What is a Charter?

In today's episode I will explain what a charter is. After you listen, you will feel like you know more than you did before you listened. It is always my goal to give you information that will be helpful on your journey. 

Transcript

Welcome to Homeschool Horizons! I’m Yvette, your host! Let’s jump right into today’s topic.  I have often been asked this question, “What is a charter?” Today I will do my best to help you understand what a charter actually is. Let me give you a quick definition of a homeschool charter in my own words. A charter is a school that offers money or what we call funding to homeschool families that they can use for things like learning centers, classes, curriculum, school supplies, musical equipment, sports, and the list goes on and on because it is vast!

I signed up with a charter when my son was in kindergarten and I am still with a charter to this day. I only stopped using a charter, when we moved to South Dakota for a year (but that’s another story for another time.) In the state of California, a charter is a public school that receives money from the state. The charter gets the money if they follow the state’s guidelines.  The charter then supplies funding to homeschool families that sign up with them. The families have to abide by the rules of the charter with things like state testing, samples of academic work, and meetings with a credentialed teacher. The funding is held on the charter’s website in your own account. The charter’s website will also have a list of vendors that are approved with that charter. A vendor is any business that is selling their educational services or product. Some of the vendors that I use are karate, a learning center, and Amazon. 

As far as the funding that we are given, that amount varies slightly depending on who your charter is. My particular charter currently offers $3600 a year for TK-8th and $3900 for 9th -12th. In August, you get the first half of the full amount. The second half drops into your account around the end of December and beginning of January. This funding is the main reason why I chose to be with a charter. I would not be able to afford to have my sons in so many different activities if I were on my own. 

So a charter provides the funds! They also provide a credentialed teacher. She or He is called by many names depending on who the charter is. My current charter calls them HST which stands for Homeschool Teacher. I have also heard of EC which is an Education Coordinator. This HST is assigned to you by the charter when you join. The HST is there to support you, encourage you, and keep you on track as per the state guidelines. An HST needs to see one sample of your child’s academic work once a month. She or He will let you know what sample they need and that will always vary between math, language arts, social studies, and science. I love our current HST! She is so supportive and great at communicating information to me. When I first joined this charter, we had a different HST that we were assigned. I liked her as a person, but as my HST, I couldn’t see myself lasting all year under her direction. She stressed me out to the max! Her delivery and way of asking for what she needed just didn’t gel with me. I mean homeschooling is often times stressful enough! So I asked the charter if they could please assign me a different HST because this one was simply not a good fit for our family. And they did! I was overjoyed! I wanted to mention this because I have also met a few homeschool moms that have felt stuck with whatever HST they get. You don’t have to be stuck! Just ask for a different HST and you will be so happy that you did! 

The last thing you should know about a charter is that because it is considered a public school and is funded by the state, your HST can’t accept any religious samples. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use religious curriculum. It just means that when you provide your sample it needs to be non-religious. I myself am a Christian! Being with a charter has never stopped me from teaching my boys about the Lord. It’s kinda like sending your kids to public school. When they come home, they do their homework while you play some cool Christian music and have prayer and bible time with them at bedtime. Using a homeschool charter allows you to do both. And the best part is that they aren’t actually at a public school.  It’s worked really well for me for these past 7 years and I am very grateful that charters exist in this state, because I love all of the opportunities that it has provided for my boys. 

So that is what a charter is in a nutshell! I’ve basically given you the charter cliff notes! But what if after hearing all of this, you feel like it’s not the right fit for your family? Well, then you can file a PSA! But what is a PSA? I will be talking about that next week in episode 4! Tune in to hear all about it! Talk to you soon!