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            Parents in Kodiak who choose to homeschool their kids with the help of the Kodiak Island Borough School District will be getting more cash from the district this coming school year.

            District officials offered an update on the program at last week’s school board work session. Superintendent Stewart McDonald says homeschooling is important for a district with limited options.

            (Homeschool 1                                   :19s                 “…the needs of our students.”)

            Assistant Superintendent Ron Fried (Freed) says when the program started, the amount offered to parents as financial support was competitive with other programs in the state, notably Interior Distance Education of Alaska, or IDEA, which is based in Galena. However, Fried (Freed) says that in recent years, Kodiak has lagged behind, and as a result has lost homeschool students.

            (Homeschool 2                                   :13s                 “…that opt to do homeschool.”)

            For elementary grades the amount the district will give to parents will go up from a thousand dollars per student to 16-hundred dollars. For middle school it will go from 12-hundred to 18-hundred. And for high school it will go from 18-hundred to 2,000 dollars. Fried (Freed) says the increases will be worth it if it keeps kids in the district’s program.

            (Homeschool 3                                   :16s                 “…would come back to the district.”)

            The district receives the base student allocation and other funding from the state for every student that’s enrolled in its homeschool program. About 80 kids are expected to be enrolled full time this coming school year. Homeschool is run through the Regional Learning Center, which also offers correspondence classes to students at the district’s village schools.

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