A growing number of Hawaii parents turn to home schooling

Gail Nagasako began home-schooling her son on Maui at a time in the 1980s when relatively few were doing that kind of thing.

Her son, Jordan, was home-schooled through nearly all of his compulsory schooling years, and he now runs a successful business filming weddings.

His mom went on to write a book about home schooling and formed a support group to help other parents follow her path. She said her experience taught her that home schooling can be fun and easy, often requiring far less time than one would think.

Today, Nagasako is no longer part of a small group bucking the confining structures of traditional education.

“There are plenty of successful home-schoolers,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid to do it anymore, and there’s a lot more willing to make the jump.”

Indeed, Hawaii is experiencing a wave of parents turning to home schooling, driven in the last couple years by those seeking a safer alternative to educating children in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 3,300 parents informed the state Department of Education over the last year that they were pulling their child from public school in favor of home schooling, according to department records. That’s on top of the more than 6,000 parents the previous year who gave formal notification they were turning to home schooling.

The figures mirror a national trend that saw home-schooling rates soar over the course of the pandemic.

In the spring of 2019, there were 2.5 million home-schooled students in America, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. By the 2020-2021 school year, the number ballooned to 3.7 million, representing 6% to 7% of school-age children.

In Hawaii, as in the rest of the country, there is plenty of concern about student safety during the pandemic. More parents have been working at home, and some have either had trouble getting access to the DOE’s “remote learning” options or are dissatisfied with those options.

David Miyashiro, executive director of HawaiiKidsCAN, said parents have told him they want flexible distance-learning options and aren’t happy with what’s being offered by the DOE.

“A lot of families want and need that flexibility, and the amount of quality online options for home-schoolers is impressive,” he said.

Parents are more favorable to home schooling as a result of the pandemic, according to recent national polling from the nonprofit EdChoice. The polling also found that home-schooling parents have been satisfied with their children’s learning during the pandemic.

It’s hard to say exactly how many home-schoolers there are in the islands. But attendance at Hawaii’s public schools continues to slide, the DOE having lost nearly 8,000 students since the 2019-2020 school year.

Parents who want to home-school their child are required to submit a notice of intent to home-school, called a Form 4140, or a letter of intent to the principal of their home public school.

DOE spokeswoman Nanea Kalani said the notice of intent to home-school a child is for record-keeping purposes and to protect families from possible accusations of educational neglect or truancy. The principal and the complex area superintendent do not grant permission, but acknowledge receipt of the withdrawal, she said.

Phil Bossert, executive director of the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, said parents also should be aware of the laws that might govern home schooling, and especially those covering collaborative “learning pods” that parents often set up to help make the effort easier.

“They may not be aware of some of the state and county laws and regulations concerning how many children of various ages are allowed to be accommodated in a residence for formal activities like schooling,” he said. There are requirements covering insurance issues, fire safety inspections and more, he said.

Parents also are required to submit an annual student progress report showing satisfactory advancement in all content areas to the school of record at the end of each school year, Kalani said. And while it is not required for parents to submit their curriculum to the DOE for review, that might be necessary if the school has reasonable cause to believe there may be educational neglect, she said.

“Though schools are responsible for informing parents what basic units of study should be covered for a particular grade level, parents submitting a notice to home-school their child should be aware that they are responsible for the child’s total educational program, including athletics and other extracurricular activities,” Kalani said.

Linda Elento of Kaneohe said her experience home-schooling her kids was ultimately gratifying. She said her special education child wasn’t receiving the kind of education she felt he deserved, so she pulled him out of public school during periods of her life when she had enough time to work with him. She found additional support from a growing number of home-school groups.

“I loved it,” Elento said, “because I could see the growth in my kid.”

Nagasako, the author and home-schooling mom from Maui, said her son’s only schooling was three semesters of public high school. Although he got nearly all “A’s,” she said he was frustrated by the wasted time in the classrooms.

After her son earned his GED, she went back to substitute teaching in the public school and was dumbfounded by what she saw.

“It confirmed what I had been hearing from distraught parents all along — school is too often no place for children.”