This post may contain affiliate links. By clicking on any of the links below, I may get a commission if you make a purchase at absolutely no additional charge to you. This helps offset the costs of running this blog & I appreciate your support. Please see my privacy & disclosure policy for more.
Table of Contents
When parents make the decision to homeschool their children, one of the first thing that comes to mind is homeschool funding. This is no doubt understandable, especially if a parent has to sacrifice working out of the home or working full time in order to stay home and homeschool their child/ren.
When my husband and I made the decision to homeschool, the first thing I looked up was charter schools in Southern California. I wanted to know which of these schools offered homeschool funding while still allowing me to homeschool my kids the way I wanted to.
That’s when I came across Valiant Prep and Inspire Charter. After a lot of research, we made the decision to my son into the Valiant Prep homeschool program. After a year, Valiant Prep closed, and we switched to Inspire Charter. Both schools run on a similar model.
How Do Homeschool Charter Schools Work?
Charter schools geared towards homeschoolers provide instructional funds also known as homeschool funding and allows families to use this money on a variety of educational things for kids. These schools also offer families access to a teacher who provides support to families as needed.
PS: Charter schools Do Not hand out funds in cash to families. Funds are available on an online portal system and can be used for educational material and field trips for children as needed.
What Grades Do Homeschool Charter Schools Cover?
Inspire homeschool program is open for enrollment for kids 5 and older in grades TK (Transitional Kindergarten) up until 12th grade. This homeschool program provides homeschool funding for families while also allowing parents to be actively involved and play a first-hand role in the education of their children.
Inspire Charter also assigns a credentialed teacher to each family to offer guidance and support throughout the school year as needed.
Inspire Charter School Funding
Elementary School – Inspire Charter School provides $2800 in homeschool funding per child, each year.
High School – Inspire Charter School provides $3200 in homeschool funding per child each year.
PS: Due to budget cuts this year, the amount of money each child will be receiving has been cut by at least $1,000.
How To Spend Inspire Charter School Funds?
One of the biggest misconceptions parents have is that if they enroll their children in a homeschool charter program that provides homeschool funding likethat means that the state and government can control what their children will be learning.
I enrolled my son with a homeschool charter because I am able to homeschool him how I want to. I love the freedom of being able to choose the curriculum I want for him as well as being able to use homeschool funds on educational material and field trips.
Amazon – Amazon is our favorite website to shop from. We are able to purchase books, educational toys, curriculum, painting sets, science sets, building sets like Legos (there’s a limit), Zoob and much more. These items are delivered straight to our home in the student’s name.
Extracurricular Activities – Inspire Charter School has a very wide vendor list and homeschool funds can cover as many or as little activities as you’d like. You can use a vendor from their suggested list, if the vendor you want isn’t on there, you can request that the vendor you are interested in goes through the application process to become an approved vendor. The process isn’t too complicated.
Subscription Boxes – These are one of the kids favorite things that they look up to. Some of the subscription boxes they love are Raddish Kids, Bitsbox which is coding and they have become experts at it, Ivy Kids, Legacy Kits, Little Passports and much more.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR-9VA0_OLA[/embedyt]
Music – If your kids are into music, then you don’t have to worry about paying out of pocket for their lessons as Inspire Charter homeschool funds will cover this.
Field Trips – We are able to use funds for personal field trips such as children’s museums, science centers and more as well as school organized field trips (there are several school organized field trips throughout the year).
PS: Homeschool Charter Funds are NO LONGER eligible to be used on any amusement parks (May 2019 Update).
Sports – Homeschool funds will cover things such as swimming lessons, horseback riding lessons, soccer lessons and much more.
Laptops – With how much technology is improving and changing these days, I was excited to be able to get the kids laptop with their Inspire Charter homeschool funds.
I ordered the kids Google Chromebooks, and they have been sending emails, typing up documents and learning how to use Google docs, the internet and more.
PS: Laptops are considered non-consumable and must be returned when you leave the school.
Outschool Classes – Outschool offers online classes for kids, both pre-recorded and live. My kids absolutely love the live classes especially because they are very engaging. We just signed up for Spanish and Math live classes which start in a week and the kids are so excited about it.
Click here to use my referal link and get $20 off your child’s first class on Outschool!
Museum / Zoo Memberships – We have about 3 family museum memberships at the moment which was covered by Valiant Prep; Kidspace Museum Pasadena, Discovery Cube Los Angeles and Palm Springs Children’s Museum. There is so much learning that occurs at these children’s museums.
Inspire Charter School Requirements
The requirements for families enrolled with Valiant Prep are easy to fulfill by most families.
- Monthly attendance taken online
- Monthly in person or video meetings with a credential teacher assigned to your family
- K-8th Grade – monthly writing / educational sample per month.
- High School – 1 writing sample for each class per learning period.
The Perks Of Being Enrolled With Inspire Charter School
- The ability to purchase educational materials for your kids
- The fact that field trips are covered under educational funds.
- Instructional plans are not required. You have full control over your kids curriculum. My kids are unschooled and I love the fact that I don’t feel pressured to use a specific curriculum. As you can see above we focus on a lot of engaging learning activities, field trips and travel.
Inspire Charter School Enrollment Process
Enrolling your child in Inspire Charter is an easy process, all you need is your child’s birth certificate or passport, immunization records (or a signed document stating you do not vaccinate) and a current utility bill.
Then head on to InspireSchools.org and put in your zip code and sign up.
If you have any other questions, you can reach out to Inspire Charter schools by phone or check out their website.
