Homeschooling Northern Michigan | Features | Northern Express

Homeschooling Northern Michigan | Features | Northern Express

The Northern Michigan Partnership: Homeschoolers get elective courses, fellowship; school district gets funding and users for its surplus facilities.

"Every Wednesday throughout the school year, families involved in the Partnership convene at the old Interlochen Community School for a day of elective courses. The classes are taught by a mix of licensed teachers and homeschool parents with skills, knowledge, or specialties in specific areas. The available electives cover a wide range of subjects, from foreign languages, art, and music to robotics and computer programming.

"According to Rose Zivkovich, one of the administrators for the Partnership, the program actually pre-dated any school district involvement. A homeschool parent herself, Zivkovich launched the program that would become the Northern Michigan Partnership in fall 2016, as a way to open up new opportunities for her kids....

"The program Zivkovich created was modest: a regular meetup up of several families at the Grand Traverse Commons. A few parents would take on instructor roles and teach electives relevant to their backgrounds, and other parents would pay these instructor-parents for the service. But Zivkovich says that the program quickly became challenging to coordinate, and that it was simply too expensive for most parents to pay other parents to teach their kids.

"...TCAPS had closed Interlochen Community School the previous spring and was weighing whether to keep the building for other educational uses or sell it. When the district decided to pursue a homeschool partnership, a TCAPS representative reached out to Zivkovich and her group to see if they would be interested in working together.

"The Northern Michigan Partnership was born. Through the program, K-12 homeschool students can enroll in up to four elective courses every semester. The program enables TCAPS to collect state funding for students that opt to participate. In turn, all courses offered through the Northern Michigan Partnership are free for families. The only limitation is that the program is not legally allowed to offer core curriculum courses -- so no math, language arts, science, social studies, or the like."

The article notes that Michigan is one of the best states for homeschool freedom, and they discuss the varying motivations and homeschooling approaches taken by some of the parents involved in the partnership.