Starting a Successful Homeschool Co-Op in your Community.

You can start a thriving homeschool co-op in your community that meets the needs of all the families you would like to support. I will walk you through the process step by step.

Why should you start a homeschool co-op?

Starting a homeschool co-op can be a great way to enhance the education you provide to your children and build a support system for your family. By collaborating with other parents in your community, you can leverage their skills and knowledge to improve your children’s learning experience. In addition to adding more resources to your community, you will have a group of parents to turn to for help and advice when you encounter challenges or have questions about your chosen curriculum. Whether you need assistance teaching a specific topic or your child is struggling in a particular area, a homeschool co-op can support you.

A co-op can also support a new family to decide to jump into homeschooling with two feet. Knowing that they have the support of veteran homeschool moms or the consent of teaching a topic they aren’t 100% comfortable with (I’m looking at you science experiments) gives them the courage to take that leap. You are providing a much-needed service by creating this safety net for others in your community.

The co-op sets the tone for the school week in our home since we meet on Monday morning. We have four classrooms, separated by age, and each classroom has the same mom leading the class for the entire year. The group also comes together for two courses during the morning. Depending on the quarter, we teach a hands-on science class with basic experiments and either an art or home ec class. This year, our group is roughly 30 children from 11 families. Each mom has a role when we are together; we have those clearly laid out at the beginning of the year.

Please check the laws in your state for how to begin homeschooling your children.

How do I even start a co-op?

1. Decide you want to provide a community aspect to your homeschool.
2. Determine what the focus of your group will be.
3. Talk with families in your community to see who would be interested.
4. Write down a loose plan.
5. Look for a location for your group to meet.
6. Hold a planning meeting with interested families.
7. Decide if you will collect fees or how your group will handle expenses.
8. Write up the plan that the families agreed upon. Be sure to include precise details of the expectations of families and children in the co-op.
9. Gather supplies the co-op will need in the first portion of your meetings.
10. Enjoy the community that you and your cohorts have created.

Decide you want to provide a community aspect to your homeschool.

This might be the most crucial step. Simply deciding that you and your family need to have more than homeschooling at home is not very simple. As homeschooling families, we have decided to keep our children home for a reason. I think that for me, it was the lure of being surrounded by women and families who had also made the same decision. When we first joined a homeschool co-op, I had one child and was pregnant with our second. I was homeschooled myself but had not been a teacher yet. So, being surrounded by women who had already walked that path was comforting. Fast forward a few years, and now I am that mom welcoming new families onto the homeschooling course.

If you are feeling the nudge to start a homeschool co-op but aren’t sure you are capable (YOU ARE) of putting it all together yourself, start with a small group of moms. Maybe three of you have run into each other at the library story hour each week, and you always talk about what is working and what isn’t working in your homeschool day. Ask those ladies if they want to start something with you! Or maybe you are a part of your local homeschooling Facebook page and keep seeing the same mom come up with questions or concerns that resonate with you. Send her a message and see if she needs a more formal community.

Determine the focus of your new homeschool co-op.

There are so many different educational philosophies. And this post is not about which one is best. This post is about creating a community around what works for your family. In our family, we follow a classical education model. So, when we were looking for a community in our area, we started there.

Now, our community is pretty structured and robust. We provide 4 hours once a week for ages 4-13 and then an afternoon class for ages 10-13. But that doesn’t have to be what you offer. Your group’s focus will be based on your and your community’s needs. Maybe your family needs a group that meets once a week at a park and takes nature walks through the park. Or your family needs a group that meets twice a week and takes a deep dive into art history and hands-on projects surrounding the artist. There are so many options!

Take a moment and jot down what you think the homeschool co-op for your family would look like. I have created a document to help get you started. Download it here.

Talk with families in your community to determine the need for a new homeschool co-op.

You have decided to add a homeschool co-op or group to your homeschooling practice and have thought about what that co-op would look like. Now, you need to add some families for the community aspect.

There are a lot of places where you can meet other homeschool families, and I’m sure you don’t need me to list them out for you. But if you aren’t sure how to breach the topic with people, a Facebook post in a local homeschooling group, or maybe even a flyer at the library, might be an excellent place to start. You need to get the word out there that there is a new co-op; moms who need that support will hear it and reach out.

