Reporter: Taylor Petras
•8/4/2026
SOUTHWEST FLORIDA (WINK) — Next week thousands of students in Southwest Florida will be learning at home this school year. Homeschooling has become a popular option for families looking for a different approach to education.
Numbers from the Florida Department of Education show a 35 percent increase in homeschool students across the state from the 2019-2020 school year to the 2020-2021 school year during the pandemic.
Each day looks a little different for homeschool students Enzo and Lily Polanco. Not only are they learning their core subjects, they're also learning outside the classroom, visiting places like Shy Wolf Sanctuary and watching the historic Artemis rocket launch from the beach.
"We do math. We do science. We do all the things that you can think of," Lily Polanco, 7, said.
"I like that I do not sit in a room for 7.5 hours against four walls at a school," Enzo Polanco, 11, said.
Their mom, Christina Polanco-Bussell, says the biggest change she's seen in her children has been more than test scores.
"I've seen tremendous growth and a lot of it was self esteem more than anything. To me you should not have to break children in order for them to succeed," Polanco-Bussell said. "To me, we should be building them up, not trying to have them conform."
It was a similar story for Jennifer Moyer, a mother of five. She says homeschooling allows her to move at her children's pace.
"I don't have to push them every minute of every day," Moyer said. "Like we don't have to sit down for 6 straight hours. So if we can do 45 minutes right now, we can take a 30-40 minute break and give them a chance to rest their brains."
Sarah Gallant, the owner of The Homeschool Lab, helps families create that flexibility. She provides personalized lessons plans, tutoring and field trips for students and their families.
"I think a lot of people think homeschooled students are not social, but they are the busiest kids I know. They have full schedules," Gallant said. "Parents are driving everywhere all the time."
The Polanco children are excited for another busy school year.
"They're not sitting at home, not doing anything, not learning. They are actually ahead of the curve whereas unfortunately they were falling behind when they were in brick and mortar," Polanco-Bussell said.
Florida's homeschool voucher program provides families with an education savings account that averages out to about $8,000 each year. That money can be used for books, tutoring and virtual classes.
