Will my children be allowed to participate in children's activities if they are home-schooled at Fort Irwin?

Question

I am HOPING to be assigned to Fort IRwin after bootcamp & AIT. I am homeschooling my neices and wondering if they would be allowed to participate in girlscouts, sports teams and the like. Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, they will be allowed to participate in any community programs, such as Girl Scouts.  They may not be able to participate in programs through your local public school but even if Girl Scouts events take place at the school, they will be able to participate because it is not a SCHOOL program, it is a community program.  In some states, homeschoolers can attend public school activities as well.  You should find a support group in that area to help answer your questions.

My daughter is a homeschooler, and is in Girl Scouts.  The troop meets at a public school, and the girls are a mixture of homeschooled, private schooled, and public schooled (from that school and another) students.  They can not discriminate-we were told that we can not have a troop that is homeschool specific, other than the time of the meetings (which would not be an option for students in traditional school, so only homeschooled students would be able to participate-but we could not say "homeschoolers only").

My children participate in Scouts, baseball and a wide variety of community programs and yours can as well.

I wish you the best, with your military career and with your homeschooling!

Answer 2

Girl Scouts should be fine unless it is one sponsored by a particular school and is only for children attending that school. There are many homeschool GS troops in the country, however, and you may be able to find one. Sports teams will depend on local laws - where is Ft. Irwin?

EDIT: Here is a statewide California homeschool organization:  http://www.hsc.org/

Also, being military, there may be on-base resources for you. Military homeschoolers help each other out a lot. I know where I used to live in AL, there was an AF base in town, and I saw a lot of activities and groups for the local military homeschoolers available there. Good luck!