VICTOR JOECKS: How to homeschool in Nevada

Like it or not, every parent in the Clark County School District is going to be home-schooling next year. If time and finances allow, many would be better off home-schooling completely, especially those with elementary students.

The district’s plan for reopening schools includes two days of in-person learning and three days of distance learning. The school district has some great teachers. But even the best teacher can’t be in two places at once. If your children attend school on Monday and Tuesday, their teacher will be teaching the other half of the class on Thursday and Friday.

This means a parent, family member or child-care provider is going to have more “classroom” time with the student than the teacher does. If you’re going to be teaching your child anyway, you might as well select the curriculum you like.

Fortunately, Nevada law respects the right parents have to home-school their children. All parents need to do is mail a “Notice of Intent to Homeschool” letter to the district. Just Google “ccsd” and “homeschool form” to find the form and the address to send it. Don’t be intimidated by the requirement for an educational plan. Just list the curriculum you’ll be using. The district will send you back a letter, and you’ll be good to go legally.

It’d be much harder to even think about home-schooling if picking out curriculum required years of training. It doesn’t. My family home-schooled for the past four years. There are many companies out there making quality home-school curriculum. We primarily used Abeka. Ask your friends who home-school for their thoughts and whether you can look through their books. It costs much less than private school, too. You can get curriculum for a few hundred dollars a year.

Another reason to consider home-schooling is flexibility. You can set your own schedule. Some families routinely take Friday’s off or take field trips once a week. With coronavirus, this flexibility might open up child-care options that allow parents to work. This is possible, because a full day’s worth of work can be finished in a few hours. I speak from experience. My early elementary-age kids did this consistently. Reflect on your own school experience, and you’ll probably recall a lot of wasted time. You can eliminate that when you home-school.

The school district has already discussed the possibility of moving back to online-only learning if a second wave of coronavirus hits or the Legislature imposes funding cuts. If that happens, it’s going to be extremely disruptive for students in public school. Home-schooling families don’t have to worry about that.

Even before the pandemic, home-schooling was growing in popularity. The number of home-schoolers doubled from 1999 to 2016, according to federal statistics. The 1.7 million home-schoolers in 2016 made up more than 3 percent of all students. Expect those numbers to continue to skyrocket after the coronavirus pandemic passes.

Home-schooling isn’t an option for everyone, especially single parents. It’s not a good fit for every child either. Ideally, the district would change course and open up five days a week, particularly for elementary students. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen.

If you are worried about next school year and have the ability to do it, look into home-schooling.

Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Opinion section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Listen to him discuss his columns each Monday at 3 p.m. with Kevin Wall on AM 670 KMZQ Right Talk. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.