to order we can't do anything else we for here but we can we can call on our great presenter you you all obviously know Michelle I I know pretty well that so I asked Michelle to do a presentation on homeschooling which uh was very much involved in and then she going to talk a little bit about the uh New Jersey National guardy na Michelle boy I tell you my girl not me that's my kids there's some handouts if you guys are interested presentation Junior commissioner okay so uh my husband and I homeschooled our kids for 13 years right here in Franklin yeah oh yeah you know what we loved it we actually absolutely loved it we don't have anything against the Franklin schools but this was definitely uh the choice for us um I think on that paper it tells you there are 3.1 million homeschoolers in the country right now I mean there's a lot and in New Jersey because we're so populated densely populated there are are a lot right here a lot of Princeton professors a lot of record professors home school their kids believe it or not so um really yeah yeah a lot of people so people come from all ethnic backgrounds um you know our best friends were uh kids of color we had uh Muslim kids we had um you know every SE socioeconomic background religious backgrounds or secular backgrounds there's uh just a whole bunch of whole bunch of different people like to homeschool um homeschoolers save about $51 billion in taxpayer money per year because we don't put our kids kids in the system and therefore you don't have to pay for them um the home educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public school students on standardized academic tests like the uh sat in particular um when you homeschool it allows you to really individualize the teaching to your children so if you have somebody who's slower in math but faster in English you can take your time in math you really don't want to progress um and you have the ability not to progress until your kid understands that math concept when you're in public school or private school you just got to go with the flow and you don't really have too much of a choice you got to get your extra help at home um but with homeschooling you can just you can stay on a subject until you've mastered it and then you can move on um so you can cater to the individual strengths and weaknesses of your kids um um which usually uh explains why homeschoolers have higher academic achievement because you're able to give extra time to your kids if they need it um and uh conversely you can also Advance them quicker if it's super easy for them you can just Breeze right through things um so lots of individual attention for your kids uh it offers families the flexibility to tailor the education according to uh their own needs and preferences if you have a special needs child maybe you have a child with dyslexia um or maybe you have somebody who you know boys I have two boys and a girl my kids are all one year apart so the boys were more fidgety than the girl so uh I think that is also the case in public schools boys have lots and lots of energy so you can kind of cater to that you can go on your go at your own pace you know do the whole Mastery thing of when you master a subject the best part for me was you can teach your children how to teach themselves which is a good skill right you don't you don't get that a lot um you can teach your child how to open up a book and read the lesson and you know you can choose to do it with them you can choose to see if they can manage it on their own and then you can help them all kinds of flexibility uh takes way less time to homeschool three children like I did in a day than it would take to put them in the public school for example you don't have to worry about switching classes or uh you know a whole period for lunch or gym and it's not that we didn't do those things I did feed my children uh lunch and breakfast and dinner um but they didn't have to take the bus and they didn't have to go to study hall and they don't have you know little interruptions like that so you can get the you can get the classes done you just a couple hours uh lots and lots and lots of field trips homeschooling moms do lots of field trips It's usually the moms often times dads too but mostly moms uh are at home um so everything from the post office to uh you know going in the back of the post office and seeing how your works I mean as adults we the moms Loved These field trips because who knows what happens back there but now I do um so any kind of field trip you could think of what do you guys think is the biggest question homeschooling parents get about their kids can you take a guess it's the one thing everybody always social right right I figured and told my mom right what about socialization social scale so for yeah yeah what now social social social social skills social social skills I talk you do talk F actually well it's common misconception um homeschooled kids and I'm going to I know I'm biased but I'm going to argue that homeschool kids are sometimes better socialized than Kids In traditional schools uh you get to you get to hang out with kids of all different ages the older kids get to help with the younger kids the younger kids learn learn from the older kids um we are constantly doing co-ops you know we don't sit in our basement with the lights down low in home school we we're out doing things with other homeschooling families and like I said there are lots in the area so these kids learn how to interact with other kids not just in their own age