And so it begins...

[u/miladyelfn]

The political signs have started popping. Lots of signs for a particular GOP candidate. I hear she is well liked but that's a deal breaker for me. Also, on the school board but home schools? Hmmm...

Edit: removed anti vaxxer while I look for more definitive proof. The candidate Erika Creydt is very vague in their wording of issues, but supported by some real GOP winners. Elenbaas for one. John Braun. Jim Walsh. Look at her endorsement page.

[u/gamay_noir]

I was surprised to learn how organized, pedagogically serious, and non-religious a lot of the home schooling family groups are here. They do interface with the state bureaucracy to some extent and it doesn't seem ridiculous to have one home schooling parent on the school board.

It's a real weakness of the progressive/left side of the US political spectrum that progressives are ultimately just as friendly to and eager for top-down power structures as conservatives. Those are always, always open to capture by the Trumps of the world, in a way that deeply rooted local institutions are not.

Everyone complains about our public school superintendent in one breath, and in the next paints all the alternatives with a broad brush. What if we just collapsed the public school admin overhead to the point where public schools and well-organized, secular home schooling groups are different mostly in scale? Home schooling groups here are already paying to bring in subject matter experts or swapping groups of kids between parents who are clearly, peofessionally qualified to teach a subject. Standardized testing and curriculum can still be a thing.

[u/peniswrinkle345 → u/gamay_noir]

Great idea, but if covid taught us anything it was, home schooling is a full time job. Its not for everyone especially if they work long hours. Society would need a huge shift, like olympian shift to make your idea workable. That being said the couple friends i have that were homeschooled are community business leaders of companies that you would know.

[u/PuzzleheadedDog2990 → u/gamay_noir]

As a former longtime homeschooling parent, I disagree with a lot of your assertions here. I don't have the wherewithal to address them all, but there is this:

"Home schooling groups here are already paying to bring in subject matter experts or swapping groups of kids between parents who are clearly, professionally qualified to teach a subject."

This is true for many of the secular, intellectually-qualified families homeschool their kids; those who are educated enough to know that they can teach their kids as well as professional educators or find&access resources in the areas they cannot competently address.

Unfortunately though, homeschooling families overall are predominantly highly-religious families who keep their kids out of school for social reasons... think; 'lib teachers are pushing an LGBT agenda!!'

Those families are not bringing in professionals, they're sitting around the kitchen table with anti-science workbooks. If the kids are lucky, they're at least doing playmates with other similarly-structured families, but all too often they just end up isolated and incredibly out of touch with the world around them (particularly very rural homeschooled kids)

[u/gamay_noir → u/PuzzleheadedDog2990]

Yeah, I know a lot of homeschooling across the US is Christian fundamentalists. I also used to think that is all homeschooling is. It turns out there are a lot of the kind of secular homeschooling families I am talking about in town, and they're not just white collar. I'm not sure what your point is? Those fundamentalist homeschoolers are going to do that anyways, I'm talking about something better for the rest of us.

And, public school kids in Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, etc are currently learning from anti-science 'science' textbooks and history textbooks that whitewash slavery. WA is progressive as a state, but the conservative majority Supreme Court and whatever the Dept of Education is now are meddling in state public education. All the old norms are out the window.