Brittany L. Morgan
With teachers being laid off by the dozens and class sizes skyrocketing, parents are thinking twice about sending their children to public schools. Several families throughout the Hudson Valley have had enough with the current state of the public school system and have moved to homeschooling, where their children can get specialized one-on-one attention.
The decision to home school your child is never an easy one, but area libraries are doing their fair share to lessen the burden by providing great resources for homeschoolers.
Twenty-five Hudson Valley families gathered at the Poughkeepsie Library for an “Open House” forum recently to discuss homeschooling resources offered by the library. Families were also encouraged to bring their own ideas for programs the library should offer homeschoolers.
“We had a great turn out,” said Laura Pilkington, Youth Services Librarian. “We had more families than we were expecting. It seems like the desire to home school children is on the rise in the Hudson Valley.”
Currently the library has large online databases, websites, books and other useful resources on how to home school children. The library also offers several educational programs for library card holders, but is working to develop designated programs specifically for homeschoolers. Library skills classes are also offered at the Poughkeepsie library, a class that is in the New York state curriculum.
“We are in the stages of figuring out what types of programs we can offer homeschoolers. The open house was for parents and their homeschoolers to come to the library and tell us what they want us to offer them or what they’d like to see," said Pilkington.
The Poughkeepsie library is not the only library starting to offer programs for homeschoolers the Red Hook Library is also starting to incorporate educational programs for homeschoolers throughout the day.