group but helping helping kids you know throughout all the age groups another thing is uh homeschool kids you know we teach them look at look at the adult in the eye when you're speaking to them and have a conversation we there's a lot of there's a lot of socialization that goes on so it's kind of a misconception um we encourag leadership as homeschoolers we did 4 we did Scouts we did uh Franklin catchup soccer club we were involved in everything uh that all the other children were involved in in fact we were even allowed to participate in um Franklin's uh extracurricular activities the board of education allows that um so that's that's actually we're very thankful to the board event for doing that it's nice we do pay the taxes anyway so it was lovely to be able to participate in anything from theater to sports uh lots of co-ops sometimes moms will get together my husband and I our uh education is in uh math and science so we were able to do those classes but I also love to teach English so some moms will take some things some dads will take some things and uh and and the kids the kids learn from from each other and from each other's parents too um and then the other really cool thing is Early Access to college you can um go to raran Valley at the age of uh I think you could do it in high school too right don't you have yeah we have con current enrollment programs which although you don't go to the school specifically you take the courses that are equivalent or directly taught by those cultes which is cool and back when I was homeschooling um distance learning wasn't such a big thing you know the virtual stuff so we could take our kids to the campuses and they could graduate with an Associates by the time you know they were 16 which is pretty cool you get to skip 2 years of college that way um there's a couple different styles of homeschooling one is called Charlotte Mason um Charlotte Mason was a teacher in England early 1900s uh uh that method cultivates a love for learning through engaging materials and experiences like books a lot a lot of book learning um learning from fiction and non-fiction alike Charlotte Mason style um focuses heavily on reading and nature going out and doing nature studies in your yard and Parks uh crafts and activities then there are people who do unschooling which is an actual form of homeschooling and that's kind of montor like you get the it's child Le so you would teach fractions to your child by baking cookies you know a half a cup and a/4 cup and we personally did not do unschooling makes me nervous to do unschooling because it's very unstructured and I'm not that kind of of person but there are lots of parents that are and their kids turn out to be pretty darn smart um then there's traditional where you can get lesson plans like um like a company there are lots of companies especially after Co company after company it provides homeschool materials and K through 12 it's book learning you get a teachers manual just like you do in public schools so that's a very traditional way to do it and then there's classical education which is the method my husband and I chose uh chose and that's modeled after ancient Greek and uh Roman way of teaching their kids it emphasizes the trivan which is three stages uh hence the name trivan there's the grammar stage the logic stage and the rhetoric stage um each stage Builds on the foundation of the previous stage so it's a really well-rounded education uh that really emphasizes critical thinking um effective communication and definitely a deep deep understanding of every subject that you're learning that first stage the grammar stage it's all memorization when kids are little that elementary school age they're like sponges you know you can teach them languages if you multiple languages in your home these kids come out speaking one two three languages they just you just give them facts and they'll they'll memorize those things so you could teach your kids in those Elementary years the presidents from Washington to um Joe Biden and they will remember that for the rest of their lives because that's what those little brains are meant to do at that age they're just like little sponges so uh emphasis on on Phonics and spelling and vocabulary in those early years the foundations for Math and Science we chose to also teach Latin which is a dead language but my husband and I again we're science majors and sat science Latin is excellent for vocabulary uh you can't really beat it the middle school years are called the logic stage and that's where you develop your critical thinking and your analytical skills um if you've heard of the Socratic method you do a lot of asking of questions to your students and they do a lot of answers uh they analyze literature they identify themes and characters and literary devices um history you examine kind of the cause and effect of different relationships uh throughout the world history and we always study primary sources you know how you go to um maybe middle school and you get your back in the old days you got your uh soci not sociology what was it called what was history called back in your social studies you got your little social studies book and that's what you used for the air well instead of that we use the Declaration of Independence the Constitution the Magna card know we read the actual documents and we study and we study those um we do use books to help us like to guide us um and then we do a lot of fiction reading for for history there's a lot of great fictional stories