Pembroke Pines Online Home School, Accredited K-12 for Broward County Families
It’s 6:40 AM in Pembroke Pines. A nurse drops her second grader at abuela’s house before a Memorial Hospital shift. A competitive swimmer leaves C.B. Smith Park with wet hair and a 9 AM pre-algebra lesson waiting on a tablet. A third grader who reads beautifully at the kitchen table freezes the moment a FAST proctor sets a timer. Three households, three different problems, one shared conclusion: the 7:30 to 2:30 classroom isn’t built for the life they actually live.
High School of America is a nationally accredited K-12 online home school serving the city and the wider Broward County community. Elementary, middle, and high school run on one platform, taught by certified teachers, paced to the student rather than the bell. We are a private accredited online school. Not a district-run virtual program, not a parent-built curriculum you assemble yourself. The coursework, the grading, the transcript, and the accredited K-12 program record all sit with us.
Families here have been choosing this model since the early days of online learning, and the reasons have only sharpened: working parents whose daytime caregiver isn’t the one helping with algebra at 7 PM, athletes with travel calendars, medically complex kids, and students who simply learn faster, slower, or differently than a classroom of thirty allows.
Call (888) 242-4262 and a counselor will walk your family through grade placement, transcripts, and the path that fits.
Why Pembroke Pines Families Are Moving Online
The shift isn’t mysterious. The numbers tell it.
Florida’s homeschool population roughly doubled after 2020. In Broward County alone, the homeschool rolls grew about 40% between 2019 and 2022. That’s not a fringe movement anymore. That’s a category.
The pressure points are specific. Broward County Public Schools used roughly 1,200 emergency-certified teachers during the 2022-2023 year, meaning a meaningful share of classrooms are staffed by instructors who haven’t completed traditional preparation. Teacher turnover in the district has run above 20% annually. The board itself lost four members to suspension in 2022 after a state investigation. None of that is a comment on any single campus. It’s a description of a system under strain.
Building size compounds it. Several middle and high schools in the Pembroke Pines area serve 1,200 to 1,500 students under one roof, at exactly the ages when a quieter room and a known adult matter most. Broward’s average SAT score sits near 970, about 80 points under the national mark. Roughly 1 in 8 BCPS high schoolers doesn’t finish on time.
Parents read those numbers and start asking a different question. Not which school is failing, but whether the traditional model is the right fit for their kid at all.
That’s the question we built High School of America to answer. A nationally accreditedK-12 online home school. Certified teachers in every grade. Self-paced coursework aligned to Florida’s credit requirements. A parent dashboard instead of a 1,500-student hallway. Elementary, middle, and high school, all under one accredited program.
We didn’t build it because Broward is broken. We built it because a lot of families here need a different shape of school. Call (888) 242-4262 when you’re ready to talk through yours.
The Program
Elementary, Middle, and High School Under One Roof
the program is a K-12 program. Elementary, middle, and high school run on the same platform, with the same certified-teacher model, under a single parent dashboard. A Pembroke Pines family with a 2nd grader, a 7th grader, and a 10th grader logs in once and sees three progress trackers side by side.
Elementary (K-5). The early grades are phonics-forward and paced to the individual reader. A child who needs three weeks on a decoding unit takes three weeks. A child who reads two years ahead moves on. Florida’s 3rd-grade reading retention law, Statute §1008.25, applies to students enrolled in public school; private-school students are outside that mandate. In Broward County, roughly 18% of 3rd graders scored at Level 1 on the 2022-23 FAST reading assessment. Inside an accredited private program, a 4th grader can work on 6th-grade math in the morning and shore up reading fluency in the afternoon without waiting on a district gifted evaluation.
Middle (6-8). Florida requires Civics with an end-of-course exam in public middle schools, and students are expected to complete Algebra I before high school. Both are built into the middle school track. The setting is different from a 1,200-student campus. The American Educational Research Association identifies 6th and 7th grade as the peak years for bullying victimization, and the 2021 Florida YRBS reported about 1 in 5 middle and high school students were bullied on school property. NCES data also shows girls’ STEM engagement drops between 6th and 8th grade; a self-paced math and science sequence with a certified teacher on the other end is one way to hold that line.
