NYC Public Schools Office of Home Schooling: How to Register and What to Expect

Homeschooling in New York City works differently from the rest of the state in one significant way: instead of dealing with a local district superintendent, families in all five boroughs file their compliance documents with a single centralized office — the NYC Public Schools Office of Home Schooling. Everything goes there: the Notice of Intent, the IHIP, the quarterly reports, and the annual assessment documentation.

For families new to this process, understanding exactly how to interact with this office, what it expects, and what it will and will not do is the foundation of smooth compliance.

What the NYC Office of Home Schooling Does

The Office of Home Schooling is the administrative body that manages home instruction compliance for all families in the New York City school system. It operates under the NYC Department of Education but handles home instruction matters separately from individual schools and community school districts.

The office does not supervise your curriculum. It does not tell you what to teach or evaluate the quality of your instruction beyond the compliance benchmarks set by Part 100.10. Its function is administrative: receiving your filings, confirming that they meet the regulatory requirements, notifying you of compliance or requesting revisions, and maintaining records of homeschooled students in the city.

For families coming out of the NYC public school system, the office is also the starting point for ensuring your child is properly disenrolled from their school before you begin home instruction. Families should not begin teaching at home and simply stop sending their child to school without formally notifying the office — doing so creates truancy exposure and complicates the compliance record.

How to Register: The NYC-Specific Process

The process follows New York State's standard Part 100.10 timeline, but with the Office of Home Schooling as the recipient of all filings rather than a local superintendent:

Step 1: Submit your Notice of Intent by July 1. The NOI can be submitted by mail or electronically depending on current office guidance. The notice must be written, must name your child, and must state that you intend to provide home instruction under Part 100.10. NYC families should check the current submission method with the office directly, as it has updated its procedures over time.

Step 2: Receive the IHIP packet from the office. Within 10 business days of your NOI, the office sends you the Part 100.10 regulations and the NYC IHIP form. The city's form is specific to NYC and different from what you might find in template form online — use the form the office provides.

Step 3: Complete and return the IHIP. You have four weeks from receiving the form, or until August 15, whichever is later, to return the completed IHIP. The NYC form asks for all the required elements under Part 100.10: child's information, subject-by-subject curriculum list, instructor names, and the four quarterly report dates you commit to for the year.

Step 4: Receive compliance notification. The office reviews your IHIP and notifies you within 10 business days whether it is in compliance. If revisions are needed, they specify what is missing.

From that point, you file quarterly reports on the dates you listed in your IHIP and submit annual assessment documentation after each school year.

The NYC Student ID for Homeschooled Children

One element of the NYC IHIP that surprises many families is the requirement to include a NYC Student ID Number if the child previously attended a New York City public school. This ID number follows the child through the NYC DOE system and connects the home instruction record to their prior enrollment.

If your child never attended a NYC public school, they will not have a student ID number, and the IHIP can be filed without one. If your child did attend a NYC public school and you do not know their ID number, contact the school they last attended or call 311 to request DOE assistance in retrieving it.

Homeschooled children in NYC do not receive a new student ID simply by virtue of registering for home instruction. The ID in the IHIP refers to any existing city school system number your child already holds.

Pods and the Office of Home Schooling

For learning pods with multiple children in NYC, every family interacts with the Office of Home Schooling independently. There is no group registration. If your pod has five families, all in Brooklyn, each family files their own NOI, their own IHIP, and their own quarterly reports — all to the same office, but as separate individual filings.

The office does not have visibility into the fact that these children are learning together. From its perspective, each filing is one family's home instruction program. This means the pod's curriculum can be shared across IHIPs (multiple families listing the same curriculum materials is not a problem), but each document must reflect that family's specific child and that parent's instructional responsibility.

One logistical note for NYC pods: if your families come from different community school districts, they still all file with the Office of Home Schooling — not with their individual school districts. The centralized filing is one of the ways NYC's system differs from the rest of New York State, where each family files with their local superintendent.

What the Office of Home Schooling Will Not Do

The office does not provide legal advice. If you have questions about whether your pod structure complies with NYSED regulations, the office staff cannot interpret the law for your specific situation. For substantive legal questions about how Part 100.10 applies to a shared pod or co-op arrangement, you need either NYSED's official guidance documents or a New York education attorney.

The office does not forward your compliance records to colleges or employers. Homeschool graduation and college admission documentation is handled entirely by the family — the office's records are administrative compliance records, not academic transcripts.

For families building a learning pod in New York City, the New York Micro-School & Pod Kit includes a walkthrough of the NYC Office of Home Schooling filing process, IHIP and quarterly report templates, and a compliance checklist that covers every deadline from the initial NOI through the annual assessment. Managing the paperwork correctly from year one removes the biggest source of anxiety that NYC homeschool families consistently report in the first year of home instruction.

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