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I’ve never been one to bash public schools. My son attended public school for kindergarten and first grade and had great success. I have no complaints about the education he received while he was there and I only pulled him out of public school because I had quit my job and was able to teach him myself. I felt that he would learn more from me at home, but I didn’t feel like he would be a failure if he continued in public school. As a homeschooler, my feelings towards public schools seem to surprise other people, especially other homeschoolers.

It seems that most of the homeschoolers I meet especially dislike public school officials. Truant officers are to be feared and hated because they could come to your door and demand that your child be sent to school. Superintendents can request to approve your curriculum (though in my state we don’t have to comply). Teachers frown upon us for thinking we can do something better than they can when they’ve gone to college and gotten a degree and we are “just parents.”

Today I was pleasantly surprised to get the reminder that not all public school officials are as evil as a lot of homeschoolers make them out to be. I woke up this morning and checked my email. I belong to a local homeschool group and they had forwarded the group an email sent to them by the superintendent of a local school district. The school district had just purchased all new language arts programs for grades K-6 and a couple of different publishing companies had sent them samples for each grade. The school district had no use for the samples anymore and the publishing company didn’t want them back. The superintendent had been offered $150 for some of the textbooks, but he would rather donate the sets to a homeschooling family that would use them rather than take the money. It was first come, first served and so I hopped in the van and headed to the district office.

The superintendent was a very nice man and told me that he had two sets of material. He allowed me to look through each set and choose which one I wanted. He told me that I had to take a full set, but if I couldn’t use the full set to donate it to another family or even sell it. Once I left it was mine to do as I pleased.  I walked away with seven grades worth of language arts curriculum for the low, low price of FREE. I wish I could take a picture and show you all the goodies I brought home with me, but I had to leave some of it at my parent’s house because it was so much that I couldn’t fit my kids in the van with all the books back there. I have textbooks for one child for each grade, teachers manuals, workbooks, test books, test prep materials, reading books, everything that the public school will use for each grade kindergarten through sixth.

I am blown away by the generosity of this public school official. Homeschoolers love to publish the stories of the truant officers who come and knock on their doors demanding a reason their child hasn’t been to school, but it’s not too often you hear a story like this. I just had to share it with you.

by Karly Campbell

Photo graciously provided by distinguish, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved