ignored her. From then on, my son has been homeschooled, because no public school has ever shown me that they handle bullying decently. I've only ever seen the kids who are bullied get punished for fighting back, never once do the bullies get punished for their behavior. My middle son has no interest in returning to public school, and I won't ever force him to.

My youngest daughter had begged me to go to public school since she was 3 years old. I didn't want to send her, but she has always been my social butterfly, making friends everywhere she goes. So she went to pre-k and kindergarten. I didn't think she had made enough progress in kindergarten, but because she had an IEP due to speech therapy, the school just wanted to keep pushing her on, even though she couldn't read any sight words at all. I demanded that they hold her back to repeat kindergarten. They eventually agreed with me, so she repeated kindergarten. In her second year of kindergarten, her classroom had four different teachers within the first four months of school. When my husband and I had gone to the school for a parent teacher conference, we were told that her classroom was getting yet another teacher. I told the principal that that was ridiculous, and that the children would have no consistency, so Monday morning, she should expect my letter of intent to homeschool my child. She tried, in a very nasty way, to tell me that my application to homeschool must be approved and that my daughter must stay in school until it is approved. I told her that is not how the law works, and she tried to tell me that homeschooling is very difficult. I told her that I have homeschooled my kids before, and at that time, I was currently homeschooling another one of my kids. We walked out of that office and never stepped foot in that school again.

My youngest son has never been in a public school at all, and I'm determined to never let him have to go to a public school. He's very high functioning autistic (I know, there's different levels now, but I can never remember which number is which level), and he would not work well in a public school. He's a brilliant kid, and I never had to teach him how to read or do basic math, he figured those out on his own before I even tried to teach him. He knows absolutely everything possible about sharks and most ocean things, as well as nature. He's been reading advanced books for several years, and we even have the joke that he reads better than his older sister (who hates reading, because of dyslexia). He enjoys math so much, that when he's going to sleep at night, he talks for a good hour about all sorts of random advanced math topics, like squares and multiple step division (for reference, he's only in second grade and isn't currently learning these topics). He's the kind of kid that is always learning, but he learns what he wants, when he wants. I didn't have to do any sit down science with him for a full year, simply because he delved deep into the science side of YouTube, and absorbed all the information he watched. He taught himself about space and black holes and the gravity of things, about the deep ocean animals and life, about so many different science topics that I could barely keep up! I can't imagine him doing well in a public school at all, because they wouldn't support him learning what he;s interested in, and he would fight them on learning what they want him to learn. When it comes to my youngest child, I thank God that there's so much more access to information for free these days, that he can learn anything he wants, even if I know nothing on the topic. Between the internet and local libraries, he learns far more than I could ever teach him. 

So all of the backstory just to tell you about the differences in homeschooling between the two states that I've homeschooled my kids in. As I mentioned earlier in this post, we had previously lived in New York State, and homeschooled according to those regulations. And even then, I hated the endless amounts of paperwork required each year. For every child, I had to send in a letter of intent, and an IHIP (individualized home instruction plan), and a quarterly assessment. PER CHILD. So at that point, I had three kids of school age, so I had to send in 18 different sets of paperwork to the school every single year. It was exhausting. I felt like I constantly had someone over my shoulder watching my every move, criticizing my every choice. I felt like I couldn't let my kids play outside at all during regular school hours because someone could call CPS for the kids not being in school. It was hell to homeschool in New York.

When we were looking to move out of New York State, one of the things we looked into was the amount of homeschool regulations and requirements for each state we looked at. During this time, we learned that New York State is one of the most challenging states to homeschool in, and is often the problem state for legal defense organizations like HSLDA. We realized just how irritating New York was once we moved to the new state of West Virginia, and it was like a noose was loosened from our necks. 

West Virginia homeschool law is so much easier to follow, and far less stressful. Instead of having to freak out multiple times a year, and have contact with a local school district, I only had to stress out once a year, when the reviewer, that we chose, went through our schoolwork for the year to see if the kids made enough progress for the year. And in West Virginia, certain topics aren't required at certain grade levels, and hours aren't counted at all, and parents have a lot more freedom to teach to the child, not the state expectations. The reviews aren't in comparison to other children either. The reviews are in comparison to the same child from the previous year. It's a lot less paperwork compared to New York, as well. I send in a single Notice of Intent that lists all of my kids' names and information, along with a copy of my high school diploma. Then, each year we must have an assessment done, and keep it on file, but only certain years have to be sent in to the county Board of Education. Only grades 3, 5, 8, and 11 must be sent in to the Board of Education. It really is so much less stressful than New York, by a long shot. 

In summary, if you live in New York, and you want to homeschool, be prepared to jump through hoops to remain in compliance with the regulations. If you want more freedom in your homeschool options, move to a different state.