Community colleges expand options for home-schoolers

Like his brother and sister before him, Nathaniel Frost has been sort of home-schooled. But not exactly.

"I actually world-school my kids," said his mother, Mindy Frost.

Nathaniel left the traditional classroom in the fourth grade, when his elementary school balked at giving him six weeks off to travel to Nepal with his parents.

Now 14, he has just finished his first year at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College. His older sister and brother spent two years there after they left Chickahominy Middle School when they were in the seventh and eighth grades.

They left because "one day I just decided I wanted to offer them more opportunities," their mother said of Natalia, now 21, and Trevor, 23.

"I actually un-schooled them for about a year. I just sort of let them find their own niches."

. . .

When she and her husband, Ian, decided those niches needed some structure, they turned to Reynolds.

Twenty-five years after Virginia legalized home schooling, community colleges have become a popular option for families such as the Frosts who want to supplement the education they provide.

Nathaniel was one of 86 home-schooled students attending Reynolds this school year. Community colleges statewide enrolled 750 this year.

"Our population is growing," Karen Pettis-Walden, director of admissions and records for Reynolds, said of home-schooled students.

To qualify for admission, the students are given academic placement tests in reading, writing and math, or they must show comparable SAT or PSAT scores.

"We do have a threshold that they have to meet," Pettis-Walden said.

No minimum age is set -- an 11-year-old attended Thomas Nelson Community College in Williamsburg this year. But college presidents must approve admission for dual-enrollment students who are below their junior year.

The interest among home-schooling families has been great enough that Reynolds offers special information sessions for them at the start of the semester.

"It's definitely a trend," said Anne Miller, president and interim executive director of the Home Educators Association of Virginia. "We think it can be a very good thing for home-schooled students."

Seven of her eight children -- all except her youngest, who is 12 -- have taken dual-enrollment courses at Thomas Nelson's Hampton campus. Four have gone on to obtain master's degrees, "and they all started at Thomas Nelson," she said.

She finds the community-college environment a good fit for home-schoolers, because both groups of students are there to learn and not to socialize.

"They're not there to party," she said.

Yvonne Bunn, the association's director of home-school support, says the experience helps home-schoolers in another way. It gives college-bound students the opportunity to have someone else evaluate their work in addition to their parents.

"That's a benefit to them," she said, when colleges check their transcripts.

Another reason she sees for the growth in the use of community colleges might be simply that more home-schoolers now are reaching the high school level.

At its annual conference next month, the association will celebrate the 1984 state law that made home education a legal option for families. According to the Virginia Department of Education, 29,569 children were home-schooled in Virginia this year.

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Home schooling and J. Sargeant Reynolds have given the Frost family the flexibility necessary for their travels -- instead of seeing the world through textbooks, Nathaniel visited Katmandu and rode elephants through the jungle.

"It's been such a gift," Mindy Frost said of Reynolds. "None of my kids went to Harvard or Yale, but the whole world is open to them."

Trevor graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in three years at the age of 20 and now works with the International League of Conservation Photographers. He also won a grant from the National Geographic Young Explorers to study caves in Gabon in central Africa.

Natalia was 15 when she was accepted for admission to Virginia Tech and graduated when she was 19.

She had just turned 16 when classes started and says she always will remember the admissions director cautioning her "that the success rate of a 16-year-old at Virginia Tech was slim to nothing."

Natalia credits her five semesters at Reynolds when she was age 13 to 15 for helping her prove the director wrong.

"Instead of being forced to do things, I was given the freedom and independence to make my own decisions and that really helped to make me more confident," she said by e-mail.

She said she faced some trials and tribulations when she started at Tech, but "Sarge helped give me the tenacity and confidence to keep with it on those hard days."

Natalia doesn't feel she missed out on the typical high school experience. She had the chance to go to homecoming and prom, and that was enough to convince her of that, she said.

Her mother does remember one fleeting regret, however.

"My daughter was somewhat resentful that she had to go to work full time at 19 when everyone else was still in school," she said.

But that regret didn't last long, and Natalia plans to go to graduate school in the fall.

As for her younger brother, he'll spend time away from school aboard a schooner pursuing his passion for sailing.

"He'll be learning the ropes literally and figuratively," Mindy Frost said.

Nathaniel will receive crew training this summer in Yorktown and then will sail to Panama and Belize.

He said he likes the freedom that his college schedule has given him this year.

And his friends?

"They think it's cool, or don't believe me."

Contact Karin Kapsidelis at (804) 649-6119 or .