More parents inquiring about tutoring, exploring home-school options for fall

With questions swirling about what school will look like on Long Island this fall, educators working outside schools described surging interest from parents seeking alternatives for their children's education as the coronavirus pandemic continues.

Fears about the safety of in-person instruction, dissatisfaction with distance learning and concerns kids are falling behind are fueling the demand, the directors of tutoring and after-school programs said. Educators said they've seen a spike in inquiries from parents considering home-schooling their children, although it's too soon to know whether a drop in school enrollment will follow.

"Everybody's looking for alternatives," said Jo-Ann Annunziato, director of Long Island Tutoring Service in North Massapequa. Annunziato said she has received four to five calls a day in recent weeks from parents looking for tutors to help with home schooling.

"A lot of kids struggled with remote learning, and I think a lot of parents struggled with it as well," she said. "People just don't want to go back and do that again."

Stephanie Eggers of North Babylon counts herself among such parents.

"There were a lot of tears on my part and tears on my kids' parts," Eggers, 38, said of the remote instruction her 9- and 7-year-old sons received this spring. She said she struggled to juggle the demands of her part-time job and the help her kids needed with distance learning.

"I felt like I was being pulled in every direction, and I felt like my kids were not getting the best from me, but they also weren't getting the best experience in general for school," she said.

School districts moved to remote learning in March, after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo closed schools statewide to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The governor has said he will announce in the first week of August whether schools will reopen this fall.

New York State asked parents to inform their school districts by Aug. 1 if they planned to home-school their children this upcoming school year. But parents in New York may begin home-schooling their children at any time if they notify their districts within 14 days of beginning home instruction. 

Businesses like Annunziato's are bulking up services to accommodate a possible influx of new customers, whether remote learning returns or not. Long Island Tutoring Service plans to expand group instruction programs and hire at least five more teachers to supplement the 16 already on staff.

"We anticipate that there will be plenty of work for them," Annunziato said.

Village East Gifted, which offers classes to academically advanced children and has locations in Huntington Station and Roslyn Heights, has introduced daytime classes for 4- to 15-year-olds in addition to its existing array of courses.

"We're starting to get people that are coming out of the woodwork," said Tobi J. Phillips, the program's founder. "They want their kids to have more education because they weren't getting enough last semester."

Long Island Tutorial Services of West Sayville expects to continue a small-group instruction program for students it began this summer into the fall.

"We're not driving this, we're responding to it," company vice president Miles Malone said of the heightened interest.

The company primarily is contracted by school districts to teach children who cannot attend school in person for various reasons, but it also offers private tutoring.

Malone, Phillips and Annunziato all said they've heard from more parents considering home-schooling their children by themselves or with the help of private instructors. 

"There has been a growing movement just in general on Long Island of parents wanting to home-school," Annunziato said. "The whole pandemic just accelerated that."

New Yorkers who want to home-school their children must notify their school districts and submit study plans, quarterly reports and a year-end evaluation, according to Jennifer Snyder, co-president of Homeschool New York, an advocacy and support organization. A certified teacher is not needed for instruction, although some parents hire private tutors for the task.

Eggers is one Long Island parent thinking of making the switch. If distance learning is a big part of North Babylon's plans for her kids' education in the fall, Eggers said she may begin teaching them herself.

"If there is an option to go back to school, as long as it is not awful, I want to try to make it work," she said. But "if the distancing learning thing is a major component, it's going to be really hard for me to do that well for my children."

Some on Long Island expressed concern about the ramifications on local schools if droves of parents who can afford it pull their kids and educate them themselves.

"For me, that's really a question of equity more than anything else," Baldwin schools Superintendent Shari Camhi said. "Can middle-class and students of poverty, can their families afford private tutoring?"

Programs at Long Island Tutoring Service, Long Island Tutorial Services and Village East Gifted range from $45 per hour for group classes to $175 per hour for one-on-one instruction.

Camhi said her district fielded a few questions from parents this summer about home-schooling their children. But the district has not seen an increase in parents actually opting to do so, she said.

Elaine Gross, the founder and president of the Long Island civil rights group ERASE Racism, called the prospect of declining enrollment in local public schools "worrying."

"We already have a tremendous amount of fragmentation here on Long Island because we have so many different school districts," she said. "It could exacerbate the segregation for sure."

CLARIFICATION: A previous version of this story omitted that parents in New York may begin home-schooling their children at any time if they notify their districts within 14 days of beginning home instruction.