With the school year fast approaching, Gales Ferry resident Rebecca Lindner weighed the pros and cons of sending her two elementary-aged sons back to school.

She decided the best and safest option amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic is home schooling.

She's not alone. As school districts resume in-person classes later this month, following emergency distance learning in the spring, more families locally and around the state are considering home schooling.

Diane Connors, founder and co-president of the CT Homeschool Network, said there has definitely been an increase in interest in home schooling in the state, and CTHN is "working overtime" to meet that demand. She said the network is doing the same things it always does, disseminating home-schooling information to people who want it, but it's busier; she compared it to "home school getting started in August on steroids."

"If you have younger children that are doing distance learning, even if it's a fantastic DL program, the parents are the ones that have to implement it," she said. "If they're going to do that, they might as well home-school so they can do it on their own time schedule, and this is what we're seeing. These are parents that would like to send their kids to public school." She said other families are electing to home-school this year and return to public school next year because that's what will be the least stressful for them.

Making the decision

Minimizing stress played a big role in Lindner's decision to home-school. She and her 14-month-old both have heart defects, and everyone in the family but the baby has asthma. She also wanted to reduce the difficult back-to-school transition for her sons, who are both on the autism spectrum. 

"I usually start planning for the new school year August 1, and we practice everything from getting down to the bus stop on time to wearing their new school clothes so it's not an issue on the first day of school," she said.  She also said her sons struggled with distance learning in the spring.

Earlier this month, she elected to withdraw her two sons from Ledyard Public Schools to home-school them, and while it was an extremely difficult decision, she said she was happy she made the decision early because she wouldn't have had time to prepare her sons for school if she had waited for the district's decision this week. Ledyard and many districts in the region have approved a hybrid model, which separates the student body into two groups that will each attend in-person classes either Monday and Tuesday or Thursday and Friday, and virtual classes the other three days.

Home-schooling programs and curricula vary based on aspects such as educational philosophies, religious components and how much of the learning is parent-led versus child-led. Lindner said she will be using Abeka Academy, a Christian-based home-schooling program that conducts lessons via streamed videos or DVD. She said she had wanted to send her children to Catholic school before their diagnoses, and the Christian-based program hit home with her family.

The format of their lessons is also very similar to what her sons do in their applied behavior analysis therapy, which teaches them life skills. She said they'll be able to receive more of that life skills training by learning at home, as they'll have more time for their therapy and will be helping with chores on the working farm where they live.

Lindner said there will be a lot of factors that decide whether she continues home schooling long term, but her sons will reenroll in the district by middle school so they can engage in the behavioral and social-emotional learning that has to be done in a public setting. Her oldest child, her 10-year-old stepdaughter, will continue attending public school.

Because of state laws and guidelines involving home schooling, data can be inconsistent, as parents aren't legally required to file a notice of intent to withdraw their children from their school district. Several area districts reported no significant change in the number of families electing to withdraw their children for home-based education specifically because of the pandemic.

Groton, for example, had 15 students withdraw between March and June but only 10 students for the upcoming school year, and Waterford received notices from one family between March and June and four for the upcoming year. Ledyard received notices of withdrawal from 15 additional families since March.

But Connors said anecdotally that more parents are showing interest in home schooling. In response to the demand, she said the network has hosted virtual Homeschooling 101 sessions through local libraries and created a page, which has the basic information new families ask for, specifically for those looking to home-school because of the pandemic. Connors also created a post last week listing some popular programs, along with a quiz that parents can take to assess their needs, from educational philosophy to learning styles, and match them to curricula that will work for their family.

Meghan Read said she's planning on choosing Ledyard's virtual-only instruction option for her kindergartener but she will be supplementing those lessons with home-schooling materials. Her son will be redoing his kindergarten year because he was on the younger end last year and wasn't quite ready, so she knows where he needs to be based on the district's curriculum.

"I never ever thought that I would home-school or that I would have any interest in home schooling ... but because I did distance learning at the end of the school year last year, I feel more empowered to do it," she said. Her family also has more schedule flexibility now with work, so she'll be able to give her son more one-on-one attention than she was in the spring.

Read said it helped that other families are making the same decisions and existing home school groups are supporting first-timers like her in making those decisions. In particular, she wants to help her son in reading and writing, and members in the home school groups that she joined have given her suggestions on programs like "Teaching Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and "Handwriting Without Tears" that their families found success with.

She said she would definitely consider home-schooling full time if it weren't for her family's impending out-of-state move next year. Her and her husband's work schedules will likely change, and many states have strict laws regarding home schooling that make it difficult to reenter the public system.

What families need to know

Linda Hincks, a longtime home school parent in East Hampton and founder of Wren Homeschool Consulting, said that in a normal summer, she might talk to 10 families who have questions. This summer, she has been booked by 30 libraries to give presentations on home schooling.

"There's confusion over what people think that they have to do, so I would really like to be able to help people know what really is required and what the options are," she said.

In a recent virtual presentation through the Public Library of New London, Hincks compared the home-schooling experience to a pot of chili: everyone makes it a little differently but they're all good, and it should be fun and memorable. The first step, more for the parents than the kids, is to "de-school" and get out of the mindset of traditional education before figuring out learning styles or curriculum.

Hincks said the state Department of Education website is a good resource, and knowing the state laws and guidelines is helpful for a smooth transition; for example, it's suggested but not required that families file the notice of intent to their school districts when withdrawing their children to home school. Filing that notice is a personal decision that can vary depending on whether the child has already been enrolled in the district, whether he or she plans to return to public school and the relationship the family wants to have with the district, she said.

Brian Ray, co-founder of the National Home Education Research Institute, said home schooling nationwide has been growing between 2% and 8% per year for the last few years. He said that in the last five years especially, home schooling has opened up as a viable option in mainstream America, and while there are home school groups for any demographic group, the basic reason of wanting a stronger and more personalized learning experience hasn't changed.

While the Oregon-based nonprofit doesn't have any research specific to pandemic-related growth, Ray has surveyed home school leaders and said he's conservatively predicting 10% growth for next year.

Ray said that even though not every family currently choosing to home school because of the pandemic will continue to do so after the public health crisis has ended, the accelerated growth may continue for a year or two and overall growth will continue after that.

"I think what happened is that this spring and early summer, a light went on for many parents and they realized, 'our children can learn and we can teach them even though we do not have government teaching certificates,'" he said. "They found out that they were doing what they've been doing naturally since the birth of their child."

a.hutchinson@theday.com