Wednesday, June 2, 2010 at the HomeSource Board Meeting families voted overwhelmingly to pursue the charter route for HomeSource.

These are approximate percentages but the vote went the following way:

75% Charter
20% Alt-Ed
2% Look at contracting with 4J
2% Private For Pay Program
1% Look at contracting with other virtual programs
1% Close HomeSource

Charter schools are public schools that can be very creative on a number of levels.

Our charter will be modeled as closely to the program as it is now. We are not creating a virtual charter like AllPrep. We will continue to have onsite classes with choice. We will continue to use offsite providers. We may have some online courses as we had in the past. We may be able to allow students to take a college class or two.

What will be somewhat different is a weekly meeting for your students with an Educational Specialist who is an advocate for your child and helps them to create their own Individual Learning Plan, with you the parent.

Juniors will have a service project that must be completed and Seniors must complete a project of their own design.

We are creating a charter that will be essentially for those parents and students who want to educate their children at home with help from us.

The Educational Specialists will be some of those teachers that know and love your children. If we need more specialists than we have here now, we will only hire those that understand the homeschool family and how they operate.

Homeschool families who have given up their status as homeschoolers to attend charter programs have been very happy in Oregon City and Scapoose. A group of homeschoolers in Medford will open their charter called Logos in the fall.

Alliance Charter Academy used much of our model as they started out to be Link-Up, an alt ed program that opened in 1996 the very same year we started. They, however, were public alt ed and were closed down 5 years ago because of rules and regulations. They reopened 3 years ago as a charter. The two directors are homeschool moms. The population of this charter is the same as ours---homeschool families.

I have great respect for the administration and worked with them a bit 3 years ago. Now they are sharing what they have learned in the past 3 years to help us as we now go charter. (We would have had to go charter that year as they did if we had not had the legislation pass and AllPrep come forward to serve out-of-district students.)

Here is how the choice for classes works. Each student is given a certain state allotment of funding to "spend" as they choose on classes, both on and offsite, materials and curriculum. Parents can pay for materials fees and the allotment lasts for more classes.

There is no cost to the family at all if they stay within the student's allotment. Each grade has a different amount. (More funds are available for high school as the state gives 15% more funding to the charter.)

Look at the link below to see the course catalog. You will need Adobe Reader to view the document.

Course Catalog with Student Allotment Pricing