North Star Independent Homeschoolers
1. Religious freedom. Many charter schools do not allow the purchase of religious curriculum. If a charter school does, it is very questionable as to whether they are breaking the law concerning the separation of church and state or not. Some charter schools will not recognize the use of religious curriculum even if the parents pay for it out of their own pockets; the charter school will not even count it as educating the child! Many parents in our group feel that freedom to worship, to use religious curriculum and to not have to be deceitful about it, is priceless - a lifestyle that they'll gladly turn-down state money for.
2. Too many restrictions and regulations on their rights to lead the education of their children. Below you will find the testimony of one of our members about her experience with some Alaskan charter schools. Many of our members have had such experiences.
3. The loss to the homeschooling community as a whole. Many of us see the charter school movement in our state and nation as a *trojan horse. Charter schools bring public schools into our homes. Homeschoolers have fought such hard battles in the United States to make homeschooling legal in all fifty-states; have fought so hard for their freedom from government control of the education of their children, and now so many parents are handing that control right back to the government for a few bucks. Times may be hard in the U.S., but freedom is priceless. To many, this freedom can't be bought, for with freedom comes many, many blessings and a wonderful way of life.
*If, after clicking the words "trojan horse" and watching the trailer of the movie that it links to, you would like to borrow a copy of the whole movie, just call our current group leaders at (907)-488-3784 to request a copy to borrow from our group's lending library. Our leaders recommend that any Christian homeschoolers who are concerned about their freedom of religion and other U.S. freedoms watch this movie. We also recommend it to those parents who be unsure or uneasy about accepting Alaskan charter school money.
One of Our Group Member's Alaska Charter Schools Experience
We were looking for a homeschool support group when we moved to Fairbanks, AK. We were told that CyberLynx was a local support group. Silly really that someone would call a public school a "support group for homeschooling." We were enticed by the money and joined after some research. I promised myself if I ever felt over-taxed by the paperwork or if our freedom to use religious materials was restricted, we'd leave.
We were in the first program for a year when we learned their public school district was going bankrupt. They froze the funding accounts of the homeschooled students so no more funds could be spent. At the
end of the school year any remaining funds are absorbed into the school district that sponsors the program. Guess who didn't file bankruptcy? We didn't know who the other families were to band together. We tried contacting the school district directly and after several weeks we gave up. We switched to another program after that.
The supervisor we were assigned explained that testing was required because our children were now "public school students". We understood that the mandatory testing is a stipulation for receiving the funding. Our son scored fine, average all the way. Our daughter did, too. The problem with that is she confided in me that the testing was boring so she colored the bubbles in patterns down the columns. How could that come back as an average student's testing results when it was actually her bored colorings?
Nearly 5 years after we joined the first program the laws had changed and my kids had gotten older. The required testing was not a big deal. However, the work samples became an issue. We are required to turn in one per subject. I was told that they wanted additional samples from both my children = more work to copy, turn in, and then amend the paperwork already filed. Okay, so I did that. Each year the school added more forms to fill out. When we quit there were daily grades, weekly grades, quarterly grades, and Semester grades to report, for EACH student. Plus, two sets of Individual Learning Plans and ordering forms for each vendor were needed. Additional paperwork was required for things like sports, art, and music lessons.
There were limits put on the funds by the program on how much of the total budget could be spent on each subject. For reading tutoring we had used 25% of my special needs child's total budget. No more money was left to use for reading for the rest of the year, mind you, this was September! This child has a proven reading disability documented by the testing they did and had in their files.
Our supervisor did not give us any viable options in our opinion. Our daughter's ONLY option was to attend reading lessons in the special education department of our local elementary school. Her class would consist of physically, mentally, and emotionally handicapped students. Fine, if she was elementary aged and
handicapped. She was 13 at the time and normal, other than a reading difficulty. We were given no other choice. We later received a letter that this child was truant from the public elementary school! The program was freezing the remaining funding in the child'saccount. We had never enrolled her at the school and had rejected the offer. How could she then be truant??!
Their grades now went on transcripts because of their ages. We could not do Bible as a graded subject. Fine. We could not turn in or use any religious materials for the graded work samples. Okay, I could
work around that. THEN, the law became that I could not use religious materials for several of the core subjects, to include HIStory, Science, Language Arts, and Math. I could not take God out of HIStory, it is HIS STORY.
I'm not sure if the new rules were due to how that program interpreted the recent law changes. I do know that we were no longer able to fulfill the needs of the state and the command of God to train our children for HIS glory. I know I'm coming off as a Bible thumper. I hope you can see our hearts were that we could not meet the needs of the school without lying and hiding what our homeschool was about.
That did not sit well with us. It simply was a matter to us of our souls not being worth $1,800 per student.
This was our experience with several different "homeschool" programs run by Alaskan public schools in the Fairbanks area from 2002 - 2007. At no point since have we regretted becoming independent homeschoolers.
