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Amid homeschooling explosion, PJI eyes church-based co-ops

Amid homeschooling explosion, PJI eyes church-based co-ops


Amid homeschooling explosion, PJI eyes church-based co-ops

Home-based education has exploded across the U.S. during the virus pandemic, and a legal group that supports that effort is helping determined parents and welcoming churches come together.

We have a full-time pastor liaison that is working with pastors across the country," attorney Brad Dacus, who leads Pacific Justice Institute, says of PJI’s vision for church-based homeschool co-ops.

2020 figures collected by the U.S. Census Bureau showed homeschooling households exploded from 5.4% to 11% over just six months.

Many families can attest to that fact after ordering stacks of education materials and making room on the kitchen table for lessons in literature, grammar, science, math, and history.

In an Associated Press story about the growth in homeschooling, the news service interviewed parents who are homeschooling for a number of reasons: a Virginia family watched a Catholic school shut its doors, and a black family in St. Louis experienced racism in a mostly-white public school.

With the growth in home-based education exploding, Dacus says starting and maintaining a church-based co-op is a good way to welcome new parents and children, who have never homeschooled, connect with other home-schooling families.Most parents want to provide their children with religious-oriented instruction, Home School Legal Defense Association attorney Mike Donnelly told One News Now in a recent story, “which of course, as you know, you can't do that in American public schools.”

“To really provide an alternative,” he says, “to the growing issues that we are facing now in government public schools across the country."

Information about Rev. Peter Mordh, who is PJI's church liason, can be found here.