Home Schools Utilizing Public Schools

There is a misconception among many home schoolers that they can utilize public school programs, facilities and services and maintain their home school status. Then, too, many home schools are utilizing cyber schools and public school sponsored home school programs, believing they still maintain home school status.

Home schools are being mislead — sometimes innocently, many times not.

With the advent of education reform, the number of home schools began to increase rapidly. While home school parents are still required to pay their taxes that support public schools, the problem lays in something called the state allocation — the amount of money paid by the state to the school district. That allocation is determined, in part, by enrollment referred to, in many states, as the number of FTE students — full time equivalent students. A student that attends full-time (the length of the school day) is considered to be one (1) FTE; a student that attends half-days is considered a half (.5) FTE. If your school has 400 students attending full-time and 50 attending half-time, you have 425 FTE's [(400 X 1) + (50 X .5)]. If those same 50 students attended for one-quarter of the school day, you would have 412.5 FTE's [(400 X 1) + (50 X .25)]. As the state allocation is determined, in part, by the number of FTE's, the more FTE's, the more money. As such, schools and school districts are encouraged to count every FTE possible.

And, of course, if a school district can include in that FTE count students for which little or no expenditure is required, the money received from the state is pretty much gravy.

Under what conditions can a non-student can be counted as an FTE? One is to provide a service to the student. What constitutes a service? In short, any interaction or connection between the student and the public school. For example ...

the home school student attends one or more classes at the public school;

the public school provides curriculum to the home school;

the public school provides supervision of the home school;

the public school provides testing of the home schooled student;

the home schooled student attends a public school sponsored cyber school ...

the home schooled student partakes of distance learning via the public school

the home schooled students utilizes public school facilities ... computers, the library, etc ...

So, what is the harm in this? If the home schooled student can be counted as an FTE, even .1 FTE, the student is no longer considered to be a home schooled, and the student falls under the jurisdiction of the public school. That jurisdiction includes the requirements of state (and federal by pass-through) education laws and truancy laws.

With the population of home schools virtually exploding with the advent of education reform, states are looking for ways to draw those home schools back under the control of the system. Services are being offered to home schools without the home schools being told the truth about becoming involved, in any way, with the public school. In some cases, home schools looking into services offered them by public schools are being outright lied to — they are being told that even though accepting public school services, they are still considered to be a home school.

This is not true. And while states, right now, may not be enforcing their control (via law) over home schools utilizing public school programs, facilities and services, as the population of home schools and home schooled students continues to increase, the laws will be enforced to bring those students back into the system. Remember, the system cannot tolerate dissension, and home schools fall under the definition of dissension.

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