San Antonio Standard

A mother of six in San Antonio has home-schooled all her children for nearly three decades and says they all excelled beyond children their age who received a public school education.

Ione McGinty has six children ranging in age from 14 to 29, five boys and one girl, and her youngest is a special needs son who has Down syndrome. She told the San Antonio Standard that all her children have excelled from the home school experience.

Speaking of her special needs son, she said, "he's been such a blessing." McGinty says he has a case manager who ensures her son gets everything through the county. The manager indicated to McGinty that "I have done absolutely the best thing for him in home schooling him compared to the public school kids that she sees. I mean, he reads, writes does math....he works, he volunteers once a week. He's very, very high functioning ... so we are all very grateful."

McGinty said when she and her husband decided to have children, she wanted to stay home and teach them. Thirty years ago this was not as popular a choice as it is today.

"Thirty years ago it was not as big of a thing or popular; no Facebook, Instagram, no home-school groups," she said. "It was pretty much, basically, I'd always wanted to have children, always wanted to be a mom."

When her first son was born, she said, "at the time, it did not make sense to me and my husband to send him to school, for him to be away from us 8 hours a day."

She added, "By time he was 6, he was already reading at a very high level. He could read the whole Book of Revelation. He could read he read out loud to us. So with that kind of how we started just teaching, phonics, teaching, reading. And, we just took it a day at a time. We didn't have a long-term plan."

McGinty said her first son was actually teaching her and her husband some things. "...he was telling us so it became a joy in that we were learning things."

Home schooling also taught her children to be flexible.

"That's one thing my daughter told us," McGinty said. "She is 23 now and she's very grateful. She learned how to be flexible in a day."

McGinty said she focused on reading, writing and arithmetic and her children all were high achievers. 

"We gave them the basics, and then the took off. They would read whatever was in front of them," McGinty said. 

Her older four children who have all graduated and have gone to college and trade school have "a lifelong love or reading and learning."

"Another reason that we home-schooled was that we wanted our kids to have relationships with each other," she said. "That was probably the second big reason we wanted. Number one, we wanted to be with our kids. Number two, we wanted our kids to be close...and they are--they are each other's best friends." 

McGinty has seen a shift toward home schooling in the past few years.

"Yes, I've noticed a huge explosion," she said. "I'm in a Facebook group of San Antonio home-schoolers and I've seen that there is just bigger community connection. And I've also seen lately, especially with the the changes in the schools, people unhappy with the local school district, turning to home schooling--unhappy with the rules, the regulations at school and the lack of common education. People are turning to home schooling."  

The number of San Antonio homeschool Facebook page members is 7,200, more than double what it had a few years ago, she says.

While home schooling her children, McGinty said they also took part in extracurricular activities such as sports, volunteering, Boy Scouts and ballet.

She said she is "just not happy with how my tax dollars are being spent." McGinty says she lives on a very low income and much of the curriculum for her children were given to her or bought at garage sales. 

"Compared to the public school and the amount of money that is spent I feel like I have a lot better, more successful track record than the public schools," she said.

Her children took a test for college credit and they were able to get a year's worth of college credits while in high school.

McGinty advocates for more tax dollars going to home-schoolers.

"As a home-school mom, if I'm teaching my kids at home, I feel like my tax dollars should go to me, not the school district," she said. "I am not even allowed to go onto the school property. This is something that I advocated for when I was running for the school board; if I am paying taxes to the school district, I should have access to the running track, the basketball court, the tennis courts.

"I'm educating my kids. I'm taking personal responsibility for my kids. I think the money should stay with me."