Today I did something major. Something that I’ve been planning for months, from almost the beginning of this school year.
Today I submitted the request for a permit to homeschool to the Ministry of Education for this year for ds10, along with a notification about homeschooling dd12, ds10, ds7 and ds5 for the coming year. (I didn’t include ds3 – almost 4 – on this since the legal age of compulsory education is 5.)
This took a bit longer than I planned since a friend’s husband was translating what I wrote for me, which in and of itself was very nice since he’s so extremely busy. But then some important things came up for them, the kind of things that you put everything else on hold for – and in spite of having every reason to tell me they’re sorry but they just can’t do this, they didn’t. This stayed on their list of important things to do because they knew it was really important to me. When her husband handed the two typed pages in Hebrew to me, he said it was very convincing, so much so that he was almost convinced (about homeschooling). 🙂 He did a fabulous job translating and I’m really, really very grateful.
I’ve been really antsy – well, stressed is more accurate – about getting this in. The stress isn’t regarding the application for next year but for this year, since ds10 has been withdrawn from school and this paperwork is supposed to be submitted simultaneous to his withdrawal. The local authorities aren’t familiar with how to deal with homeschoolers, which I already knew since I discussed it with them at the beginning of this year – it seems I’m the first person they’ve ever dealt with about it – and I wanted to have the paperwork submitted to the main office in northern Israel before they contacted me again, so I could tell them everything was being processed.
Now we have to wait to receive our permit, a process I’ve been told will take several months. Hopefully it will get here before the coming school year. Along the way I’ve also been told the local truant officer will want to have a home visit. I’ll let you know about this when it takes place – that’s something I’ve never had to do before.
My decisions regarding this current school year have all been part of my plans to homeschool for the coming year. We initially didn’t plan to homeschool the older two kids but that decision came with time over the last few months, observing what they were getting in school and evaluating if we could better at home. It’s been a big thing on my mind for so long and I’ve hardly mentioned it to anyone, so it’s nice to finally be able to share it with you!
If you have questions about any aspect of this decision, please feel free to ask in the comments section below! What, why, when, how, whatever!
Avivah
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