Homeschooling in California
This is an e-mail that I posted to a homeschooling list in 2003 or 2004.
Technically, it is not legal to homeschool in California. It is also not illegal. It is not specifically addressed by the laws of this state. There are 4 legal means to remove your kids from public school. A common means for homeschooling legally here is to fill out an R-4 form declaring yourself a private school with 2 kids (cuz I have 2 kids -- one kid, 3 kids, whatever).
Private schools do not have to have accredited, credentialed teachers, etc. Basically, with the R-4, you don't have to test, etc. You can do as you please, as long as you aren't too thin skinned about the periodic hullaballoo when someone new gets into office and they start freaking out about homeschoolers using this option and how that is not what it was intended for, yadda yadda. I have found it to be a generally homeschool-friendly state, where businesses (like bookstores) will give you a teacher's discount if you bring in 'proof' and fill out the paperwork to get your discount, etc.
Parts of Southern California are like g/t homeschool heaven. I used to live in Southern Cal. Apple Valley is home to a science and technology research center: The Lewis Center This is a resource for a number of school districts that get access like once a year. But, they also run a charter school for homeschoolers. It is basically a gifted program. They had a waiting list when we looked into it. I don't know if that has changed. I used to drive 70+ miles one way to use a different Charter school in Victorville (which is cheek to jowel with Apple Valley) and it was worth the drive. If you live within 90 minutes of Apple Valley, I would recommend you look into this center. It is awesome -- to drool over.
California has laws on the books that REQUIRE California colleges to accept k-12 kids under certain circumstances. The laws are written such that it is actually easier to get an elementary school kid into a community college than it is to get a high school kid into one. If you have a child under 14 and want to send them to college to meet their needs, this is a good place to be.
There are also some gt programs at colleges, such as UCLA's Summer Institute. There is another program, I think at UCLA, for early enrollment of GT kids. The community college in the county I live in has a policy on how to admit K-12 kids written up in their catalog. Community colleges are dirt cheap -- like $11 a credit hour -- and it can cost more for the textbooks than for the tuition if you qualify for in-state rates.
California has a Virtual Campus, a website that gathers together info on 'all' distance learning college classes or programs in the state. California also has a program for making it easy to transfer classes between California colleges and a searchable site for finding out which classes at which colleges are certified by this program as basically an automatic transfer. ASSIST
California also has unmatched medical resources if you have one of those gt kids with special needs. I live in a glorified walk in closet -- 955 sq ft -- and I have the highest quality of life I have ever had. You probably couldn't pay me to leave California permanently. I do love to travel and I might go somewhere for a project or whatever for a few months, some day, but I am chaining myself to the mast if anyone ever wants to evict me.
And then there is the beautiful weather, cosmopolitan atmosphere, and contrast of highly urbanized areas combined with large tracts of protected lands. You can have your cake and eat too here: In the land of Fruits and Nuts, you can live in a big city or near one and also be near to wilderness areas. The one big earthquake I lived through wasn't that bad (I got really luck). I will happily live with the occasional earthquake. This is much less disturbing than the daily afternoon thunderstorms of Georgia and tornados in Kansas and ice storms shutting everything down in winter in Eastern Washington state.
Swimming in February in the high desert and living in shorts 10 months out of the year like some kind of beach bum was priceless. We left Southern Cal. and came up here to San Francisco Bay Area and I was shocked to discover that I owned 5 pairs of sandals and one pair of winter boots and not a single pair of shoes. I now own shoes -- this area is cooler than where I lived in Southern Cal (Just south of Death Valley) but I still wear sandals most of the year (with a long sweater after dark -- temps drop dramatically when the sun goes down -- and I love that, actually).
Like so many gt kids, my kids are very weird about clothes. The temperate climate means they live in shorts and sandals year-round. In winter, they top their shorts and sandals with a jacket. If it gets REALLY cold, I insist they also wear socks. lol. They are in heaven.
Have I mentioned yet that I am fond of California? In case you missed it: I think California is gt homeschool heaven -- just don't whig when the newspapers get splashed yet again with the latest controversy over the technical detail that it isn't "legal" here. It also isn't illegal. That is one of those legal details where some dummy forgot to specifically say anything about homeschooling when they wrote laws up about required education.
Just in case you haven't noticed my personal bias, check my e-mail address, below. lol
Michele
calif.michele@sbcglobal.net
"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens
to you." - Aldous Huxley
To Top
|
|
Free Curriculum on the Web
The Math Files
|
