Surge in home-school interest shut down NC website as families explore options
Updated July 7
The state website for North Carolina families to register for home schooling this fall was down for nearly a week due to a tremendous surge of parental interest.
The state Division of Non-Public Education told families between Wednesday and Monday that the home-school registration system “is not currently available due to an overwhelming submission of Notices of Intent.” The site was up Tuesday morning after DNPE said it made improvements to the online submission form,
The website (https://www.dnpesys.nc.gov/NPEPublic/NOIHomeSchool.aspx) went down shortly after it opened on Wednesday — the same day Gov. Roy Cooper announced that a statewide decision on school reopening wouldn’t come until “the next couple of weeks.”
Public schools are working through their reopening plans, with districts like Wake County opting to send students back on a schedule of one week of in-person classes followed by two weeks of learning from home.
“My child has been through enough,” Kelly Belk, a Morrisville parent, said in an interview Monday with the N&O. “He and I both need some kind of consistency and planning to decide both for his comfort level and my comfort level.”
Belk is among the parents who’ve been trying to register their home-school forms with the state. Her 9-year-old son has asthma so Belk wants to keep him home, away from people who could have COVID-19.
Spencer Mason, law and policy manager for North Carolinians for Home Education, said the group expects the number of registered home-schools to rise by 10% this fall.
Home-school enrollment rising in NC
New state statistics released last week show there are 94,863 home-schools with an estimated enrollment of 149,173 students. If they were their own school district, home-schoolers would be the second largest in North Carolina behind only Wake County and ahead of Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
Statewide home-school enrollment rose by 7,136 students last school year. It has risen 39.6% over the last five years.
Last school year also saw the continuation of a trend in the rise in private school and charter school enrollment combined with a drop in students attending traditional public schools. The percentage of North Carolina students not attending traditional public schools rose to 21% last school year.
That percentage could rise this fall, especially among home-schooling families.
“We’ve been getting a lot of calls in our office from folks who are interested in home schooling whose kids are in public school right now,” Mason said. “They’re having to help their kids at home so they’re saying ‘let’s look at home schooling.’”
The state’s 1.5 million public school students have gotten a taste of what home schooling would be like since schools were closed for in-person instruction in mid-March to try to slow the spread of COVID-19.
The remote instruction that was offered in the spring has drawn complaints from some parents, with school officials admitting it was put in place in a rush. School leaders say instruction will be better this fall, but some parents are skeptical.
Parents want more control over children’s education
“Where does the buck stop with our kids? It stops with us,” Nicole Arnold, a parent from High Point, said in an interview Monday. “We don’t want them to receive a miseducation, or a lack of education, or a degraded education, which is essentially what they got from distance learning.”
Arnold plans to home-school her 9-year-old son and potentially her 17-year-old daughter as well this fall. She was able to get her paperwork filed Wednesday before the state website crashed.
Schools are working under reopening plans that include state requirements for daily temperature checks before students and staff are allowed in schools. School employees and middle school and high school students are being required to wear face coverings, with them being strongly recommended for elementary school students.
The state may also require schools to limit themselves to no more than 50% of capacity. This could force students to not be on campus each day.
Virtual option offered to keep families in public schools
Arnold said all these issues create emotional anxiety in a school setting that parents can avoid by home-schooling their children.
“The best thing I can do as a parent is to provide the most normal, emotionally safe environment for my child to learn,” she said.
Surveys have shown parents are split on what school reopening plan they want to use. But many school districts are planning to offer virtual programs for families who don’t feel comfortable about returning to campus yet.
“As North Carolina’s leaders consider ways to safely re-open our public schools this fall, districts and schools are planning for multiple scenarios to meet the needs of our students while maintaining safe environments for our staff, students, and families,” Mary Ann Wolf, president of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, said in a statement. “In addition to in-person or hybrid models, many are planning to provide a virtual option for students whose families prefer remote learning from home.
“In many cases, families will be able to stay engaged with their school system and school communities as their students can continue to be accommodated by our public school system as we, as a state, continue efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19.”
But Belk, the Wake parent, said she’s skeptical of the quality of the new virtual program given how things went in the spring.
“I don’t have any guarantees that this virtual school will involve the personnel at my (son’s) school,” Belk said. “So I might as well be able to pick a curriculum that is of my own choice.”
Will home-school families return to public schools?
The extent of the potential surge in home-schooling is unclear.
Mason said it could be harder for parents to continue home-schooling when they’re no longer working from home after the pandemic ends.
Keith Poston, president of WakeEd Partnership, a business-backed group that supports public schools, said it’s difficult at this point to draw any conclusions.
“Will this mean fewer parents sending their children to public schools next spring or next fall?” Poston said in an interview. “I’m skeptical this will be a long-term impact. I don’t think anyone can predict. All of our crystal balls are broken right now.”
Brian Jodice, a spokesman for Parents For Educational Freedom in North Carolina, said home schooling is a force that will continue to grow even after the pandemic ends.
“There will be families who choose to home-school their children over the coming year because of the pandemic,” Jodice said. “But families by the thousands have been choosing to educate their children at home over the last few years.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 2:54 PM.
