Homeschooling in Hawai‘i

Nine years ago, stay-at-home mother Mio Chee was running out of education options for her two sons, then in the third and seventh grade.

The younger son had a bad experience with a teacher, and Chee pulled both from the small private school they attended. Because of the issues then faced by her younger son, Chee believed the same problems would arise if they simply enrolled in another private or public school.

She believes homeschooling was her only choice despite her biggest concern: English is her second language.

“The second biggest concern was just not knowing where to start, what to do, what to expect, because it’s not like we’re excited to homeschool,” Chee says. “We actually did homeschool out of necessity, so we learned as we went.”

But homeschooling wasn’t as hard as she imagined. “We met the right people, the right time, the right kind of support and at the end, everything just worked out.”

Forms Are Required

Parents who want to homeschool their children in Hawai‘i must submit state Department of Education Form 4140, called “Exceptions for Compulsory Education.”

On the form, parents provide information about the student and are required to select one of four “exceptions” to explain why they are choosing homeschooling. Those exceptions are for disabilities (a doctor’s note is required), employment (only applies after age 15), alternative education or pursuant to a Family Court order.

The DOE says in the 2022-23 school year, it received about 4,700 forms signaling parents’ intent to homeschool. But the DOE says it does not know how many children were actually homeschooled.

There are no education requirements or standardization for homeschool academics. However, parents are required to submit an annual report to the DOE that shows how their child is progressing. And Hawai‘i administrative rules require that each homeschooled student complete a standardized test in third, fifth, eighth and 10th grades.

DOE Educational Specialist Sara Alimoot says, “Homeschooling is a parent-initiated education alternative, so when a parent chooses to homeschool their children, they’re taking on full educational responsibilities.” Those responsibilities include socialization, curriculum, athletics and extracurriculars.

The federal DOE’s National Center for Education Statistics most recent figures show that in 2019, 2.8% of American children ages 5 to 17 were homeschooled – an estimated 1.5 million students.

But the National Home Education Research Institute, a nonprofit that supports homeschooling families, reports a much higher rate for the 2021-22 school year: about 3.1 million homeschooled students in grades K-12 – roughly 6% of schoolage children.

Advocate for Homeschool Families

Peter Kamakawiwoole, director of litigation for the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Christian nonprofit based in Virginia, was homeschooled while growing up in Hawai‘i. He says he now helps families all over the nation with legal issues they encounter while switching to homeschooling.

When Kamakawiwoole was about to enter kindergarten, his mother left her teaching job to homeschool him and then went on to homeschool his siblings.

“Homeschooling is first and foremost family- and parent-directed,” he says. “What that means is it will look differently based on what the family wants it to look like.”

While some families follow the homeschooling stereotype of being locked up at home all the time, poring over books, that’s not common, especially in Hawai‘i, Kamakawiwoole says.

“It’s hard to stay inside when you live in some place like Hawai‘i,” he says. “The local culture is very communal. Everybody is Uncle and Auntie, everybody’s outside.”

He says another invalid stereotype is that homeschool families are antisocial and poor communicators.

Maile Higashi is a homeschool mother of four children and the District 1 regional director for the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association. She also oversees Hawai‘i’s Christian Speech and Debate League – a group open to all students, not just Christians and homeschoolers.

Higashi says she originally had no plans to homeschool: The idea sprang from the successful homeschooling of her husband’s cousin. When raising their first child, Higashi and her husband decided to see if it would work for them too – and have since gone on to homeschool all of their children.

Because she teaches them one on one, she says, her children can develop their interests and personalities early on.

“My 16-year-old is passionate about flying, so he is currently working on his pilot’s license and flight school,” she says. “Who knew that at 16, 17 he could become a private pilot?”

Homeschooling allowed an easy educational transition as the Higashi family moved from Seattle back to hawaiʻ’i to be closer to family. | Photography: Aaron Yoshino

Not One-Size-Fits-All

The reasons for homeschooling vary from family to family.

Chee, the mother who pulled her two sons out of a Honolulu private school, was concerned that her background was different from her sons’. Originally from Japan, she learned in ways that aren’t taught in Hawai‘i. For example, she says that she was taught math with the metric system and wasn’t taught English in a classroom setting, so she never learned phonics.

However, she found that locating teaching material for her sons wasn’t difficult.

“That was the biggest issue or concern for me, but at the same time I knew that they had a lot of resources,” Chee says. “We are fortunate enough to be able to hire tutors for the subjects that they really needed help with.”

