Thread: Weekly Poll: If you could pick and choose, what would it be?

If the public school system were on a "cafeteria plan" for us homeschoolers, which things would you want to be open to homeschool participation?

(you may choose more than one option on this poll)

I have absolutely no desire to be entangled with the public school system in any way. I fear the lines will get blurred, and lead to more regulation of homeschoolers.

I agree with Jana. I have no interest in the public school system after our experience there for a year and a half. Thankfully I don't think DS or DH have any interest any more either.

While I agree with Jana and hockeymom, my kids feel otherwise. Since they spent several years in the public school system and made a lot of friends there, they have a great interest in attending many of the school social events (i.e. middle school dances) and my daughter has expressed some interest in some of the extracurricular activities. In NH, homeschoolers are able to participate in extracurricular activities (and, in fact can even take some individual classes) in the PS, and the schools are not allowed to put any more restrictions on HSers than their regular students.

I don't have any interest in having the kids do much else than those social activities that my children are requesting within the public school system while they are being homeschooled for exactly the reason Jana articulated-that it might lead to more government regulation of home education.

When we lived in Utah, my son took Band from the public school system. Because UT is very liberal with its homeschool policies, this didn't cause us to become overly tangled up with the school system or anything and he did enjoy the experience. Even though there were a lot of homeschoolers, the only thing even vaguely like a band or choir done by the homeschool groups was a signing choir-- they did ASL to pre-recorded music and didn't sing along. If there would have been enough interest to do a homeschool band or regular choir, I would have preferred that. As it stood, participating in public school band was as good as we could get.

It was a learning experience on several levels. The school principal was delighted to have Son in band class the first semester. The second semester, when Son went to Band, he found that the principal had gone and registered him for a full roster of classes instead of just Band. He assumed that after Son experienced the wondrous joy of public school, that he would of course want to be there full time. Son gave him a polite no and nothing more was ever said about it. Then son came home and gave me an earful! He couldn't understand how any sane person would willingly choose to spend all day long in what he referred to as "a mold filled dungeon, run by the inmates".

I'm not sure if there is anything I'd really want from the public school at this time. We can already get sports from the rec councils, the homeschool group we belong to has plenty of clubs, and I've already found some homeschool proms (just in case we go that far) for the future.

There's nothing *I* want from the public schools right now or any time in the near future. BUT, I think we pay for these schools and if other homeschoolers want any of the things listed above, they should have access to them - at least through one school in their district. I agree that dealing with the public schools leads to entanglements that I'm not in support of. But if anyone wants to accept them in exchange for the services, then more power to them.

My son would love to be able to play football. He was able to play in our local Civitan league up until this year, he is too old now. I also think he would like to participate in some of the clubs if given the chance. Unfortunately that is not an option here, so we keep trying to find homeschool groups that have activities for older kids.

Since we have never been a part of the public school system (only 6 months of prep) I am with Jana.

I chose other because my family doesn't want anything to do with the public school system. My daughter has friends, dance class as an extracurricular and there are plenty of homeschooler friendly activities in our area. There's a reason we don't associate with anything that public school has to offer.