Volusia, Flagler families homeschooling students with disabilities
Two of Jennifer Forbes’ three children attend a public elementary school in Flagler County. But her youngest, Jack, is homeschooled.
He has a rare form of epilepsy called SCN2A, which Forbes said causes some cognitive delays and mimics forms of autism.
She and her husband were “scared” to send Jack, 6, to the same school as his siblings. Since he is nonverbal, they worried that if something “horrible” happened, Jack wouldn’t be able to tell them.
“Recently here in Flagler County, they had a teacher hit a kid who has special needs … ,” Forbes said, referring to Cheryl Andrews, an Indian Trails Middle School substitute paraprofessional who was accused of striking a student with disabilities and charged in November with child abuse without great bodily harm.
Forbes said not everyone who works in Exceptional Student Education is in for the “right reasons.”
“And I just don’t want Jack to be a victim to somebody and not be able to tell me,” she added.
Additionally, Jack has a tendency to run away, and his parents questioned how that would be dealt with in a traditional school setting.
“The school just could not guarantee me that he was going to have a para(professional) assigned to just him … ” Forbes said. “When I asked them, ‘What happens if Jack gets up, and he leaves this classroom?’ they said, ‘Well, the teacher hits an alarm, and it notifies us,’ and I said, ‘And by that time, he’s out in the middle of Belle Terre (Parkway), and he gets hit by a car, or he ends up in a pond.’”
Instead, Forbes has been homeschooling Jack in their Palm Coast home for about a year.
Currently, they don’t use a set curriculum. Forbes runs the show, and each day is tailored to Jack’s needs.
Every morning starts with an arts and crafts activity – “something that he can manipulate with his hands, that’s requiring him to do things, put things together,” Forbes said.
That transitions into Jack’s therapies, where he learns different occupational techniques.
Jack also spends time learning math, and while he hasn’t started reading yet, he does practice flashcard identifications. This month, he will begin working with a tutor to read sight words.
Each month, Jack’s learning is centered on a new topic. For instance, in October, he studied the ocean, and in November, he learned about outer space.
“Every time we have a unit, I find something that Jack and I can go do together, and we do invite other kids, and sometimes, we’ll wait until the weekend so my other two kids can go and be with him, and my husband can be there,” Forbes said. “But we try to get things that are going with the theme of what he’s learning.”
The Forbes family went to the Daytona Aquarium & Rainforest Adventure to enhance Jack’s understanding of the ocean. And they also planned to visit the Kennedy Space Center, so he could learn more about rockets and astronauts.
“Being there and seeing things, it kind of reinforces what we’re going to be learning about,” Forbes said. “And that’s important for him because he’s such a visual learner, like he wants to see things.”
The number of homeschooling families
The Florida Department of Education’s 2022-23 annual home education report, which is the state’s most recent home education report, showed that homeschooling is becoming more popular statewide, and its largest influx overlapped with peak pandemic years.
“We saw a big change during the pandemic, and since then, we have seen smaller changes. But what we haven’t seen is a big bounce back to the pre-pandemic basics,” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at American Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. “I think that means that a lot of the choices to move, whether it be at a homeschool or private school, are relatively thick. … They weren’t just a pandemic fling.”
When asked why Florida families might be opting out of public schools and into homeschooling for students with disabilities, Malkus said, “this touches on one of the things we hear frequently about special education.
“I think that the drive to alternative schools, that you sometimes see towards homeschooling, is a reflection that number one, special education services are hard to do for all the kids that come through with a variety of needs,” Malkus said. “And number two, that the guaranteed free and appropriate public education isn’t always that great of an education, and so, parents are looking for other ways to meet their kids’ needs.”
Other Volusia-Flagler families share why they homeschool students with disabilities
Jennifer Herold, who lives in Palm Coast, has three kids: a 12-year-old son with autism, a 10-year-old son with ADHD and a 7-year-old daughter with ADHD.
All three of them started in Flagler County’s public schools with individualized education plans. During the pandemic, they switched to virtual schooling and after that, homeschooling.
“The IEPs weren’t necessarily specific to their goals. It was more general because they just don’t have the staff, or they don’t have the time,” Herold said. “Another really big reason (for homeschooling) was reading and how they’re teaching it. We felt we could maybe do it a little bit better one-on-one, which has been really successful for us.”
Herold’s children use The Good and the Beautiful for language arts and math. The curriculum “emphasizes family, God, high character, nature and wholesome literature,” according to its website. They use other unit studies for science and social studies, Herold said, and they participate in weekly co-op classes that teach electives like cooking and STEM.
Shawna Dean, who lives in Port Orange, homeschools two of her sons, both of whom are in high school and have ADHD.