that are historical fiction that kids just they absolutely soak that up they love that kind of stuff um you do a little bit more of advanced mathematics a little bit more of independent resarch search for your science in those Middle School years um and then you have the final stage which is high school and we call that the rhetoric stage and that's where you take all of those things that you learned uh as you build through grammar school and U Middle School you take that uh that logic stage oh and by the way in the logic stage we actually taught logic this the subject of logic I think every school should teach logic we would have uh you have a different Society I think people could um if people could do logic and then take that those high school years the rhetoric and they would refine uh their communication skills and learn to articulate their ideas um intelligently you know learn logical fallacies learn how to make an argument and support your argument with uh with reasons um and facts so that's the retor rhetoric stage um our kids did debate that was also part of the r rhetoric stage uh essay writing academic writing my kids can write a sentence and I say that because a lot of adults can't write sentences I know a lot of adults that can't use a capital letter in a period And I think that some of these things are missing in the school system not a criticism of of schools necessarily you know you do have to teach a lot of children one teacher you know gets a whole room full of kids it's something that's missing sometimes um what else our kids did public speaking our library offers the best programs um they do uh what's the Toast Masters I think it is used to come to library I don't know if she doesn't anymore but the woman who runs Toast Masters in this area used to teach kids and we would do that public speaking course right here in our library and you know all the other awesome things that they do in our Library chess all that good stuff um so I'm going through very quickly in conclusion uh homeschoolers succeed and perform statistically better than those that are in regular schools they participate in all kinds of community Serv Services more frequently uh they tend to vote more often and these are if you ever are interested in where I get this information from there's it's it is available online I might have put it on that paper um and they succeeded at at College uh pretty well very low Dropout R uh rate so um so that's what I did for 13 years you guys have any questions question I do have question you do tell me what do you got so after a couple of questions the first question is yeah that's wonderful so the first question is uh what are the the biggest challenges for homeschooling for parents you know what I loved it um sometimes here's another thing you hear the socialization thing but you also hear from parents I could never do that I could never spend all that time with my children in one day so having three kids one year apart there was some bickering sometimes you know sometimes guys it's time to do your math and they roll their off eyes but they do that in school too teacher says put your books away we're going to have a quiz everybody goes so I mean it's that kind of thing but otherwise this area fantastic area to homeschooling because there are so many homeschoolers in so you share the the resources and the kids and the books and all of them are shared you can we don't have to and we didn't do it all the time but there were times where we would do like a huge history project we we'd study ancient egyp that's another thing I didn't mention in history we started at the beginning and we end at the end so we started in Ancient Ancient not even ancient Egypt ancient Sumeria uh you know the Crescent Circle the Crescent Circle what's the Fertile Crescent the fertile Cresent fredes and tigers yes Mr tis no I was impressed by when you first started I was going a I would take a negative view not a negative view but what the type of you how are you going to teach your your how are you going to teach the kids that's the first thing came my mind and you immediately answered that by saying you teach kids how to teach themselves and I thought that was quite impressive you know it's a good skill and that that takes a hell of a skill to teach kids how to teach themselves yeah and I can understand and I understood everything you were saying it reminded me of Alex because I know Alex was totally into what you was talking I thought that was an excellent presentation and I couldn't take my eyes off you explaining what homeschooling was Melle Peterson we l it yeah so I have a followup question do you do the testing assessment and so forth so you can you're not required in New Jersey but you can oh I see okay New Jersey is very lenient they don't make you report nothing I don't have to tell the Board of Ed that I'm even that I even exist if I don't want to some states you have to New Jersey homeschoolers test so well that the state has always left us alone you don't have you don't hear of a lot of uh neglected children not being schooled so uh let's say I'm a parent I only have a high school degree and I want to do homeschooling so I don't have the degree Bachelors or back PD or whatever tell me how can I do that you can you can do it if you have a high school degree you can get your kid through high school and moms do and they do a fantastic job at it there are so many resources and even before Co I had so many resources that it would take me weeks to figure out what I wanted to teach my kids the following year in addition to that there is online learning even before Co we had online learning my daughter did an advanced chemistry class online uh and then we perform the experiments with her at home uh and by the way my kids my daughter Samantha she's got a degree two degrees in molecular biology and um biochemistry and she's an analytical chemist from MC right now um so we were able to teach those things of course I do have a bachelor's degree and are you saying that's not that's not illegal not to send your PID to school that's not illegal no nothing illegal about it you do have to school them the CH the children legally you must School them can't just let them sit home all day and play video games or anything like that but it's not illegal absolutely not who watches this I mean what is the is there a government Board of Education New Jersey Board of Education that comes once in a while to assess how things going not in New Jersey okay but in Pennsylvania yes and in New York yes so New Jersey no and I'm telling you say so well but we perform so well they've never bothered us and you don't and again you don't have you know you would know you could go to dius and maybe look at their records do they have a lot of records of abandoned children that are homeschooled that are not getting any any education probably not a whole lot you probably have some public I mean you know there's definitely public school kids who are Trent or maybe don't have two parents in the house maybe don't have a parent this out so tell me about the cost so I'm a parent wanted to home school my kids I have two kids I wanted to know how much is going to cost you of course I'm paying the taxes you're paying the taxes right so now I have to how much more money I need to spend besides the time right just the MoneyWise what will cost for me to educate my kids High School great question so you can do it anywhere from free to spending maybe $1,500 a year per child on materials just like college books you know you go and you get your bi ology book for your bachelor's biology 101 and for some reason that book cost $235 not just a book homeschool you know educational books tend to be a little bit more expensive and there are programs and there are that you know this and that that you can do you can take part in a um Church there's just there's so many extra things so those costs can but if you don't have a lot of money you can absolutely homeschool your kids but you know to do some science and all these project art and so forth we got to buy a lot of materials too you sometimes yep you can you do have to buy Sub can you share with other absolutely share we did that a lot because not you know not every mom wants to open up the glitter in their living room so you know one of us will do it it was usually at my house for some reason vocabulary analysis but and then we would do like a like a co-op of of what we try to do is tie things together so if you're doing history and you're teaching middle-age um thankfully I homeschooled before I turned 55 because I can't think of anything anymore middle the middle ages right I'm middle-aged the Middle Ages you're teaching that then you can teach the science of uh Galileo and um you know uh Isaac Newton and all those those kind you can um actually tie all these things together and there are programs Who tie it together for you so that you don't really have to think too hard on it they'll give you a lesson plan and you can follow it um but yeah it could be super expensive or you could really do it for close to nothing it is possible the library has excellent excellent books as always great presentation just one question when your daughter started looking [Music] College col CH home school transcripts detailed transcripts just like you would get at the high school um and I would argue that mine were pretty impressive because my daughter did some really amazing studies in her high school years and by the way she got a full tuition scholarship to binmar which is one of the female IVs the original female IVs um8 $86,000 a year she got thank God because can you imagine sending your kid to you know even sending your child to records cost you a fortune but um but yeah so my daughter got full tuition scholarship and my boys are different because uh they've been going to ran Valley Community College that's paid for by uh one the yeah they're they're they're paid for with the GI does the last question does the universities uh make a preferential uh treatment for the students that are homeschooled versus Public Schools I wonder if they do now back in the day so my guys are in their mid 20s now back then it was it was just becoming more popular the the colleges were just sort of getting used to the fact that there were a lot of homeschoolers coming to apply to college so but but their resumés I have to say look pretty good our transcripts look good we we always provided the books and the exact you know like when you're when you're studying classical writing through ASAP and Homer it it looks impressive and honestly it is impressive because your kids are learning excellent you know you can cater to exactly what you want to teach them okay did you how many hours did they did it take did you break it up or is it you could be super flexible if you had a doctor's appointment in the morning or if you wanted to do a field trip in the morning you could home school at night and you could get it done in just a few hours because your kids are really learning how