Florida Homeschool- Moving to Florida when you are homeschooling your children.
We received this email on our ActiveRain home page:
Hi!
We are a homeschooling family from OH and we are considering a move to the Miami area for my husband's job.
Any advice?
thanks for your blog.
(I left of the name for obvious reasons.)
Since I am a homeschool advocate and activist promoting homeschool wherever I go and as much as I can one of my passions is to write about our homeschooling journey and support parents who homeschool or want to homeschool.
Florida is a very homeschool friendly state. That is one of the reasons for homeschool families to move to Florida. In fact, every year the governor of Florida honors homeschool in a special day where he invites homeschoolers to visit the capital in Tallahassee.
When I first started homeschooling so many years ago we were looked upon as some sort of freaks and we mostly were closet homeschoolers. Back in the day in one of the states we lived in we were not even allowed to homeschool and therefore had to homeschool in hiding so to speak.
But now millions of children are homeschooled. It is now a very legitimate option to public schools.
When you move to Florida it is very easy to homeschool. You do need to register your children with your school district as homeschoolers. They have a homeschool department in most school districts in Florida.
You are required as the parent to turn in a signed form each year that your child is still being homeschooled and that you have chosen to either have your child tested with the state standard testing or to have your child evaluated by a teacher or certified psychologist. We choose not to have our children tested. That is totally up to each parent. We choose to do the annual evaluation and we have a great teacher who we hire to do this each year with our kids.
There is a state law here in Florida that your children can participate in extra- curricular activities at the public schools. This is what Tim Tebow did. He was homeschooled but played ball at his local public high school. So if your children want to play football or be cheerleaders or be in the debate club- they are allowed to do so.
You are free to choose whatever curriculum you want to for your children. There are no requirements other than they have to make progress in their learning each year. So if you want to unschool your children Florida is a great place to do so.
Support systems are very good here in Florida. We have a lot of Christian, Jewish and secular homeschool support groups that meet and give the parents the moral and religious support they need. The kids get together to play and get to know each other. They have some really awesome teen groups here also especially here in Wellington Florida.
We belong to PEC, a Christian Parents Educating Children organization. We meet once a month to hear a message of support, to socialize with other parents and to have the kids play together.
There is also a great Christian homeschool athletic association that meets all across the state of Florida teaching your children all the sports. Our son goes once a week and spends the whole day doing the SAINTS program run by CHAA, Christian Homeschool Athletic Association. I have written a few posts about this great organization.
There are also awesome co-ops where kids learn from different parents who help teach subjects that you may feel intimidated to teach or not know to teach like a foreign language.
Also, here in Florida your children can be enrolled in the public school system but take all their classes on the computer at home. Please remember that if you are concerned about what they are teaching in the public schools that is not going to be different in this program. You also may not be eligible for certain homeschool scholarships since this program is considered to be public school and not homeschool even though your child would be learning at home. This is called Florida Virtual School. Please prayfully go over this option before you opt in for it.
Homeschoolers here in Florida on average are 2 grades above their peers in public school. They are also eligible for many college scholarships. Many colleges and universities like homeschoolers because they know they have good study habits and most often are way ahead of their classmates.
Also, here in Florida you can dual enroll your teenagers in a University program and homeschool.One of our daughters started going to the Palm Beach Atlantic University - one of the best Christian universities in the U.S.- at the age of 14. She graduated at the age of 18 with her bachelors and is now getting her master's degree in May in psychology.
Homeschooling families are welcome in Florida!
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