After trying Volusia County public schools, Dean wanted out. Her reasoning stems from what she refers to as “The Three B’s: the bullies, the bathrooms and the boredom.”
While enrolled in public schools, Dean said both of her sons were bullied — specifically, they were inappropriately touched in the gym locker room by their classmates before physical education class. Additionally, she said the school bathrooms were regularly broken, so sometimes, her kids would go all day without using the bathroom. And she said they were falling through the cracks, not learning how to properly read or write.
“They can’t read,” Dean said. “They can’t read math directions or just science or really anything. … The kids are not getting what they need … and they’re getting kind of all lumped together, and they’re getting kind of lost in the system, and they’re not gaining this basic skill that they need.”
When asked about Deans concerns, Sarah Lux, Volusia County Schools’ spokesperson, said the district’s top priority is student safety and well-being.
“We have robust protocols in place to address any allegations by students,” said Lux. “We encourage our students and families to work with our school administrative teams and other appropriate staff members to ensure thorough investigations take place while maintaining student confidentiality. We take all allegations of misconduct seriously and investigate all concerns caught through our safety initiatives and reported by students. Discipline, if misconduct has taken place, can vary based on the Student Code of Conduct.”
“VCS offers a variety of schooling pathways including traditional, homeschool and virtual options to ensure students are in the best learning environment for their personal needs,” Lux added.
Now, Dean’s sons learn at home with her on Mondays and Wednesdays, when they spend time on English, writing, reading the Bible and history. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they attend elective classes at a New Smyrna Beach co-op called FAITH Homeschool Academy, which “strives to honor and reflect Christ by encouraging students in a classroom environment that promotes academic excellence and by nurturing a family-like atmosphere,” according to its website. And Fridays are reserved for either family fun, field trips or meet-ups with other homeschool students.
Palm Coast’s Julie Cabeza also homeschools her son, Jonathan, who has epilepsy and quadriplegia, the most severe form of cerebral palsy.
Since he is nonverbal, immunosuppressed and requires total care — including tube feedings and being changed hourly — homeschooling made the most sense.
Jonathan qualified for Florida’s family empowerment scholarship for unique abilities, also known as the Step Up for Students Scholarship, which allows him to receive extra in-home therapies.
“We use the scholarship to buy him all new therapy equipment,” said his home health nurse, Danielle Alexandra Pelose. “So he has a seated ball chair that we work on head control with. Even just sitting him up is a two-person job if he’s not in a wheelchair, so it’s a lot of fine and gross motor movements, passive range of motion, stuff like that. So his annual evaluation is based on his therapy notes.”
What do other Florida families use their scholarships for?
Herold’s family also benefits from Florida’s scholarship for students with unique abilities.
“It helps to pay for some of their activities and whatnot, but definitely their therapy sessions,” she said, noting that it covers physical, professional and speech therapy as well as counseling. “It has been just a blessing. Whether it’s fidgets or curriculum or whatever, that’s all been able to kind of help us be able to do that.”
Dean agreed, noting that her kids’ scholarships pay for their co-op.“Without Step Up, we would be very limited on what we could give and provide for our kids,” she said.
Dean said that the state should also consider paying parents who homeschool because they have to stay home during the day and, therefore, cannot work as much.
“We’re doing the teacher’s job,” she said. “We should be getting — not as much as a teacher — but I think we should get a little salary each month for being a teacher to our kids.”
Despite the barriers, homeschooling parents agree: It’s worth it.
Herold doesn’t think homeschooling is an option for every family because, “it’s not accessible, necessarily, to everybody.”
“Accessibility,” she said. “Can people just either work part-time or stay home and be able to do that? I’m sure a lot of people would if they could figure out the work situation.”
But for her, it works. She appreciates having choice: knowing what her kids are learning, how it’s being taught and being able to adjust on a whim.
“If they’re not doing well, I can change it on a second’s notice. I don’t have to go through a school board to get something changed. I can do it myself,” she said. “Or if they want to do something specific, or if I know he needs something to calm down an anxiety attack, I can immediately do that. I don’t have to get it written into an IEP.”
Additionally, Herold noted safety as a big advantage to homeschooling.
“There’s been a lot of threats in the last year and things like that, and … there’s times when I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that,” she said.
Dean agreed.
“I had pulled my kids out before anything major had happened,” she said. “But I know a lot of people have safety issues going on with their kids, that it’s a big concern.”
Dean also said there are social advantages to homeschooling.
“They’re going to be properly socialized because you (as a parent) decide who they’re socializing with and where, versus what they’re getting at school,” she said.
Moving forward, Dean predicts homeschooling numbers will continue trending positively.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if half the kids were homeschooled, honestly, in the next 10 years,” she said. “… They always need teachers. I don’t know. It might be one of those jobs that they just might need private tutors more than anything. We’ll see.”
