pro/con

Things that make homeschooling attractive

• I want Khubz and Thumper to have a natural rhythm to their days. If she is reading (and she is) I don't want her to stop just to pull out a different subject when a bell rings.
• Meals together. Kids have 20 minutes for lunch in school. 20 minutes. That feels like a child-stuffing factory, not a place where kids refresh, recharge, eat and share.
• Appropriate choice. Khubz will be 5 when she starts kindergarten. A five year old should not be making choices about white milk or chocolate milk. Nutrition is my responsibility. Not hers.
• Public schools will put my kids in the wider world. Bratz dolls, "faggot" and "bitch", and romantic mythologies about the pilgrims are all things I'd like to avoid.
• Learning about the world in context seems practical, interesting and manageable.
• Public schools have been put in a position of constant crisis, where the survival of their system is at risk if they cannot produce test scores. I believe a system will always protect itself before pursuing loftier goals like "educating" my children.

Things that make public schools attractive

• I believe in public schools, public parks, public libraries, public ventures. I believe in them and their messy compromises. We will never have truly inclusive public ventures if critics and/or those on the margins stop showing up.
• My children get to know themselves in a different way when they have some space away from me. I don't like saying that. But I think its true.
• Public schools will put my kids in the wider world. They will meet people I don't know (maybe new friends), see many ways of living in the world (different kinds of families, a diversity of abilities/disabilities, economics)
• I have no idea how I would actually do it. Especially with Thumper.

I heard a rumor my school district offers an opt-in half day kindergarten. Inshallah. I think that would be my best answer.