On an early Saturday morning in the summer of 2016, my husband and I brewed a pot of coffee and sat down on our sun porch with a map of the United States. Our three children were still in their beds, unaware that we were strategically planning where they would spend the rest of their childhoods.
At that time, my husband was a police officer for our midwestern town, and I taught at a local school. My parents lived nearby, and we saw them almost every day. We were invested in our community. We were active members of our church. We started a nonprofit organization, organized 5K races, and volunteered for a variety of charities. My husband had even written a book on local history.
Yet after spending years putting down roots, here we were planning to leave it all behind and move across the country because our community was missing something. We did not have a school for our children through high school that supported our parenting philosophy. Our local district was on the cutting edge of the latest ideological curriculum. We only get one shot at raising our children, and knowing what was being taught in the schools near our home, I refused to put my children into these classrooms.
“We could move.” After listening to my emotional rants about the direction of the educational system, my husband’s solution was simple. If our community could not provide for our children’s needs, we could find another community. I know that sounds
