FAQs
The Q&A below is meant to help answer some of your basic questions, before we schedule a personal chat.
As a personalized learning program, we pride ourselves in doing everything in a very personalized manner. That includes answering your questions and our Tours.
What sets our program apart from others is that we are truly a community of caring teachers, staff and families. We all have one thing in mind: To make sure that your student is successful. Our staff works extremely hard to support you and to be your partner in education. We work together as a team, so we can support you along the way and on this journey. If you join our program, you will be working with a team of experts. All of our teachers are fully California credentialed. They are beyond passionate about what they do and many of our teachers not only homeschooled their own students, but many of them have been at River Oaks since the program’s inception in 2010. It is our goal and our mission to support you and create a community for you.
After you read through these Q&As, let’s set up a meeting, so we can then answer your personalized questions in detail. We are here to help and support you.
There is no cost to attend ROA. We are state funded just like any other public school.
Since ROA is a charter school, we have several compliance requirements that we have to follow. Our charter renewal, funding and accreditations depend on your student and you helping us meet the following compliance requirements:
Regular meetings with your coaching teacher: Your coaching teacher has to meet with you at least every 20 days. We prefer to meet more frequently though, especially if your student is in upper middle or high school. Most meetings can be in person or via Zoom/phone call. However, the coaching teacher will also ask you to meet in person, so we can continue to build our partnership in your child’s education.
Attendance and work samples: Your coaching teacher will require you to keep attendance and submit regular and contemporaneous work samples. He/she will instruct you on how to submit that not only in a timely fashion, but also how and where.
Take progress assessments and state mandated assessments: Students in grades 3-12th are required to take the local assessment (iReady) 3 (three) times/year. The coaching teacher will let you know when your student has to take them and give you the needed information to log-in, etc.. The state mandated assessments are administered to students in grades 3-8 and 11. They are usually administered in the spring. At this time, the State still allows us to administer them virtually, however, we are always more than happy to have your student come in and take them under the supervision of your coaching teacher at either one of our facilities.
ROA has two accreditations: WASC (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) and the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) accreditation. These accreditations show that ROA has an academically rigorous program. Our high school diplomas are welcomed by all colleges throughout the country. These accreditations further attest to the fact that ROA prepares all high school students for college and career and gives our program credibility and standing within the higher academic institutions.
You will be assigned a coaching teacher who will meet with you regularly (in many cases weekly) to guide and support you and to verify and make sure that your student progresses academically. Your coaching teacher does not teach your student. You, as the parent/guardian, are the academic facilitator. While your student in grades 6-12 may attend some virtual academic classes, you have to make sure that your student works in all academic subjects. Your coaching teacher will guide and support you, help and make curriculum choices and answer your questions. If your coaching teacher is worried about your student’s academic progress, he/she will ask that your student (5th grade and up) will attend Focus Room, so we can better support and help with the academics. Your coaching teacher may recommend other academic supports, such as changing curriculum and other interventions, including tutoring.
Your coaching teacher also can issue so called MAR (Missing Assignment Reports), if your student is not completing at least 75% of the assignments, or if you miss meetings with your teacher and do not follow the coaching teacher’s instructions. After the issuance of the 2nd MAR, you and your student have to meet with the administration to discuss if ROA is the best fit for your student. After the 3rd MAR, your student will be disenrolled from ROA.
Our main facility is located in beautiful Westlake Village. We are off Hampshire Road off the 101 freeway.
CLICK HERE FOR STREET DIRECTIONSIn Oxnard, we are excited to move into a brand-new facility that is off Gonzales Road between Rice and Rose, off the 101 freeway. Both sites offer academic support and are open 5 days/week, so we can offer academic support and answer your questions.
We have a myriad of different curricula. We offer the traditional large publishers (Glencoe, McGraw Hill, etc.), but also use a lot of more homeschool-friendly materials. We will work with our families to help select the materials that best suit the student’s learning style and the parents' teaching style. We can also create a “blend”, consisting of some books and materials and adding online classes for your student. Since we are a public school, ROA provides your student with all of his/her materials and classes needed for his/her academics free of charge.
We are a TK-12th grade program. A student qualifies for the TK program, if his/her 5th birthday falls between September 2, 2024 and June 2, 2025.
The parent plays an important role at ROA. The parent in our program is the academic facilitator. That means that ROA relies on the parent to be our “eyes” at home. We ask our parents to make sure that they check on their student’s progress daily, review the work and make sure that the student does the assigned work at home. We also ask the parent that they grade/review the work and attend the regularly scheduled meetings with the Coaching Teacher and the student, so we can work together in partnership to make your student successful.
Our teachers are here to partner with you and guide and support you along your journey to educate your child. You will have an assigned teacher and meet with him/her regularly. We do have to meet at least every 20 school days, but we often suggest meeting much more frequently, so we can make sure that we answer all your questions, guide and support you and that we keep you and the student “on track”. The teacher will not write your lesson plans, but help you with the assignments and help you with the pacing plan to make sure that learning happens. The student dictates the pace of the learning and that can vary between all subjects. That is why we work so closely with our families to make sure that the student is challenged but not frustrated with the assignments and will make appropriate academic progress. We like to incorporate your student’s passions into the learning and will work closely with you to do so. We are always open and encourage you to ask questions. Not only will you get one teacher assigned to you, but you ultimately have an entire team behind you, who is working hard to assist and support you on your journey.
We do not give letter grades to our students in K-7th grades. We are giving letter grades from grade 8th-12th grade. Since you are working closely with your student you will always know if he/she understands the materials. While you can give chapter and unit assessments, they only guide our instruction and will help us if we need to adjust our curriculum or our instruction. We believe that learning is a process and therefore will always give our students the opportunity to review and relearn something rather than just holding firm with a grade on an assessment. The parent, teacher and student work together.
Our students also take our local assessment three times/year (at the beginning of the school year, in November and in the spring), so we can make sure that the student is academically progressing.
We administer all state mandated assessments and ask that all of our students participate in those since our funding is tied to having at least 95% of our students partake in these exams. We also administer the PE exam to our students in 5/7/9th grades.
ROA does not give out funding. