When Homeroom Is a Home Room

In the immediate hours after her house burned down last month, and once she and her children were safely being treated at Southampton Hospital, Judi Bistrian said her thoughts quickly turned to a Parrish Art Museum field trip that she and her two children had planned to attend.

“We were supposed to be getting ready for the Parrish, and I realized we weren’t going to make it,” Ms. Bistrian said.

She has home-schooled her two children, Violet, 11, and Roman, 4, since her daughter was in second grade at the Springs School. When the contents of her house on Accabonac Road went up in flames, she also lost the curriculum that she uses to educate her children. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association, which provides services to home-schooling families, and of which Ms. Bistrian is a paying member, is working to replace the lost materials.

Over the past month, the close-knit home-school community has come to the family’s aid — lending books and desks, and donating overflowing bins of art supplies.

“The whole home-school community, people we didn’t even know,” Ms. Bistrian said from the three-bedroom mobile home that now sits adjacent to her tarp-covered house. Until construction can begin on a new house, she keeps the living room blinds drawn to obscure the view.

“We just can’t believe the support. People have been coming out of the woodwork.”

Though passionate and close-knit, the number of South Fork families who home-school their children is tiny, particularly when compared to the number of children enrolled in local public schools. In East Hampton, for example, Debbie Mansir, the programs coordinator at the high school, said that district-wide, two families are home-schooling their children this school year. In Springs, Eric Casale, the school principal, said that just two families had submitted letters of intent to home-school their children.

In order to home-school, each family must submit an annual letter of intent to their local school district. In addition, families must specify which curriculum is being used and also submit quarterly progress reports. New York State mandates 225 hours of schooling per quarter.

The question Teresa Loos, an East Hampton resident who home-schools her daughter, Abigial, is asked most commonly is “Home-schooling? Is that legal?” Abigail, now 14, has been home-schooled since she was 4.

Two weeks ago, Ms. Loos organized a field trip with the Group for the East End, an environmental nonprofit, at Northwest Creek in East Hampton. The organization runs environmental education programs in schools across the East End. Two dozen families, from all across Long Island, signed up for the survival-skills course. The cost was $10 per school-age child.

The East Hampton Homeschool Group, which Ms. Loos runs, organized the trip. When conceiving of possible destinations, she quickly discovered that South Fork families generally will not travel west of the Shinnecock Canal. This fall and winter, the group has various excursions planned — from ice-skating to touring a mushroom farm to visiting a chocolatier, among dozens more. From Southampton to Montauk, Ms. Loos counts 30 families as members.

Ms. Loos decided to home-school her daughter, who suffers from auditory processing issues, when she was slow to talk. Before home-schooling Abigail, Ms. Loos ran a sewing and alterations business out of her house. Her husband works as a contractor. Ms. Loos also runs a lending library out of her house, loaning boxes of grade-level curriculum materials to local families. Yearly materials can cost upwards of $900, she said, with some families opting to hire outside tutors, most commonly for music and math.

When not fielding questions about the legality of her decision, she is frequently bombarded with questions about whether such children receive adequate socialization in the absence of their school-age peers. 

“You can be as social as you want,” said Ms. Loos. “There’s something going on just about every day.”

Walking around Northwest Creek, Davana Grabel, who lives in Hampton Bays, said she has home-schooled her two daughters, Ona, 13, and Isira, 11, all their lives.

“I like all the classes we can do that you wouldn’t normally be able to do,” said Ona, a dancer.

“I want to be an artist,” said her sister Isira, while wandering along the shore, searching for potential food sources and collecting scallops and mussels in a red bucket.

Danielle Rodriguez, a mother of three children from Holbrook, said she does a lot of driving, frequently crisscrossing Long Island several times in one week. She owns a wellness center in Sayville.

“I thought the kids would really enjoy it,” she said of the survival course. “It gets them outdoors on such a lovely day. Especially since we’ll be locked indoors for the rest of the winter.” Nearby her children constructed a shelter made entirely of reeds.

Now a month since the fire, life is only beginning to return to normal for the Bistrian family — and still not quite. “We’re a little behind on the schooling,” admitted Ms. Bistrian. Violet sat at the kitchen table, meticulously tending to a 500-piece puzzle. Roman was still asleep.

When Ms. Bistrian is out with her children, particularly during school hours, she frequently draws the attention of passersby, who ask why her children are not in school.

“Growing up, I didn’t know anyone that home-schooled,” said Ms. Bistrian, who initially feared being seen as an outcast. She pulled her daughter out of Springs School because she felt that her needs were not being met. Her husband, Rob Bistrian, is the captain of a commercial fishing boat. Ms. Bistrian is a stay-at-home mother.

Since deciding to home-school, the family has never once looked back.

“It gives us a lot of freedom,” said Ms. Bistrian. “It’s a lot of work, but you get into a routine. We work straight on through, one subject after another, and we’re done by lunchtime and have the whole day free,” she said.

 Though Ms. Bistrian gives Violet the option of returning to school every year, the plan, for now, is to home-school her two children until 12th grade. “We’re taking it year by year,” she said.