Because of her sons’ five-year age difference, Chee used different methods for each, as well as an online program that followed the same curriculum as some private schools.

She used both online programs and traditional sit-down learning with her younger son, Micah, who was still learning fundamental skills.

“My main goal was to teach him how to read and write so that he can be a little more self-directed and if he wants to, he could attend school later on,” Chee says. “I was spending more time with Micah and making sure that he was able to get all the help he needed.”

She says she didn’t need as much help with her older son, Dyson, who had attended conventional schooling longer. Instead, she outsourced his learning to “high-level intellectual experts” who were able to explain the nuances and niches that he was interested in. She says her biggest contribution to Dyson’s homeschooling was connecting him to local experts, driving him to the right opportunities and helping him make friends.

Like other parents, Chee found it easy to connect with other homeschool families through social media. She joined Facebook groups and coordinated with other families to plan gatherings and grow friendships.

“It was pretty easy. There are always opportunities,” she says. However, because the other families live elsewhere on O‘ahu, “there’s always driving and planning involved.”

Social Media Support Groups

Those same Facebook groups also served as a guide for Chee when she started homeschooling. She says that seasoned parents had a lot to share – she could just type a question and other parents would answer.

“There’s so many people who are happy to share and support, so that was really enticing for me,” she says. “I didn’t have to spend hours Googling trying to find answers. So that really made it easy and I felt a sense of support in the community.”

Dyson stuck with homeschooling until he graduated from high school, but after three years Micah enrolled in a charter school so he could see his classmates and friends daily. But without homeschooling, Chee says, “I really don’t know where our kids would be. Their life would be very different.”

Dyson Chee graduated from UH Mānoa in 2023 and Micah Chee graduated from high school in May and is now attending Kapi‘olani Community College.

“I know that most people – like 99.9% of the homeschooling families that we’ve met through Facebook and also in person – they are very happy,” she says. “The key is parents know what works for their kids, and also always trying to listen to what the kids want and need and try to cater to their needs.”

Vouchers and Education Alternative

Sixteen mainland states provide school vouchers – money that parents can use to help pay for private or religious schools or homeschooling.

Corey Rosenlee is a former teacher at Campbell High School, former president of the Hawai‘i State Teachers Association and now the Democratic candidate for state House District 39 (including Royal Kunia, Village Park and Ho‘opili). He says that adding a voucher system in Hawai‘i would widen the gap between rich and poor families.

Instead, Rosenlee says, the state should focus on repairing public schools.

State Rep. Elijah Pierick, the Republican incumbent in District 39, and Republican Rep. Diamond Garcia of District 42 introduced a bill in 2023 that, if enacted, would have established a scholarship program similar to school vouchers. The bill failed to pass.

Pierick says that if people are mandated to pay state income taxes, “parents should have liberty and freedom when it comes to the education of their children.”

“If the parents then choose to homeschool their kids or send kids to private school, I don’t think that their state income taxes should be going to public schools,” he says.

However, Pierick doubts such a bill would ever pass as long as there is a Democratic majority at the state Legislature and a Democratic governor.

Vouchers promote freedom, individual choice and competition among schools, he says, which “isn’t the main focus of the Department of Education and the teachers unions.”

“We’re a Family of Options”

Brandon and Kathy Bell, owners of HI Insurance & Financial Services, educate their children through a private online school and believe that the more options given to families, the better.

“We’re a family of options,” Brandon Bell says. “The more options you have, especially with schooling,” the better choices parents can make.

The Bells’ two daughters attend an online school, which gives them the freedom to enter more golf tournaments than they would otherwise.

“I honestly wish that I had what they have now for like this online platform … when I was in school,” Brandon Bell says.

Their oldest daughter, Arianna, is now a junior at an NCAA-approved online school – a key consideration when they selected a school as she is preparing to continue her golf career in college. The Bells chose that format after seeing her thrive when schooling went online during the pandemic.

During her last year at Punahou School, her teachers noted that she missed a lot of classes because of her golfing, even though she played on the school’s team and only attended Hawai‘i tournaments.

At their daughters’ online school, “There’s more options for different types of courses they can take, compared to what you would normally find at an in-person school, whether they’re public or private,” Kathy Bell says.

After seeing Arianna thrive through a year of online classes, the Bells enrolled their youngest daughter to start this fall.

“It just allowed us a lot of flexibility. And so far in our first year, it’s been great.”