High (9-12). The high school band is a high-school accredited program aligned to Florida’s 24-credit graduation framework: 4 English, 4 math beginning with Algebra I, 3 science including Biology, 3 social studies, 1 fine art, 1 PE, and 8 electives. Transcripts and course descriptions are prepared for in-state admissions at UF, FSU, and FIU, and for out-of-state applications. Pacing is flexible for student athletes on travel schedules and for performers in rehearsal cycles. We do not promise early graduation. We do map the remaining credits against the student’s transcript and build a realistic path.
K-5
ElementaryReading, math, foundations with a certified teacher for every student
6-8
Middle SchoolCore academics and study skills that set up high school
9-12
High SchoolAccredited credit path, AP options, college-prep advising
Built for Pembroke Pines Households Where Two Adults Work and a Third Adult Helps
Three things have to be true for an online home school to actually fit a Pembroke Pines family. The schedule has to bend around the working day. The curriculum has to stand on its own when the adult in the room isn’t the one who took algebra. And a parent has to be able to check in from a phone, in the ten minutes between meetings, and see exactly where their child is.
That’s the household we see most often here. Labor force participation in the city runs north of 65 percent, which is another way of saying both parents work. More than 30 percent of local households speak a language other than English at home, mostly Spanish and Haitian Creole. In thousands of homes along Pines Boulevard and south toward Miramar, abuela or grand-mère is the adult present at 10am, and a parent opens the laptop at 7pm to help with the math problem that stumped everyone at lunch.
A 7:30am to 2:30pm bell schedule cannot serve that rhythm. A self-paced accredited K-12 program can. Lessons run when the student is ready. Certified teachers answer questions within 24 hours, so the tough problem doesn’t have to wait for the evening parent to decode it from scratch. The parent dashboard shows grades, assignments, and pacing in real time, from any phone, on any break.
The daytime caregiver keeps the child safe and on task. The evening parent coaches the academics. The school holds the standards. That is the Pembroke Pines online home school model that actually works.
How it works
How the Program Works Day to Day
Here’s the actual rhythm. Wake up. Log in. See the day’s coursework laid out by subject. Work through teacher-built lessons. Submit assignments. Move on.
No bell schedule. No 7:30 AM start. No Zoom room waiting for twenty-eight classmates to unmute.
This is how online homeschool works when it’s built for the medium instead of bolted onto it. Lessons are designed for asynchronous learning, meaning your student reads, watches, practices, and submits on their own clock. Stuck on a geometry proof at 9 PM? Message the certified teacher. You’ll have a response inside 24 hours, often much sooner. Every course in our K-12 lineup is taught by a state-certified teacher, and that includes elementary.
Self-paced means exactly that. A strong student pushes ahead. A student rebuilding a shaky foundation slows down and actually learns the material before moving on. Same the Florida high-school graduation requirement of 24 credits structure, different speeds.
Enrollment is year-round. Start in August, start in February, start the Tuesday after a move from another district. There is no cohort to catch up to.
Parents get a dashboard. Real-time grades, assignment completion, pacing against the plan. Open it on your phone between meetings. You’re support, not the teacher.
And because the program is fully online, school travels. Run it from your kitchen in Pembroke Pines. Run it from abuela’s apartment in Miramar on the days you’re working late. Run it from a swim meet in Orlando. Run it from a hotel during a hurricane evacuation with the laptop charged and the hotspot on.
The work is the work. Where you do it is up to you.
What the program Is
Pembroke Pines parents researching an online option usually have a handful of questions before they find us. It helps to say plainly what we are.
we is a private, nationally accredited K-12 online school. The curriculum is built. Certified teachers deliver it. Transcripts are issued by the school. the Florida high-school credit plan is aligned to Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards, so if a family’s plans shift later, re-entry stays clean.
What families actually get when they enroll. A full course catalog ready on day one. Lesson plans written, graded, and tracked by our teachers. A real transcript with a real diploma at the end. The flexibility to travel, work evenings, pace ahead, or slow down through a harder unit. Without asking permission from a district calendar.
What parents don’t have to carry. Curriculum design. Portfolio keeping. Annual evaluations. Lesson delivery. The instructional load sits with us, not with the family. Parents stay in the role they want. Coach, supporter, accountability partner. Instead of becoming the teacher, registrar, and record-keeper all at once.
What the student’s week looks like. Self-paced coursework opens on their schedule. Assignments are submitted online. Teachers respond, grade, and guide. There is no mandatory in-person testing day that dictates the month of April. Progress is measured by completed, mastered coursework. The way a transcript actually reads to a college admissions office.