to teach themselves at a certain point maybe not so much in the elementary years but later on Middle School years you can you know you get homework in middle school it's like like it's almost like homework in a way um okay did you did you pick now like one room to be like a some people have a home going inside the bedroom or and some people use the kitchen table the same kitchen table that we that we had during homeschooling it's very welled hours a day no gosh no oh no when the kids are little you can teach them very quickly a lot of things uh in 2 hours and then 4 hours later on I'm telling you you don't have to get on the bus you have to change classes you don't have all the the auditorium events or you know you 4 hours of solid study you're you're good okay great um now I apologize for the attendance usually have good attendance so but graduation um do you want to talk a bit about National Guard yeah New Jersey National Guard deploy um deployed 1500 soldiers, 1500 of our guys and girls from New Jersey are now serving in the Middle East um and there is a conflict there so it is an interesting time to be serving um my two guys are in artillery the majority of the National Guard and uh uh Phil Murphy announced this so it's not a secret they went to alassad Airbase in Iraq uh my two guys did not they are out in little outposts they're not together they're about 50 Mi apart from each other they won't see each other during that during their entire deployment I'm sure but uh the National Guards throughout the United States do deploy they rotate so if you're a National Guard doesn't NE necessarily mean you're protecting your state or deployed to a hurricane or something like that you do actually go overseas you're not from this unit here they signed up at this unit so this unit does a lot of recruiting these guys go to all the high schools uh my son's one of them signed up at 17 years old and the other one at 18 the one that signed up at 18 went active duty um Special Forces artillery and served in fair bags Alaska so it's interesting he went from- 40° literally to he's an 115° and I'm telling you those guys I didn't complain at all last week I wanted to but I bit my talk because my guys are out there and all not my guy the 1,500 of plus right there's plenty of people overseas full military gear they're not allowed to go to the restroom without their helmets on without their weapons so I mean they're carrying 50 lb of gear on their bodies just like I'm sure you know you guys carry a lot of gear too and it's 115° interestingly enough my guys are in the little Outpost they don't have uh they don't have a defac the I forget what that stands for do you know is it name in The Police Academy it's the food they don't they don't feed you necessarily my guys get a a small stien but they have to use the cash that they they brought to go out and buy their food every day so they have to go to the market which I think is you know as Army mom I say why me out there I'll cook them food all day long don't send my boys to the market but they they do they go to the market it's very interesting I don't know too much now they can't tell me you know too much but maybe when they're home I'll learn more but we do have some pretty brave men and women from New Jersey uh moms dads spouses children serving in the Middle East right now thank you Michelle as always I said I apologize we don't have a quum so but thank you I appreciate presentation as always so we don't have you can stay we're going we're going to end very quickly um we don't have a quum so I can't okay the minute uh but I do want to introduce our a new Junior commissioner U he he's known as aier the way okay yeah I I appointed you but Alex is going to at the next C council meeting he will officially announce that you've been appointed the jity commissioner okay and of course we will We Wish Quin the best of luck he just graduated yeah I'm going to New Brunswick the school of environmental and biological sciences and I usually and I usually go to the graduation I usually get an invitation but this year because of the people I was there and believe me it was hot it was very hot so conrat glad nobody got sick you've been a great commissioner you've been a great help to me and uh we'll miss you but you can come to us anytime thank you I may show up to one of the meetings again at some point okay is that Franklin High School yes ABS welcome a police report you have any police report for us yes sir we have so we have our National Night Out Tuesday August 6th right here in the municipal complex from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. the uh five works Wednesday July 3rd uh um our food food distribution is also getting so the first Wednesday of every month so we're going to have it July 3rd also and um it's changed it used to be over by commun relation V 1935 hon street now we've uh we've been doing it over our First Baptist Church yeah bigger spot right a little safer everyone Hamilton yeah it's uh you doing your food work in progress yeah the distri yeah the food distribution first Wednesday it's uh we do it at the First Baptist you're doing at First Baptist now oh okay you get all have your food food back correct or your was do it on stre TR yeah traffic so we have our Youth Academy our police uh Youth Academy that are running it's um start on Thursday July 11th going to run till the 19th and uh at the end of the month we're going to have the uh Canal can I roll the Walk and Roll so it's going to be Sunday July 28th from 