By Vernon Robison

Moapa Valley Progress

School starts on Monday next week. On that day, most of the kids in Moapa Valley will be reporting to their assigned classrooms at the local public schools.

For the vast majority of kids and their parents, those schools do an excellent job and entirely meet their education needs.

But an increasing number of parents are deciding to look in a different direction for their kids’ schooling. With the struggle over state and district budget cuts to education, the threat of increasing class sizes at traditional schools has driven many parents to seek other alternatives. They fear that their children will not receive the individualized attention they need to meet their potential.

So these parents have gone out looking for alternative programs that offer a learning environment with fewer distractions, more individual attention and greater time flexibility.

Years ago, parents like that, who didn’t have the money to send kids to private school, had but one alternative option: home schooling. But that option was a difficult path. It put the full burden on the parent to develop the curriculum from scratch and find creative and entertaining ways to present it. Also, while it was cheaper than private school, there was no help to the parent in bearing the cost of the education. Public funding was not available in paying for books and materials for a home-schooled student.

But today things are different. There are a variety of options available to parents seeking an alternative to brick and mortar classroom settings. A wealth of resources are available to help home-school parents who want to shape their own curriculum. In addition, online charter schools have popped up all over the place providing accredited public school-style curriculum to be done at home fully funded by public education dollars. These things have changed the face of home-schooling.

Not Your Mother’s Home Schooling

Traditional homeschooling has advanced a long way from the old days. Once a practice that was considered, sort of, out on the fringes, home-schooling has entered the mainstream in recent years.

With the internet as a tool, home-school parents have tremendous resources at their disposal. Parents share successes with each other online and communicate clever ideas and techniques. Indeed entire curriculae may be found online and purchased, boxed and ready to be used, by parents with their children.

Moapa Valley even has a home schooling organization known as the Northstar Commonwealth. This group was founded several years ago by Logandale resident, Raina Stump. Made up of about a dozen families and 25-30 students, the Commonwealth meets once a week for classes and activities. This weekly opportunity for formal classwork and social interaction provides a framework for curriculum and breaks up the home-school routine which can be a rather solitary affair.

Stump is a long-time home-schooling mom. She has homeschooled all of her children beginning with her oldest son who is now 23 years old and is attending college.

“I started home-schooling because I wanted my children to learn that they are individuals,” Stump said. “That God created each of them for a specific purpose. I wanted them to know who they really are and not to be afraid to say who they are and be who they are.”

Stump operated independently for many years. But bringing the Commonwealth together was a way of sharing ideas, pooling resources and allowing kids to socialize together.

“Different parents have different areas of expertise and proficiencies,” she said. “The Commonwealth brings those strengths together for the benefit of all the kids. I love the synergy that goes on within the Commonwealth. We all love our children and love education.”

Having the final say over the curriculum being taught was paramount for Overton resident Rebecca Muhlstein who has enrolled all of her children in the Commonwealth.

“I like that I get to choose what they are learning,” Muhlstein said. “Every family decides what is right for their family. Parents are inspired for the needs of their own family. They know best what to do.”

Muhlstein also likes the Commonwealth for its open and exploratory approach.

“Kids are taught not just what to learn but how to learn,” she said. “There is also a focus on parents learning and showing an example of a life-time learner. If the parents show that hunger for knowledge they become inspiring mentors for their kids. Then the learning is exciting and fun rather than work. The idea is to Inspire not Require.”

Of course, funding for these traditional home-school programs is still an issue. Currently Nevada provides no public funding to these types of home-school parents.

“In some states it is done, but not in Nevada yet,” Stump said. “They say that each student in Nevada public schools is funded with about $7,500 in public funding. If I had even a fraction of that for my kids I could go a long way with it. But we don’t.”

So members of the Commonwealth must pay dues and tuition to cover the cost of instruction materials and curriculum and for building use fees at the Old Logandale School where they meet.

But it is well worth it to Muhlstein. “I love that my kids aren’t being lumped into a big crowd,” she said. “Learning this way helps them to be who they really are. Each of them have their own unique talents and wonderful things come out when they can just be themselves.”

The Virtual Classroom

Many parents who seek a more personalized approach to their child’s education find the idea of developing and presenting their own curriculum rather daunting.

Some also may balk at the idea of leaving tax dollars allocated for their student’s education on the table. They want to be able to fully employ those public funding resources to their kids’ advantage.

Thus, there are many parents who are looking for a greater degree of support in the home-school experience.

Many have found it in a variety of online academies that are currently available. These virtual schools are set up like charter schools within the State’s public education system. The schools are fully accredited and operate under the public school umbrella.

These online academies provide all of the curriculum and materials including computers, equipment, textbooks and supplies; absolutely everything needed for the state-required coursework. All of this is fully funded from the student’s allocation of public education funding. There are no additional out-of-pocket expenses from the parent. Some programs even give an internet subsidy to help pay the cost of internet service to the home, a required component for such a program

The schools also provide online instructors to oversee the child’s education. These state-certified teachers give direction and support in much the same way as the teachers in a brick and mortar school would do. Children work independently from home according to an established schedule of learning activities and assignments given by the teacher. The students are coached and supervised at home by a parent. But their teacher is just an email or a phone call away at any time when help is needed.

Teachers also hold online class times frequently. These sessions provide an opportunity for students to get together in an online forum to be instructed. They listen to the teacher speak through a microphone online and they can respond by voice into their own microphone or by typing in answers to questions in an instant messaging system.

