Parents browse the books for sale at Renovation CrossFit on Friday, July 21, for some learning material for their kids. According to Kirsten Heck, what doesn’t work for their kids may work for other kids when it comes to learning at home. Brian Ponce/Franklin Journal

LIVERMORE FALLS — On Friday, July 21, several families took over Renovation CrossFit, a family friendly gym tucked away behind the H&R Block on Main Street in Livermore Falls, to set up tables and sell school and art supplies, books, and sports equipment.

The common factor among all these families was they were all homeschooling families, with many of the kids present never once stepping foot into a public school.

The event was from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and also featured a bake sale with fresh lemonade, cookies, brownies and muffins.

Known as the True North Learning Collaborative, the group formed last year as a way to create a network of homeschooling parents that could play to each others strengths and better educate their children, board member Kirsten Heck said at the event.

“What we try to do is create an environment where they can learn a variety of subjects that perhaps are not our strengths,” Heck stated. “I am not a science and math person, I am writing, humanities, and arts.”

She continued, “One of our other mothers, she is biology. So she managed to create all sorts of science based units for us all. So we take turns, we play to each other’s strengths. That way the kids get the well rounded education.”

Carrie Spector, senior communications associate at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, reported in February of this year that students enrolled in the U.S. public school system have seen a significant decline since 2020, with roughly 1.2 million seeking other forms of education.

In her article, she details a collaboration between Stanford researchers and the Associated Press where they found, based on data provided by 21 states and Washington, D.C., that 14% of students who disenrolled from public school over the three-year period went to private schools, while 26% switched to homeschooling.

Heck, who has been homeschooling her children for roughly seven years, said it was she and her husband’s own qualms with the public school system that led her to seek alternatives in educating her child.

“We wanted the freedom and flexibility of making those choices,” she said. “We wanted a better handle on what they were being taught and didn’t want to put them through any of the struggles of being in public school with other kids and behavioral issues.”

According to Heck, the number of children with True North Learning Collaborative is in the ballpark of 22 kids from seven different families. She stated that in the last three years, the number of homeschooling children has increased drastically.

“It has exploded in the last couple of years,” she stated. “We’ve been homeschooling for quite a while now, but just in the last three years or so, Franklin County is just kind of off the charts with a number of home schoolers.”

Betsy Mancine, owner of Renovation CrossFit, is also a homeschooling parent, but uses her gym as a space for the kids to be able to get some energy out of their system.

“I wanted a place to work out that we could do it kind of in the pockets of the day,” Mancine said. “So I coach in the morning, I coach at night, and then we have CrossFit kids for homeschoolers during the middle of the day. So that was a way to keep our kids involved in different stuff.”

Though not a part of the True North Learning Collaborative, Mancine and other parents maintain a close network for events such as the yard sale, but Mancine also wanted to get the parents involved as well.

“Instead of the moms sitting around and waiting for their kids to get done,” she said, “like we typically do with music lessons and swim lessons and every other type of lesson, we started offering adult classes at the same time.”

For more information about the True North Learning Collaborative, email truenorthlcmaine@gmail.com. For more information about Renovation CrossFit, visit the website at www.renovationcrossfit.com.