Homeschooling in Broward

Homeschooling with the County

Establishing Your Homeschool

This is the most straightforward option. If your kid is in public school, you will submit a withdrawal letter to your public school first. Then you'll submit a letter of intent to homeschool to the Broward Home Education Office. All the info is on the Broward Home Education page, scroll down to the Enrollment section to get the Letter of Intent form.

Here's a Withdrawal Letter Template to get you started, but your school may require in-person or some other format.

For your reference, here's the full Florida Homeschool Law .

IMPORTANT - Make a note of the day you send your Letter of Intent because this is your personal deadline each year to submit your signed evaluation form to Broward Home Ed.

Recordkeeping Throughout The Year

Keep a folder to put examples of work.
Take pictures as evidence.
Keep a weekly log or calendar with notes about what you're doing.
Keep a book list. (Broward library keeps track of what you check out, so you can grab it from them during portfolio time!)

Alternatives to the portfolio are standardized tests or FLVS transcripts. You can see more about those options at the Broward Home Education page.

Practical application:

I created a separate google account for my homeschool and I upload the photos to a photo album and I copy the books from the library website into a google sheet. I keep a document with the themes and projects and interests he's covering throughout the year as our log of activities, usually loop in there every few months and put some notes about what he's been doing. I write a mid-year progress report for my own records, and then I write an end of the year summary for the evaluator with links to scanned/uploaded samples of work and the photo album and book list. Since we don't strictly follow a curriculum, this format works best for us, but if you had a curriculum you could just share details about what you used and how it went and a few examples of work.

My evaluator Sarah’s Homeschool Evaluations asks for the following: 1) At Least 5-6 pictures of work or activities or transcript 2) what curriculum did you use if any? 3) how did it go?

For middle school and above, I also recommend taking the time to write out a transcript and course summaries at the end of the year so that you have them ready for whatever your kid is matriculating towards. (There are resources out there for how to do transcripts, I'll work on getting some collected here as well.) This part is not absolutely required for the evaluation, but you won't regret doing this step.

Before your Deadline

Finalize your portfolio, and make contact with a certified teacher who can perform your evaluation.
You can submit your portfolio to an evaluator up to 90 days before your deadline and have them sign your form electronically.
The evaluation form must be submitted by email to the Broward Home Education mailbox by the day before your LOI was submitted. The form and email address is on their Broward Home Education webpage.
You'll want to keep the portfolio records on hand for 2 years, in case Broward Home Ed needs more evidence for some reason.