Alison Osmond has been teaching for three years at Connections Academy, one of these online schools operating in Nevada. She works out of the Academy’s office in Sparks teaching kindergartners and first graders located in various places in the state.

“After working with students in an online setting like this, I don’t know that I’d ever want to go back to classroom teaching,” she said.

Osmond says that she averages about 40-45 kids in her “class”. While that would be a huge class size in a traditional setting, Osmond says it is very manageable with online schooling. That’s because she never has all the kids together at once. Instead, through online media, she can work with each student individually.

“I actually get to know the students more than I might in a classroom of, say, 25 kids all at once.,” Osmond said. “We talk on the phone regularly and I can spend time to really get to know them personally. I’m not dealing with the whole classroom management piece. It is purely about that student and what he/she is learning.”

The custom-tailored approach resulting from that one-on-one interaction is the real beauty of the program, Osmond said.

“If a kid is really good at a subject, he can speed right through the material until he gets to the challenging stuff,” Osmond said. “On the other hand, if he needs more time to get a concept, he can work through it at his own pace and there is a lot of practice work he can do to get there.”

And if a student has fallen far behind grade level, they don’t have the classroom social distractions to make them feel dumb, Osmond said.

“That is a huge part of the brick and mortar setting that can be intimidating for kids,” she explained. “If they are struggling and have to be pulled out of the classroom for special attention, it calls attention to the child. That is intimidating to kids and their parents because they don’t want the stigma. In our program, no one even knows what level you are; whether you are gifted and talented or special needs or just average; kids aren’t singled out, they just get what they need for their level.”

This approach has been especially helpful for Logandale youth Stacey Cameron who was enrolled in Connections Academy high school program last year. This year she is returning to Connections Academy for her senior year in high school. Stacey’s mom, Celeste Green, said that the program has helped Stacey in areas where she struggles.

“With this program, whenever she has trouble with something she can talk to her teacher one-on-one,” Green said. “When she was going to the (local) high school the teacher’s attention was taken away in the class and she was too shy to ask for help in front of the class. She would come away feeling defeated and feeling a little dumb.”

Stacey said that she likes the flexibility of scheduling that the online program gives. She spends a lot of time practicing for local gymkhana events where she does barrel racing. The online program allows her to practice at the best times of the day.

“In regular school you have to go to class early in the morning,” she said. “By the time I got back I’d only have 4-5 hours before dark and I’d have to do homework too. With this program I can ride in the morning when it is cool and do my schoolwork later in the day.”

It was the individual attention that made the decision for Logandale mom, Jenna Rhude. Rhude has decided to pull her daughter Emily out of the local school this year to attend fifth grade at Renaissance Academy, another online program offered in the state.

“Emily is kind of quiet in a classroom setting, she doesn’t speak up,” said Rhude. “I know that with the government cutting education budgets there will be more kids in the classroom and I have been concerned that she will be lost in the mix.”

Rhude has other school-aged children that she is going to be leaving in the local schools. “Right now public school is great for my second grader and my kindergartner,” she said. “I just don’t think that it’s working for my fifth grader.”

Logandale mom, Angie Leavitt has all three of her kids enrolled in the K12 Virtual Academy, another online program available in Nevada. Leavitt began keeping her kids home four years ago using a more traditional home-school approach. But she found that the Virtual Academy allowed her to focus her efforts more on instructing and interacting with her kids rather than the work of developing curriculum.

In addition, Leavitt likes the fact that, at the end of the Virtual Academy high school, her kids will receive an actual diploma from an accredited school. They won’t have to obtain a GED in order to apply for college like they would in a traditional home-school program.

Leavitt said that her children are always being challenged by the Virtual Academy system rather than feeling bored in a classroom waiting for the other kids to catch up.

“When my son went to public school he liked it a lot,” she said. “But he got frustrated with going over the same things twenty times for the class, when he understood them just fine.”

Trying to help, Leavitt volunteered in her son’s classroom. She said she was frustrated to find that, to accomodate all the various ability levels of the class, the teacher had divided up the students into four groups. “They would have four different versions of spelling tests, with four different lists of words, at the end of each week,” she said. “That can’t be beneficial for any of them.”

Leavitt explained that the K-8 section of the Virtual Academy is mastery-based. “That means that once you master the concept, you go to the next lesson,” she said. “There is a test at the end of the unit. If you already know the material and can pass the test, you move on. There is no busy work.”

And what about the social element? Don’t kids get tired of being alone at the computer all day without other kids around?

First of all, Leavitt clarifies that these program don’t leave kids at the computer all day. Students and parents are provided with a variety of learning activities, many of which are done away from the computer. In addition, enrichment activities like museum visits or field trips are encouraged in these programs.

As far as the social element, each of the online schools schedule regular group activities where kids can get together with other kids in the program for picnics in the park or other trips. Many of these are held in Las Vegas, however, because that is where most of the kids are enrolled right now.

Still. Leavitt said that her own kids are not being deprived from social interaction. There is a lot to do in Moapa Valley for kids, she said.

“When it comes down to it, school is maybe not the best place for socializing anyway,” she said. “Besides with recess times being cut back there was not a lot of that going on in school anyway. But there is a lot in the community for them to do and be with other kids. They are involved in parks and rec sports, scouts and lots of church activities. And they have more time to do things like that because they don’t have homework in the evenings.”