One decision. One program. Most Pembroke Pines families only need it explained once for the picture to click.
Why it holds up
Accreditation, Transcripts, and a Diploma Florida Colleges Recognize
the program is a nationally accredited K-12 program. That single fact does a lot of quiet work for a Pembroke Pines family.
Here is what accreditation means in practice. Our transcripts follow a standard format admissions offices already know how to read. Course descriptions are written to the level colleges expect, with scope, sequence, and credit value documented for every class a student completes. When a 10th grader transfers out of Broward County Public Schools mid-year, the credits earned to date come in with us and the credits earned with us go out cleanly if a family ever moves again.
Our program requires 24 credits: 4 English, 4 math starting at Algebra 1, 3 science including Biology, 3 social studies, 1 fine art, 1 PE, and 8 electives. That structure meets Florida’s Florida high-school graduation standard and exceeds most state minimums nationwide. Florida’s graduation framework is published by the Florida Department of Education at https://www.fldoe.org/ for families who want to compare line by line.
Florida public universities (University of Florida, Florida State, Florida International) admit homeschool applicants who submit transcripts, course descriptions, and SAT or ACT scores. A parent-issued home education transcript can satisfy that requirement, but it puts the documentation burden on the family. An accredited K-12 program produces those documents automatically, on official letterhead, in the format registrars process every day. The same paperwork travels to out-of-state universities and to military recruiters.
Nationally, homeschool graduates post college acceptance rates and standardized test averages at or above the public-school mean. Accredited online students sit inside that track record with a cleaner paper trail. Call (888) 242-4262 to request a sample transcript and a high-school credit plan mapped to your student’s current grade.
Florida Credits
Florida Notice of Intent, Portfolio, and Annual Evaluation, How We Fit
Florida Statute §1002.41 governs parent-directed home education. The steps are concrete. File a Notice of Intent with the Broward County Public Schools superintendent within 30 days of starting. The notice lists the parent’s name, address, and the names and ages of each child. There is no fee. There is no parent qualification requirement. There is no waiting period; a Pembroke Pines family can legally begin the day after withdrawing from BCPS.
The portfolio has two parts. First, a contemporaneous log of educational activities with titles of reading materials. Second, samples of writings, worksheets, workbooks, or creative work. Parents preserve the portfolio for two years and make it available to the superintendent or the superintendent’s agent on 15 days’ written notice.
The annual evaluation has five statutory options: a Florida-certified teacher’s review of the portfolio paired with a discussion with the student, a nationally normed student achievement test administered by a certified teacher, a state assessment used by the district under §1008.22, an evaluation by a licensed psychologist or school psychologist, or any other valid measurement mutually agreed upon by the parent and superintendent. The evaluation is filed with the superintendent’s office in the county of residence.
Here is where the framework question matters. Families enrolling in a private accredited online K-12 program may operate under a different section of Florida law than §1002.41 parent-directed home education. The path a given household uses depends on how the family intends to document attendance, records, and re-entry. The the program enrollment team walks each Pembroke Pines family through which path fits before the first course is scheduled.
Two provisions worth knowing. The Craig Dickinson Act preserves access to interscholastic extracurriculars at the zoned public school when eligibility requirements are met. Dual enrollment at eligible Florida colleges is protected by statute and cannot be denied on the basis of home education status alone.
4English
4Math
3Science
3Social Studies
1Fine Art
1Physical Ed
8Electives
24Total Credits
The Middle School Years, Reframing the Socialization Question
The socialization question always comes up first. It shouldn’t.
Here is what it actually looks like on the ground. Pines Middle and Silver Trail Middle each serve between 1,200 and 1,500 students. The American Educational Research Association puts the peak of bullying victimization in 6th and 7th grade. Florida ranks 49th in the country for per-capita mental health spending. The recommended school counselor ratio is 1 to 250. Broward routinely runs worse than 1 to 400. The 2021 Florida YRBS found that 28% of Broward middle schoolers reported being offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on campus.
Read that again. That is the environment the socialization argument is defending.
A traditional middle school in Pembroke Pines is not providing supported social development. It is providing high-volume, low-supervision peer exposure at the single most vulnerable age in a child’s life. Those are two different things.
