As a fourth-grade teacher at Kingdom Christian Academy in Fulton, Melissa Leisinger knows what a benefit access to a private school education can be.
Karesha Warford wants to make sure her children are getting the education they deserve, so when her local school district took over half a year to recognize that her daughter should be moved up a grade level, she decided to take their education into her own hands, even though it meant quitting her job and finding a new source of income while she homeschooled her children.
Karesha first looked at sending her kids to a private school but quickly discovered the tuition was too much so she decided to start a daycare in her house so she could still earn money while teaching her children.
“I definitely feel like they’re getting a better education. I feel like we learned the way our kids learned before anybody else so I think like as a parent you can sort of take advantage of that,” she said.
Because she is homeschooling, Karesha is able to make sure her daughter is doing higher level work by using a seventh grade curriculum even though she is only in the sixth grade. She hires a tutor to help her daughter with any subjects she needs help with in the evening.
Although Karesha made the decision to homeschool because of her daughter, she said it has also been a real benefit for her son, who was starting to get into trouble at school.
“I feel like I can actually see how he’s progressing and monitor his progress head on,” she said. “One of the nice things about homeschooling is that you can decide what it is that your child is learning at a particular time.”
“One of the reasons I think school choice is really good for kids is that you don’t have to put your kid in a certain box,” she added.