RED WING, Minn. — With the majority of kids back in the classroom this week, more Minnesota students are learning right from the comforts of their own home.
According to data from the Minnesota Department of Education, there were more than 29,000 students in Minnesota that were homeschooled last year, which is a 10% increase from the previous year.
So why the increase?
In the National Household Education Survey (NHES), parents said they homeschooled their children for a variety of reasons with the majority doing it because they are concerned about school safety, drug use or negative peer pressure.
Others were dissatisfied with how the curriculum was taught or they wanted to include religious teachings.
KARE 11's Alicia Lewis caught up with a Minnesota mom who homeschools her kids to hear why she decided to go that route.
"COVID kind of forced us to homeschool because we didn't want a really awkward school experience for her," said Angela McGuire who teaches both her 9-year-old daughter Alysa and 6-year-old son Will from their home in Red Wing. "We had already kind of started thinking, okay, so many people homeschool ... there's tons of resources and I just kind of felt like homeschooling could be an option for our family."
McGuire added she wasn't surprised that more families are deciding to homeschool.
"When people got like a taste for it, they could say like, 'Oh, we could do this,'" McGuire said. "There's so many online options too. You don't have to do what we do, which is teach every subject. You can have someone else teach subjects, but they're just doing it at home."
According to the Minnesota Department of Education, homeschooling is predominately financed by the parents. However, Minnesota does have "Nonpublic Pupil Aids" that parents may claim by Sept. 15 of each year through their public school district superintendent's office to help.