Families in a pembroke pines online home school build the social life on purpose. The Pembroke Pines branch of Broward County Library runs dedicated homeschool programs, STEM workshops, and reading clubs. C.B. Smith Park sits in the middle of a city with more than 50 parks. The YMCA runs homeschool fitness blocks. West Broward has music academies and youth theater programs built around day-schedule kids. The Broward Homeschool Association runs co-ops. The local Facebook networks clear 5,000 families.
That is structured social time. Small groups, shared interests, adult eyes in the room.
Our middle school program sits inside the K-12 stack. Certified teachers, self-paced coursework, Algebra I on track for students who need it. The academics run on our schedule. The social life runs on yours.
Call (888) 242-4262 when you want to walk through it.
Third Grade Reading, the FAST Test, and Why Pace Matters in K-5
Florida Statute §1008.25 requires that any 3rd grader who scores a Level 1 in reading on the FAST assessment be retained. In the 2022-23 testing cycle, roughly 18% of Broward County 3rd graders scored at that lowest level. That is close to 1 in 5 elementary students in the Pembroke Pines area sitting under the threat of repeating a grade based on one spring test window.
The testing context is worth naming. Lakeside Elementary in Pembroke Pines has historically enrolled around 900 students in a building designed for approximately 750, with portable classrooms absorbing the overflow. Pembroke Pines Elementary received a C grade from the Florida Department of Education in 2022-23, with 49% of students scoring proficient or above in math. The same children being labeled by FAST are being taught inside classrooms running over capacity, where teacher attention per student is mathematically lower than the research-supported K-3 class size of 15 or fewer.
A private accredited K-5 program changes the inputs. Florida homeschooled students are not required to take the FAST assessment. They are also not subject to the Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screener. Instead, a child works through phonics, decoding, and fluency at their actual reading pace, with certified teachers available for support and a parent dashboard tracking progress.
the program’s elementary program is aligned to Florida’s B.E.S.T. ELA standards, which were adopted in 2020 and emphasize explicit phonics instruction through 3rd grade. That alignment matters for one practical reason: if a family ever returns a child to Broward County Public Schools, the coursework maps to the standards the district is teaching.
Curriculum Ownership for Pembroke Pines’s Diaspora Families
Pembroke Pines is one of the most demographically layered cities in Florida. Census estimates place the population at roughly 34% Hispanic or Latino, 27% Black or African American, 30% White non-Hispanic, and 6% Asian. The Haitian-American community here is among the largest in the country, and the Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Colombian populations are substantial.
Florida curriculum standards, set under Statute §1003.42, require specific instructional content in every accredited K-12 program in the state. That list includes the history of communism and totalitarian ideologies, Holocaust education, Florida history, the contributions of African Americans, and the contributions of women. For a family whose grandparents left Havana in 1962, or whose parents left Caracas in 2017, or whose cousins are still in Port-au-Prince, these aren’t abstract units. They are household history.
the program is a private accredited K-12 online home school that meets the standards as written, then hands the household the pacing and the depth. A parent can sit with a student through the communism unit and add the family’s own account. A Haitian-American family can slow down on Caribbean history and speed up on algebra that week. The coursework is certified-teacher delivered and self-paced, so the conversation at the kitchen table runs as long as it needs to.
For bilingual households in the city where the daytime caregiver speaks Spanish or Haitian Creole and the evening homework helper speaks English, the self-paced format fits the household schedule rather than fighting it. To walk through curriculum and enrollment, call (888) 242-4262.
Student Athletes, Performers, and Families with Different Schedules
Since our earliest classes, a meaningful share of our roster has been students whose calendars refuse to sit still. The Pembroke Pines online home school families we hear from most often fall into four groups, and the fit is not accidental.
The first is the competitive athlete. Club soccer in West Broward, gymnastics travel teams, swim squads training at dawn, tennis players circulating through USTA tournaments. A 7:30 AM bell does not survive a schedule like that. Self-paced coursework does. Under Florida’s extracurricular access provisions (often called the Craig Dickinson or Tim Tebow Law, Florida Statute §1006.15), home education students may still try out for sports at their zoned public school when eligible, so a serious athlete keeps the training block and the jersey.
The second is the young performer. South Florida’s film, television, and music industry runs auditions, callbacks, and shoot days on its own clock. Our accredited K-12 program lets a student prepare for a Miami audition on Tuesday and finish English 2 coursework Tuesday night.
