As discussed before, I believe the Superintendent wishes to close CHEP by draining it of resources, closing sites, and reducing the student body. He wants this because he sees it as an expensive program.
But CHEP is not just a program draining resources from OCDE. It’s the solution to the problem of declining numbers within OCDE as a whole. People are taking their kids out of public school in record numbers because there are more options than ever. While at the same time no one knows about CHEP. An alternative program within the public school system with over 30 years of experience educating homeschoolers.
Education is expensive but CHEP (homeschooling) should actually be cheaper for OCDE than traditional schools. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, most homeschool parents foot a lot of the bill for education. On average, homeschool parents spend upward from $900 per student per year. Often buying their own school materials, parents drive their own children around, network to plan field trips, and make use of public resources like libraries, museums, parks, and city services, spreading out the cost to other programs not under OCDE.
In the past there was public school and private school. Homeschool was a fringe idea. But today there are a growing number of charters, online schools and homeschooling is a rapidly growing trend. Last year there was an estimated 198,947 homeschooled children in California, which has a projected increase of 7-15% each year going forward.
Local Public Schools are making it harder to transfer into CHEP because they fear losing students to alternative education. However once someone has chosen to take their kids out of traditional public school they are not going to come back just because their transfer fell through. There are too many other options available. Local schools districts need to understand that no one benefits if the kids can’t stay in OCDE.
And CHEP parents know all about the alternatives but have chosen to stay in the public school system despite the challenges. Because no alternative program can provide what CHEP does.
Each CHEP site can pull from a pool of local public schools. Statistics show that there are nearly 2,000,000 people living in North and West Orange County. But only about 500,000 people are living in Central Orange County. Two thirds of the children in CHEP are from North and West OC. Closing these sites means cutting off access to these populations, and driving the kids out of public school completely.
If OCDE is to remain solvent, it needs a program to maintain families who wish to leave. CHEP is that program and if we promote in earnest we can make it grow as it was seven years ago, before the ban on promotion. Maintaining the North and West Sites is crucial so that CHEP doesn't get cut it off from the wider community.
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https://statisticalatlas.com/county/California/Orange-County/Population
https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/
https://a2zhomeschooling.com/thoughts_opinions_home_school/numbers_homeschooled_students/
http://www.homefires.com/ca_style.asp