As thousands of Tri-state students head back to school this week, hundreds of others will be staying home.
Julie Bogart, the founder of Brave Writer, an Internet-based homeschool program, says there is a growing trend in the area – and across the country – where more parents are choosing to homeschool their children.
Bogart homeschools her children at her West Chester home.
She says the Internet is making it easier for many more parents to try homeschooling.
Bogart started Bravewriter.com nearly 10 years ago.
She offers a total of 50 homeschool classes over four quarters from August through June.
Bogart says she has students enrolled from the Tri-State as well as nationally and internationally.
She has a staff of 12 teachers that serve as online teachers for students.
"The reasons I wanted to homeschool were to keep my kids with me and have the opportunity to be a part of the exciting adventure of learning to read, discovering history, becoming a person who was more and more exposed to the world," Bogart explained. “And, I wanted to have that influence and be that person.”
Bogart's children say there are pluses to being homeschooled.
They say they were allowed to be more creative taking community art, music, and Shakespeare classes.
"I was really into fashion for awhile, so I got a prescription to Vogue and we like, we made word games out of designers," said Bogart's 12-year-old daughter, Caitrin Bogart.
However, there are some things they felt they missed not going to a traditional school.
Jacob Bogart decided to enroll in Lakota West High School in West Chester two years ago.
"I just didn't have enough friends really. I had friends,” said Jacob, “ it's just that I wanted to go into a wider pool of people that would live closer to me and be able to really develop my social life as well as be a part of the band.”
Bogart has homeschooled all five of her children.
Ten years ago she launched the online homeschool program called Brave Writer.
Bogart says if parents are worried because they aren't good at a subject, they inquire if their public school would allow their child to enroll for that specific class.
"My oldest did math at Lakota West and Johanna got foreign language and did some of her science there. So we didn't have to do that at home," explained Bogart.
Bogart says the average cost to homeschool a child is about $500 a year.
She says some parents do it for practically free, by using library books.
