Confused and need help asap.

[m4luci]

I live in Central Florida. My kids are in public school, they started when the school year started. I was going to wait until winter break, however it is best for my kids if we start homeschooling asap. I am going to enroll them in an Umbrella school, that is the option I am taking so that they can be listed as private school attendees, and I can keep track of their attendance. I am confused and worried though. I have read in some sights that the year starts on date of enrollment. Does that mean they will have to start all over for 180 days attendance or will their attendance in public school count towards the year? I really hope not because they will finish will later in the year, and will have to start the new year right away.

[lovehmschlg]

Hi. I live in Florida, also. Have you read the Florida law for home educators? There are no required number of hours per day or per year. Basically you have to notify your local school board with a Letter of Intent when you want to start homeschooling your child. When you stop (end of high school or if you decide to put them back in school), you send a Letter of Intent to Terminate School Enrollment. There are several sites you can get a sample template of these letters. But I wanted to say, to answer your specific question, is that I started homeschooling my daughter mid-year in Kindergarten. There was no problem with that at all. Like I said, there's no requirement for hours or days of attendance if you're homeschooling. Now, there is a problem if your child has missed a lot of school and then you want to homeschool them. I remember reading something about that. I guess if there's no medical reason that the child has been missing school, and then you say you want to homeschool them, they'd naturally become suspicious of that.

Some parents feel more at ease using an umbrella school. I understand. I just wanted to let you know it's not necessary if you find it doesn't work for your family. We've never used an Umbrella school. So I also don't know what the requirements are for an Umbrella school...whether you need to send that Letter of Intent. I think they take care of all of that. We use Time4Learning, which tracks all my daughter's work. I can easily print her progress reports for our records, if I want to do that. I keep a portfolio of some of her schoolwork throughout the year. We supplement T4L with some writing and some worksheets. We also do a lot of reading and watch educational films. That's one of the requirements. You need to keep samples of their work, even if it's pictures of science experiments and field trips.

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I live in Central Florida. My kids are in public school, they started when the school year started. I was going to wait until winter break, however it is best for my kids if we start homeschooling asap. I am going to enroll them in an Umbrella school, that is the option I am taking so that they can be listed as private school attendees, and I can keep track of their attendance. I am confused and worried though. I have read in some sights that the year starts on date of enrollment. Does that mean they will have to start all over for 180 days attendance or will their attendance in public school count towards the year? I really hope not because they will finish will later in the year, and will have to start the new year right away.

I started midyear last year and registered with an umbrella as well. the days in school count toward the yearly total. you pick up where they left off. good luck!