9/5/04 While the harsh reality of 6 a.m. alarm clocks and the Pythagorean theorem jolted area students out of summer vacation bliss and back to buzzing bells last month, a couple hundred area kids continued to study at their own privately appointed pace as homeschooled students.

Casey Hartmann, 14, is one of these students. His family is part of the Lompoc Valley Home Educators, one of two home school support groups in Lompoc that operate independent of the Lompoc Unified School District.

On Thursday, Hartmann's school was Miguelito Canyon Park as LVHE regrouped with other families for their first meeting of the fall. Five mothers sat at an administrative picnic table and hammered out a curriculum for the geography club, selecting the countries and cultures they would study each month. The students all have input here and Tibet was chosen as this month's country. After a month's study, each student will give a presentation on the Himalayan country for a culminating potluck dinner.

"Do you want to do the conflict between China and Tibet?" asks one of the mothers.

"No," Hartmann says. "I want to do photos."

The Lompoc Unified School District estimates that over 200 Lompoc families participate in home education. Nationally, over one million children, or 2.2 percent of the school-age population are homeschooled, according to National Center For Educational Statistics, part of the Department of Education. The amount has risen 29 percent in the last 4 years, the center says. County statistics were not available.

Under California law, families may opt to home-school their children by registering with an independent study program at a sponsoring public, private, or charter school or by registering as their own private school. Any individual can create a private school in any location without a teaching credential as long as the level equals that of a public school and records such as attendance and curriculum are kept.

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The sponsoring school's level of involvement can vary widely from mere administrative acknowledgment and standards testing to providing curriculum, materials, and group meetings.

Currently, Lompoc Unified School District offers independent study curriculum to 34 students for grades K-12, and provide parents with similar curriculum, materials, and standards as a traditional student. Students meet once a week with a district teacher to discuss their progress. If a student doesn't attend in consecutive weeks, they are dropped from the program.

Even more popular with Lompoc home school families is the independent study program through Olive Grove Charter School of the Los Olivos School District, which individualizes the program more than LUSD's curriculum. This year the charter caters to 46 Lompoc students in grades K-12. They operate a weekly meeting requirement similar to LUSD.

Other families work through private institutions or national networks, which makes enrollment difficult to track.

One of these networks is the Christian Home Educators Association of California, which is the second and largest home school group in Lompoc. Founded in 1982, the network is a private institution with over 200 local chapters in the state. Last year's Lompoc chapter included over 100 families. For a membership fee, families are provided with instructional materials and suggested curriculum as well as an extended support group.

Beverly Imano is a CHEA member and has homeschooled her three children since they were young, the oldest of which is twelve.

"We felt we could offer them more of an individualized academic education than the school system. And of course there's the faith based incentive," Imano said. "The more we did it the more we realized how many benefits there were."

Both LVHE and CHEA were the same organization over a dozen years ago. They eventually formed their current groups and many still interact, though there are disparate differences between the two.

The key difference is the Christian-based curriculum of CHEA as well as their organized structure. Meanwhile, LVHE is secular and more free-form: there are no membership fees, registration, pre-established curriculum or materials, or mission statements.

Members of both groups say they are able to offer their children a curriculum that addresses their child's personal learning style, something they feel a traditional school is not always able to do. Susie ForsterSaunders of LVHE said she didn't want her daughter to fall through the cracks like she did.

"When I went to elementary school, I was advanced in many subjects and behind in many subjects and I found that the school was not equipped to deal with my special learning needs," ForsterSaunders said.

Tom Goodman, who, with the help of his school board, started the Olive Grove Charter School based on that very issue.

"The goal is make it work for the kid, make it work for the family," Goodman said. "We're not a one-size fits all."

A number of home schooled children study at a more accelerated pace and end up taking college courses during their mid-teens. Daniel Senn, 13, of LVHE has been attending Allan Hancock part-time since he was 11. Goodman said he had eight students last year who graduated from high school with over a year of college work finished.

Goodman also has students who homeschool through the charter school because their extracurricular activities make a common school schedule impossible.

"We had two kids that went to the national amateur judo championships. We had two girls who went to the Olympic qualifying trials," Goodman said. "That's the beauty of this, we allow kids to pursue their passions."

In a poll by the National Center For Educational Statistics, thirty-one percent of parents cited concerns about public school environment as their main reason for homeschooling. The second-most cited reason, at thirty percent, was the desire to teach religious or moral lessons. The third-most cited reason, at sixteen percent, was dissatisfaction with the academic instruction of schools.

Meanwhile, LUSD say they are supportive of those that wish to take their child down a different path than their classrooms provide.

"The main thing is that not everybody fits into the 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. education box," said Kay Eatmon, LUSD director of curriculum. "We try to make education fit the kid instead of vice versa." Staff writer Mark Baylis can be reached at 736-2313, Ext. 105 or mbaylis@pulitzer.net