Topic
Deschooling
2 issues
Browse full archive →- Weekly DispatchAug 17, 2026
Starting homeschool with no summer to plan it: what changes when a school placement fails, a family moves, or a crisis sets the timeline
The guides in this dispatch so far have mostly assumed a family with a clean runway, a decision reached over the spring, a summer to research curriculum and set up a room, and a first day in late August that the last two issues could treat as the actual beginning. Some families do not arrive that way. A school placement fails partway through the year, a family relocates on short notice, or a crisis pulls a child out of a classroom with no plan behind it, and that household is not late to the routine the last two issues described, it is solving a different problem. The state paperwork has to be filed correctly on the first attempt because there is no summer left to redo it. The curriculum has to be assembled from what a family can get its hands on this week, not what arrives by mail weeks later. And the child who just left school under duress may need time to heal and regain confidence, and a family in this position has little room to give it. This issue takes that family on its own terms instead of squeezing the September plan around it. Plus the policy dispatch, as North Carolina's list of approved scholarship organizations under the federal tax credit it joined has yet to be published, more states have joined the program than the count in issue 16 reflected, and North Carolina's extended ESA+ families reach their acceptance deadline the same week this issue publishes.
The earlier issues of this dispatch were written mainly for a family that got to choose when its homeschool year began. That focus produced clean arguments about routines and multi-age mornings, and it left little room for a specific group: families who did not choose their start date at all. A sch…
Mid Year Start·Crisis Homeschooling·Notice Of Intent·Dnpe·North Carolina·Deschooling - Weekly DispatchAug 3, 2026
The first two weeks: what a new homeschool should actually attempt before it tries to cover anything
A family that has chosen the curriculum, built the day, learned to read progress, selected its outside resources, and worked out what to do when a child refuses now faces the part none of that prepares it for, which is starting. A family can be tempted to open on day one at the pace it intends to hold in March, and that temptation can lead to a collapse a few weeks later. The first two weeks are not for covering material. They are for installing a routine that a family can repeat on a bad morning, and the schedule that survives that test is often shorter than the one written in July. Plus the policy dispatch as North Carolina extends its ESA+ offers and the Texas funding calendar turns out to work differently for homeschoolers than for private school families.
The last five issues built a working early-grades year and then addressed what to do when it meets a child who will not participate, which completes the planning and leaves the execution untouched. This issue takes up the first two weeks of an actual homeschool year and argues that they serve a dif…
Getting Started·First Week·Homeschool Day·Routines·New Homeschoolers·Deschooling