10: in the morning to 4:00 p.m. that's going to be the uh we're going to close the north section of the canal between East M and Butler for the July 28th and the south side of it which is between gtown cway down to 518 that's going to be August 25th Sunday August 25th same time 10 in the morning okay thank you any questions I think in September there is a DMV truck yes right I think that's you I don't want to go that farad okay just a couple of other things uh um the 17 the AI board had had had had another meeting last week on the Kart shopping center we did not finish we're still talking about it there's been a lot of a lot of complaints and a lot of things so the the next uh the meeting on that is July second I think July second so we haven't voted yet a lot of people as you know are complaining uh with the parking lot but but you know our point is when K was there that parking lot was packed so all these people are complaining but I understand they they have some concerns about how the young kids are going to be walked from the from the apartment if I gets approved to mcdonal so we're still talking about it and the other thing on the agenda um edner was still working on the flags on the on the other Town project we'll hold that off till the next meeting our the next uh meeting is on July 24th we're going to be talking about the YMCA and the township and I don't have anything else so there's there's a big big let me just add one other event that we have in Township on the 29th this Saturday there is a Big E celebration uh there's over 500 people have signed up is going to be at the middle school it was supposed to be at the JS what is this is the eat celebration so it's uh it's pretty big event uh I think if you can come enjoy some food others it's on June 29th Saturday 5:00 p.m. at uh Middle School mle SCH a different name for next meeting Middle School Saturday be simp very very brief goe simp things um that dat of this Saturday this Saturday right 29th and U let tell you exactly that's not the concert no no no it's not a concert no it's just the E celebration John Johnny read your email I I I sent that invitation to the to the whole ahrc so okay so you should have got them well there's two things I want to I like to throw a little fruit the game U the National Night Out yes sir uh I I was all downtown in are you going ride around with on the fire truck and they us have they us have some truck park inside on the side yeah they us have they R around the town they had the bu on the back of the truck I mean somebody had the lights on supped to have your lights on doing the time and that's that's what KN met out was was having your lights on and you you be friendly you be friendly with your neighbors and so forth that's how it was designed I was in the gun several times when the first came about this other thing it tickles me to see um this whole going on about with the with the Kmart thing and it tickets me all you guys you know I sit back and look at you guys let me tell you what what the hood come from we I'm going to go down there one night and get up on the microphone I'm telling Mr Lerner everybody in the hood is with you Mr Lerner we would love to see you have some nice big Apartments some affordable apartments cuz we ain't got nowhere to live now if you promis this town ship that you have some low income apartments in that space there that you but that's where he first got that idea from that we will support you as many as we can to have you build and then you have the clientele for the for the supermarket and you have clientel for the Kmart I mean for the other other stores there you have a built-in clientele so we wish you would build us some low income apartments cuz we don't have no low income apartments nowhere in Franklin is being proposed and we all all desperately need because you know they running justification of us down in the fourth FL and they building all those luxury apartments and can't now one of us support now one of them so yes we will we would support you against all them people in there and they got the traffic violations and the traffic studies and the boooo and the boooo we really wish we can get some appartments well there is actually low inome they never say that though that's where that first idea came from though they have some low income where I'm talking about what you be having all meetings about it all day long the all night with people coming to the m I just want let you know come to the own meeting I amton Apartments filled you know all the new the new stuff that's what he wants to do they turned around so many the retail is open talking about the the yeah the that they had it at Hamilton Street there was the five story at the bottom they're going to have the parking lot and the daycare and then they have the residential turn it into some low income that's consistent with the Hamilton Street that's what we people there talking about all this oh we want some low income let the man build some par um School midle scho talk 'll talk to about your position secretary and PDF and everything else can there so much out there you can choose anything and if your kids are in regular school yeah we'll just do the okay the minutes of last time this time can send it to him but like we can't believe counil yet because we don't have fix up the minutes and then once it's declared you can send this month's minutes and a lot of reasons probably some parents they were listening to like that also some parents said oh we can do this and some parents