Education Matters US

By now, most everyone knows my wife home schools our kids. What most of you don’t know is that we felt forced into this decision. My oldest started in Public Schools. So, yes, my wife and I some attended board meetings, all Parent-Teacher conferences and even called a few of our own. We were also there at every find raiser and after school play. My wife volunteered in the school and went to PTA meetings. We met a lot of resistance when we asked questions about why things were done a certain way. We had bad experiences with long term tenured teachers 2 out of the 3 years we had our oldest in public school. The 1 year that was great was a teacher who had only been teaching in the district about 3 years if my memory serves me. The last teacher was antagonistic toward us and toward my child. My oldest came to us late that school year and asked to go to another school. So for third grade we put both children into a Private School. We sacrificed to make this happen because we care about our kids education.

Finally, this past year, we made the decision to homeschool. It was a long process and many conversations with the Private School administration. We had our youngest tested and were told she needed to skip first grade. The private school was unwilling to do this unless the public schools would also agree to allow her to skip a grade. That was not going to happen, we had tried to do the same with my oldest as well and the public school would not allow it either.

As you can tell, I have 2 gifted children. Our decision was simple, but very frustrating and a lot of hard work. We had to start homeschooling to make sure our kids got the education they deserved. Let me tell you, homeschooling is work. It takes more time and sacrifice to do it right than sending your kids off to public or private school. It would have been very nice to have been able to keep my kids in public school. I refuse to do that because my kids education is too important. For anyone that wonders, when my kids were in public school I still opposed the referendum in the district I was in at the time.

Public schools are failing to meet the needs of my kids and of your kids. Giving them more money is not the answer, reform is. The system needs an overhaul that is long past due.