Write out a loose plan.

Now, this is where I completely geek out. I am the mom who has the new teacher planner each fall, a spreadsheet or Google doc for each event we have planned, and everyone’s phone numbers in a group on my phone. But if you aren’t that person, it’s okay! In this step, you must write down what you have done in the previous steps. You have your focus written down from an earlier stage. But it would help if you had talked to more people and heard more needs. The general principle should be gathering some clarity and taking the final shape.

A quick side note here. You must be flexible and open to changes as the person (or team) putting together the beginning stages of this new homeschool co-op. As homeschool moms, we are used to setting the plan and directing the program’s implementation. Handing over part of those plans can be overwhelming. Being willing to accept changes and suggestions can help to ease those overwhelming feelings.

Look for a location.

At this point in the planning process, you should have a general idea of the number of families and children attending your co-op. With this number in mind, you can start looking for a location that will meet all your needs. Will you be needing a nursery space for the younger siblings? Will you need a kitchen to allow families to make lunch meals?

Making a list of your minimum needs is helpful here. Communicate these needs with the families joining the co-op to see if their church has such a space or if they know of a building that will suit your needs.

The Signal App is a great way to communicate with everyone in our co-op. Everyone can get the messages sent out, whether an Apple or Android user.

Hold an official planning meeting.

Now that you know the type of co-op you would like, a group of interested families, and a location, it’s time to have your first official meeting. At this meeting, you can present the group with the details you have compiled in the previous steps.

At this meeting, you can expect to have the plan change to accommodate the needs of each family involved. Be open to suggestions, but have a clear understanding of the nonnegotiable of the group. For example, if you strongly believe that each child in your co-op should be required to do a presentation each week in class and a family strongly disagrees with that directive, now is the time for the decision to be made if your co-op is the right fit for their family. And it’s completely okay if it isn’t a good fit. Your co-op will not be the right fit for everyone, and everyone will not be the best fit for your co-op.

Try to have a summary page with the contact information of our planning board on it to be available at this meeting. This way, people who need to process things after the fact have a way to get in contact with the planning committee at a later date.

Decide if you want to collect fees.

You can run a co-op with no fees being collected. You can distribute all the purchases that must be completed between all the families, much like a supply list in public schools.

As a board or on your own, you can decide if you will have a per-child or per-family fee. We have done this both ways in past years. I have found that as long as you are upfront about the costs and how you will be collecting these fees, most parents are okay with them.

In our co-op, we have a flat fee per family. This money is placed in a central pot for our liability insurance that our host church asks that we have, supplies for our classes, and to purchase gifts for any guest teachers throughout the year.

Write up your final plan.

Now, you get to take your rough draft or loosely written outline and make it more robust. In this document, you want to include as much information as possible. This document will be taken home by families and shared with other families who were interested in joining a co-op but not interested enough to attend any meetings you have had up to this point.

This is also the document that each family will refer to many times during the year. What week do we have a break? Do I need to bring science supplies this week or next? To reduce your need to answer the same questions repeatedly, this final plan should be easily searchable and straightforward.

I like using Canva to design handouts I will use during the year. You can use a free version of the program for this project.

Gather the needed supplies for the first portion of the year.

Having multiple weeks, or the entire year, of supplies on hand has been the best practice I have found over the last four years. Taking the time to do the leg work before the school year starts will save you that much stress throughout the year.

Suppose you are not collecting funds from each family but have chosen to have each family provide specific supplies. This would be the time to hand out the supply lists to each family. I would also suggest a due date at least a month before the first meeting. This will ensure enough time to pick up any missing supplies and organize the lot of stores for the year.

Our host church has been gracious enough to provide us with a storage area where we store our supplies yearly. We have not always had this luxury and have had to cart supplies back and forth each week from my house to the church.

Enjoy the community you have helped to bring together.

The work is far from over, but seeing how the community comes together each year is my favorite part of the year. Watching families new to homeschooling bloom and their children blend into the veteran group of kids is worth all the details and preparations from the summer.