Yes.

Yes. It's a very rural area. The county tried to offer a daycare a few years ago, but it was difficult for people to get their kids there and make it to work on time. For example, if my kids were still young enough for daycare, it would take forty-five minutes for me to get there in the morning. Depending on where I could get work (pharmacy tech in a flooded market), it would take me another thirty minutes to an hour to get to work. So if my shift started at eight, I would need to be able to drop the kids off around 6:15am, and it didn't open until 7am. Most people rely on family or friends-of-family to watch their kids. I hadn't considered offering afterschool care myself.

I'm happy that's an option for some people! But it's not. I have friends with kids in public school. Trust me when I say that many have looked far and wide for afterschool care and have not found it.

Mosr people rely on grandparents or other relatives to act as babysitters. That's not an option for my family because of personal reasons. The other option is to pay a friend-of-a-friend to watch kids. But that's not affordable for my family. The average rate is $15 per hour. As a pharmacy tech, the average wage is $17 per hour. In other words, the math ain't mathing for my situation.

I have known of a school district offering so much! I'm glad to hear that your tax dollars are well-spent. The wage issue only applies if the homeschooling parent would be in the workforce. For me, I don't see that being the case. My husband and I feel that running a home is a full-time job, and I don't need a second one, paid or not. Trying to balance both would be how we got burned out. Also, childcare - affordable or not - isn't available for many people. For example, we don't have any sort of daycare or afterschool care in my entire county or any of the surrounding ones (and that border goes into three states). If I tried to work with school-aged children, I'm not even sure what I would do for afterschool, half-days, snow delays, breaks, etc. I see you're point, and Social Security should definitely be considered. BUT you have to live until retirement too.

I count gas as education expenses when it can be directly related to education. I'm not driving my kids to school everyday, so that is money I'm not spending. As for lunch, sure, they would need to eat, but the cost is quite different between what we spend at home and what they would get at school. But I do see your point that they might just be regular expenses. I mean, for us, we have to budget to afford curriculum. It's a careful month-by-month plan. My kids education is certainly worth the expense, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't just up and buy everything I want in June or July. Yeah, childcare can eat up a second income like little else.

All American schools are different, but, at least locally, we get a lot of fundraisers. This year alone, I've had friends selling chocolate, tiny bundt cakes (overpriced at $5 each), doughnuts, cookies, candy, etc. Selling school/mascot apparel is a big fundraiser too. My grandparents have two themed cowbells "for football games," so I wouldn't be shamed for not selling any. That's another big issue with American schools, at least in my experiences. Often, they had some sort of reward - usually a free day or free half-day, often with snowcones or some other treat - if you sold a certain amount of whatever the latest gimmick was. If you didn't meet that goal, you got stuck in a classroom doing busywork. We ended up with a stand-up deep freezer full of Krispie Kreme doughnuts in third grade, so I wouldn't get stuck like that.

The beautiful thing about homeschooling, at least in my humble opinion, is that it can look like whatever our families need it to look like at any given time.

Yes, exactly! So much is based on what each family would need, and what is available to them. Do they make below the threshold to qualify for assistance? Or do they make say $5000 over, so they really can't afford it but they also can't get help? It's such a nuanced mess that nobody can really answer for anyone else.

The idea of more clothes is a big concern. I know some public schools are requiring uniforms now, and that sounds like a headache. I also know bullying is awful about these things; a friend's daughter was bullied over her winter coat so much that she wouldn't wear it (mom had tried to save money and picked one up at TJ Maxx, thinking it was cute; she ended up having to go on a hunt for the "right" coat that her daughter had asked for before school started).

Well, what our schools offer barely qualifies as an education, and it arguably isn't affordable. But that's another post for another time. I already explained that meals aren't free here. And, no, there is no subsidized afterschool care; I'm sure those programs are available somewhere in my state, but there aren't any programs like that locally. I would have to pay an individual to watch my kids, and that is assuming I could find someone who is willing and trustworthy. I'm being honest when I say that homeschooling is a fair bit cheaper for my family than public school. Anyway, you left this part out of your quote, but I do think she is going to try homeschooling next year.

Homeschooling isn't very big here, so she hasn't really spoken to many people. A lot of what she was hearing was from the other side of the argument: people trying to convince her that public schooling was so much cheaper. I think she's going to give it a try next year (Kindergarten).

Your homeschool sounds pretty similar to ours! I don't think many families would choose to homeschool because it's cheaper. In the case of the conversation I had, a friend was concerned she couldn't afford it, that it would be extremely expensive to homeschool.

Good luck in the job search!

That's a big financial decision you made. Teachers in our district make nowhere that much! I think the cap is about $35,000 for those with 10+ years. Our principals only make around $80,000. Yes, that means most decent teachers end up leaving for better paid districts. We have one private school in our district with academics as bad as any local public school. It's mostly a dumping ground for the misbehaving kids of out-of-towners. The cost for the day program is about $12,000, so it would quickly eat any money I made.