The third is the military-connected family. Orders move households; curriculum continuity should not. One online classroom, one teacher of record, one transcript, across every relocation.
The fourth is the medically complex student. Families working with Memorial Hospital or Cleveland Clinic Florida in Weston often need to minimize exposure during treatment or protect a post-surgical recovery. Coursework waits for the student, not the other way around.
Ready to begin? Start enrollment or call (888) 242-4262.
How it works
How to Enroll, From First Call to First Lesson
Enrollment is simpler than most Pembroke Pines families expect. Here’s the whole path, start to finish, with the parts that tend to trip people up explained as we go.
Step 1. Call or book a counselor. Dial (888) 242-4262, or request an appointment through the enrollment form. The first conversation is about your student, not a sales pitch. Grade level, current school, what isn’t working, what you want the next year to look like.
Step 2. Talk through grade and goals. Your student can enroll without a transcript. They can start in the grade you choose. If your 10th grader is leaving BCPS mid-semester and the transcript is stuck in a district queue, that doesn’t stall the start date.
Step 3. Send the transcript when you can. Three easy paths: text a photo or screenshot to our number, email it to support@highschoolofamerica.org, or upload it during enrollment on the website. Text and email are the fastest. A phone photo of the paper copy is perfectly fine.
Step 4. Official credit evaluation. For high schoolers, our team reviews the transcript, applies transfer credits from accredited schools, and maps out the remaining path through the Florida high-school credit plan. You’ll see exactly what’s done and what’s left.
Step 5. Log in and begin. Courses are assigned, the parent dashboard is set up, and the student starts. Certified teachers are already behind the curriculum when they open it.
A note on Florida framework. Families operating under home education file a Notice of Intent with Broward County Public Schools. Families treating our program as private school enrollment follow a different route. The enrollment team walks you through which one fits your situation.
Year-round enrollment means any month works. January, April, the week after a BCPS report card lands. There is no waiting period under Florida Statute §1002.41, and no closed admissions window on our side.
Why it holds up
Tuition, A Counselor Conversation, Not a Sticker Price
Tuition at the program isn’t a number on a shelf. It’s a conversation, because the honest answer depends on the student in front of us.
Three things shape what a family actually pays. One, the number of credits the student needs. A rising 9th grader has a full high-school credit runway. A transfer junior might have 12 credits already on the transcript and only 12 left to build. Two, the pace the family wants. Steady year-round pacing looks different from a compressed plan for an athlete catching up between seasons. Three, the payment structure that works for the household. We offer payment plans and work with families to keep the program affordable.
That’s why the first call is short and specific. Current grade. Transcript if there is one (text a photo, email it to support@highschoolofamerica.org, or upload it during enrollment). Goals for the next year. From there a counselor can give you a real breakdown, not a brochure estimate.
It helps to compare honestly. A Pembroke Pines family already spends on supply lists in the $150 to $300 range per child, school lunches near $600 a year, and after-school care that runs $600 to $800 a month in Broward. Those costs are real; they just aren’t printed on a tuition page. Once you total them, an accredited private online program is often closer to the current budget than parents expect.
Call (888) 242-4262 and ask for a counselor. Fifteen minutes gets you the full picture for your student, not a guess.
What Parents and Alumni Say
5.0 out of 5 from verified parent and alumni reviews.
The reviews land on a few consistent themes. We’ll summarize what families actually tell us, paraphrased to protect privacy.
A working mother in Pembroke Pines wrote that for the first time since her daughter started school, she could see the day clearly. The parent dashboard showed what was assigned, what was submitted, where the grade stood, and which teacher had weighed in. She works a full shift. Her mother handles the afternoon. The dashboard closed the gap between those two households without anyone having to translate a paper agenda at 9pm.
A seventh grader’s father described the change after leaving a campus of roughly 1,400 students. The stomachaches stopped. The Sunday night dread stopped. The work got done, and the work got better. He was careful to say it wasn’t magic. It was a smaller, quieter environment and a teacher who answered email the same day.
A high school athlete training on a travel schedule finished the high-school coursework without pulling back from practice. Coursework moved with the season. Transcripts stayed clean. College conversations stayed on the table.
The survey data backs up the anecdotes. 95% of parents rate our teachers as helpful. 98% say the curriculum is high quality. Read the full reviews when you’re ready.
