The number of home-schooled children in Florida saw its biggest increase in five years during 2014-15, according to a recently released Florida Department of Education report.
Last year, the state counted 84,096 children in home schooling, up 9.6 percent from a year earlier.
The number of families involved rose by a much smaller 2.6 percent, suggesting that a big chunk of the growth could be related to youngsters in those families growing old enough for school.
The largest spike in home-schooled students prior to that, according to the Florida Department of Education data, was a 10.7 percent increase from 2010 to 2011, when there were 69,281 students from 6,714 families.
Since that time, the number of students has risen about 21 percent.
The top districts in 2014-15, by total number of home-schooled children, were Duval, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Broward, Orange, Dade, Brevard, Polk, Pinellas and Pasco counties.
In Southwest Florida, Sarasota County had the largest number of home-schooled children: 1,315 from 950 families. Manatee County was second, with 1,260 kids from 958 families.
Charlotte County had 584 home-schooled students from 567 families.
Three Tampa area school districts landed in the top 10 statewide for having the most home-schooled students. Hillsborough came in third, with 5,560, while Pinellas ranked ninth with 3m089 and Pasco rounding out the list with 3,011. At the top was Duval County’s 6,106 students.
— Information from the Tampa Bay Times was used in this report
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