A total of 27,528 kindergarten-through-12th graders were homeschooled students in the just completed 2023-24 school year, according to an Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education data report.

The count is the lowest number is four years.

It is down 2,251 students from the 29,779 homeschoolers reported by the state for the 2022-23 school year, the 30,205 homeschool students in 2021-22, and the 30,267 number of homeschoolers in 2020-21, which was at the worst of the covid-19 global pandemic.

In 2019-20, the total was 22,267.

The annual number of homeschooled students in Arkansas exceeds the enrollment in any one of the state’s traditional or open-enrollment charter school systems. By comparison, the Springdale School District is the largest traditional public school system in the state with 21,712 students.

Homeschools are not public schools. Homeschooled students are those whose parents or guardians have opted to assume the full responsibility of educating their children. Parents who homeschool their student, however, must register their intent to homeschool with the state.

Some school districts have hundreds of homeschooled students, according to the state data, while others have numbers in the single digits — Augusta, 6, and Earle, 4, for example.

Of the 27,528 homeschooled students, this past school year, 1,432 were residents of the Bentonville School District, 509 lived in the Bryant School District, 641 in the Cabot district, 736 in Conway, 514 in Fayetteville, 511 in Fort Smith, 890 in Rogers, 579 in Siloam Springs and 806 in Springdale.

In Pulaski County, there were 360 homeschooled students in the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District this past school year, 548 in Little Rock, 258 in North Little Rock and 998 in Pulaski County Special School District.

The state’s latest 2023-24 report on homeschool student numbers comes just as the state is making taxpayer-funded Educational Freedom Accounts available for the first time in the coming 2024-25 school year to homeschooling families.

A total of 1,453 homeschooled students have been approved for the accounts so far this summer, Kimberly Mundell, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, said Friday.

Approved homeschooling families will be able to use the Educational Freedom Account vouchers to offset their education expenses — including costs associated with the relatively new concepts in Arkansas of “learning pods” and “microschools.”

“It’s definitely a game changer for our community,” Kanesha Adams, founder and director of The Learning Lounge, which is a microschool in Pine Bluff, said Thursday about the impact of the Educational Freedom Accounts on her clientele of homeschooling families.

“This is a great opportunity for parents who want to have more choice in where their students attend and the type of services they get,” Adams said.

A learning pod is defined as a community of homeschooled students created by a voluntary association of parents. A microschool is a tuition-based organization that serves a community of homeschooled students and is responsible for employing staff.

The Reform Alliance organization that advocates for private, charter and homeschooling options for students, lists a total of eight microschools on its website, with two in Little Rock and one each in Marshall, Royal, Casa, Wynne and Brookland, as well as Pine Bluff.

The Learning Lounge this past year served about six homeschooling families with a school-day program a few days a week and as many as 14 families with after-school tutoring, Adams said.

This coming year, The Learning Lounge is moving into a former public elementary school building and to a more traditional five-day-a-week, on-site school program for most of its enrollment. And, with 27 homeschooled students signed up, the microschool is nearly at capacity, Adams said. Only a small number of students will have a school schedule different than the five-day program, she said.

The kindergarten-to-sixth grade microschool with class sizes capped at one teacher per 10 children is to be staffed with licensed teachers, including herself, Adams said. The school will charge families for the educational services. The families, if the student meets the state-required qualifications for the Educational Freedom Accounts this new school year, will authorize the payment of the microschool charges from the child’s state account.

Act 237 of 2023, the multifaceted 145-page Arkansas LEARNS Act, authorizes state taxpayer funding of at least $6,856 for eligible students to be applied to tuition and other private and homeschooling costs over the 2024-25 school year.

During the 2023-24 school year, the state-funded vouchers were available to more than 5,000 private school students or 1.5% of the state’s public school enrollment. Over the coming year, funds are available for about 14,000 students or 3% of the 2022-23 state public school enrollment.

To be eligible for the state education funding for private and homeschool costs, students must meet eligibility requirements. Those include having special education needs, experiencing homelessness or foster care, being children of active and veteran military personnel, children of emergency responders, children enrolled in a D- or F-graded public school, or eligibility to enroll in kindergarten in either the 23-24 or 2024-25 school year.

For the 2025-26 school year, all students will be eligible to apply for vouchers.

State rules regarding the Educational Freedom Accounts in homeschools restrict the the paying of parents with the account money to educate their children.

“A parent of a participating student may not receive payment from the student’s EFA account unless it is reimbursement for a pre-approved eligible expense” — with some exceptions, Mundell said.

“A parent of a participating student may only be reimbursed for pre-approved eligible expenses to include course and testing fees, curriculum, online course tuition and fees, tutoring fees, therapy fees, and transportation,” she added.

“The family shall submit a pre-approval request for one of the pre-approved eligible expenses. Once approved, the family may incur the cost and submit a receipt for services that match the pre-approved expense.”

    This graphic shows that a total of 27,528 kindergarten-through-12th graders were homeschool students in the 2023-24 school year, according to a state report. That is down 2,251 students from the 2022-23 school year, the largest year-over-year decrease since the height of the covid-19 pandemic. In spite of the decrease, the annual number of homeschool students in Arkansas exceeds the enrollment in any one of the state’s school systems. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette graphic)