So this brings us back to the idea above of having a team of specialist tutors rather than one teacher. And in the above analysis, nominally those tutors can be paid $40/hr, and we can buy 40 hours of specialist tutors every week for 36 weeks before we burn through our $60K budget. I am becoming convinced this may be more workable for the simple reason that its more flexible and less of an all-or-nothing approach.
Reading homeschooling forums, it looks like many parents with elementary school age children do not not spend more than 2-3 hours a day on academics. I don't think children can handle 8 hours a day of direct instruction. Teachers are not providing instruction throughout the elementary school days. There is lunch (sometimes also breakfast) and recess, and "drop everything and read" (DEAR), also known as sustained silent reading. In some elementary school classrooms the children start the day by sitting on a rug and talking about what is happening in their lives. There are assemblies.
So you may not need 40 hours a week of tutoring at $40/hour but instead 15-20 hours of tutoring and 20-25 hours of babysitting, unless you do the latter yourself. Many people have observed that schools are in part educational institutions and in part day care centers. With three children and both of us working, we certainly value both aspects.
Good luck with your homeschooling/tutoring experiment.
