Heleno said many parents who were planning on sending their kids to MMS in 2010 will be home-schooling this year and pooling efforts with the newly formed Education Consortium. “A group of parents is home-schooling this year, which can be scary for parents who never set out to home school,” she said. The “stop-gap” measure will help pay for tutors two days a week at a location yet to be announced. “A lot of home-schoolers run into problems in middle school with subjects like math and sciences or whatever parents aren’t experts in,” said Heleno.

For the other days of the week, home-school parents will have the option of using 9-Rs shared schooling or the free, public online charter school, Colorado Virtual Academy. Beginning next year, MMS plans to have its own two-day-a-week home-schooling option – the Education Alliance.

In the same spirit of alliance, the MMS Board of Directors also launched the “One Community, One Goal” program this year. The idea behind it is to share efforts and open communication lines among local schools and educators, particularly School District 9-R and charter schools. “We decided at the beginning of the year to put the tense dealings behind us. We’re too small a community to not do the right thing for every child, whether from a public, private, home or charter school,” said Heleno.

For the rest of the article, go to Charting new territory