James and Bonnie Sturgis are the kind of parents any school would like to claim. He's highly educated, has four degrees. She's an energetic, stay-at-home mom who spends hours each week carting their four children to activities near their Palm Beach County, Fla., home. They are involved parents, committed to their children's education—just not committed to the public schools. The Sturgises are home-schoolers, part of a growing movement that rejects many of the practices-and, at times, the very premises—of public education. Home-schoolers believe that parents are the best teachers, that family-centered education trumps the typical K-12 experience anytime, that only by separating themselves from a cumbersome and, some say, morally corrupt system can they retain control of their children's lives. In the past, the response of many school board members has been: 'If they don't want what we offer, let them go.' And on those occasions when home-schooled students asked to try out for the football team, play in the band, or enroll in high-level science classes, the response has often been 'no'. But that's changing. More school districts are opening courses and extracurricular activities to home-schoolers, and the rhetoric is softening. The district's former policy toward home-schooling 'wasn't friendly at all,' says Renee Sessler, a board member for the Reynolds School District, near Portland, Ore.. 'It said, we're not going to do anything for you.' Last year, the board opened physical education, music programs, and other activities and courses to home-schoolers. Extracurricular activities have also been opened to home-schoolers in Palm Beach County and districts throughout Florida since a state law was passed in 1996. Now every school system in the state has a coordinator who handles relations between the district and home-schooling parents. 'I think, certainly, in the last five years or so there's a different climate,' says Mike Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which advocates for the interests of home-schoolers and goes to court on their behalf. 'Not everywhere, but it's changing.' Why the new attitude? For one thing, it's good public relations. As any board member knows, it's better to work with disillusioned parents than drive them farther away. And it's good business to get a portion of the full-time equivalent funding for the period that home-schoolers are in school. From the introduction of the Sturgises, we learn that