We are excited about the possibilities that Baptist Homeschool Academy (BHA) affords its enrollees and their respective families. BHA is a hybrid Homeschool and Academy, as it draws from the strengths of each and melds them into a superior education. Traditional home schooling is a wonderful way to school your children. It allows the parents to tailor make the educational experience to the desires of the parents and needs of the child. While the home schooling option is filled with tremendous possibilities, it also has its challenges and limitations. In an effort to address these challenges and limitations, we have formed the BHA.
Specific Challenges and Limitations that are Overcome at BHA:
· Diligence, Orderliness and Promptness
o We will have specific tasks that will be required to be accomplished each day. By schooling at home two days in the week, one will have to ensure their day’s work is accomplished before returning to the Academy on the next day.
o While in the Academy, there will be a consistent structure that the students will find refreshing and encouraging. When schooling at home, there always seems to be something that pops up and diverts our attention from schooling. The days in the Academy will keep us on track and ensure we don’t fall behind or miss important teaching material trying to “catch back up”.
· Positive Peer Pressure
o Parents are typically very leery of peer pressure. Peer pressure is good, when it is positive. We are employing a number of safeguards to ensure the peer pressure stays positive and reinforcing and not distractive and destructive.
· Curriculum Help
o We will have a full-time staff on the Academy days to direct the students through the curriculum and answer any questions they have from their home school days. This consistent and easily accessible help is hard to find in the Homeschool environment.
· Group Activities and Experiments
o In traditional homeschooling, it is hard to find a group that consistently provides relevant activities. We will have a number of curriculum-reinforcing / life-relevant activities for our students and their respective families. We will also have group science experiments and crafts that will be a great help to the visual learning process.
· God Honoring Environment
o It’s hard to find a good God honoring environment to school in. We plan to ensure that the schooling environment stays just that. In our BHA, we plan to honor God in our appearance, speech, study habits, relationships, ethics and morals.
Tuition and Fees
· Lower Tuition
o Because we are only in the Academy three days a week, the tuition is substantially lower than other Academies.
· Fees
o The yearly tuition rate covers the three days of school, each week, and the core instruction that goes with it.
o Curriculum costs also vary based on student and grade, hence the curriculum cost is “in addition to” the tuition cost. The curriculum cost for each core subject is $35 per year.
o Since not all students will take extra curricular classes, we have come up with a “Pay as You Play” fee structure.
o Refer to the “BHA Tuition Fee Sheet” for additional information in this area.
Distinctly Baptist
· Our Baptist brethren have fought hard through the years to ensure that we have the freedoms in our country that we all enjoy, and that enable us to openly school in this fashion.
o Did you realize that John Leland was a Baptist? John Leland is credited for the first ten Amendments to our Federal Constitution. These Amendments are known as the Bill of Rights, which include our freedom of speech and religion.
o Did you know that the “Bible Belt” was a product of the Sandy Creek Baptist Church Revival, which spawned a Separate Baptist movement planting over 2,100 Baptist Churches across what we know as the “Bible Belt” today?
· We have chosen Landmark Freedom Baptist Curriculum due to its inclusion of Baptist History and Doctrine. While we will allow other denominations to participate in BHA, each will come in with the understanding that Baptist History and Doctrine will be taught unapologetically.
· Not only does Landmark Freedom Baptist Curriculum maintain solid Baptist Distinctives, it is also quite academically sound, and is on par with Abeka and A.C.E.
We have prayed about the formation of BHA for some time now and are seeing it come together. This is an opportunity that I previously never thought possible. BHA will be the “Best of Both” as we bring together the strengths of Homeschooling and a Directed Studies Academy into One, producing an educational experience that has the potential to excel in both. If this is what you’ve been looking for, please contact us via our contact link on this web site.
Chris Kaiser, BHA Administrator
