SAN DIEGO -- Home-schooling is not a new concept, but there's a new wrinkle that's becoming more popular in San Diego.
Home-schooling via computer has an added attraction for the families that take part -- it's free. And that concept is prompting a debate over who's really footing the bill.
At a traditional home school, learning is a one-on-one proposition, between parent and child. It's not all that different at the Tomkins home, with one important addition, a computer.
The Tomkinses are part of
California Virtual Academies, or CAVA -- a hybrid education option that became available last fall.
"It's charter school, slash independent study -- provided in a virtual setting and publicly funded. So we are a public school," CAVA spokeswoman Guadalupe Vander-Ploeg said.
California schools receive roughly $5,000 per student per year from the state, depending on the grade level. When a student signs up for a certified cybercharter school like CAVA, that money follows the child. All a parent has to do is register, 10News reported.
CAVA supplies a computer, along with a printer and a cupboard-full of educational supplies -- a sore point for some educators.
"It's still money being taken away from the classroom," said Terry Pesta, of the San Diego Education Association. "When supplies are bought in a classroom, it's not necessarily that just one student is using the supplies. A group of students, sometimes 30 or more, share in the supplies."
Janine Tomkins claimed that the district is actually spending less per child to send computers into homes, with a greater impact.
"It's clear to me that they're spending far less to give me a computer than they're spending in a school per child and I'm getting much more," Tomkins said. "And the curriculum is so good, so comprehensive, that I feel bad for my two older children, who didn't get an opportunity to use it."
CAVA uses the K-12 curriculum developed by Reagan administration Secretary of Education William Bennett.
As for accountability, CAVA monitors the progress of roughly 200 students in San Diego via computer and with periodic visits from credentialed teachers. Tomkins' children, Olivia and Zach, will also take the same standardized achievement tests as public school students.
Opponents of home-schooling, however, have long pointed to the socialization that children miss if they don't leave the nest to go to school. Cyberschools, they argue, would only increase a child's social isolation.
Tomkins said that because the program is very interactive, children don't actually miss out on much.
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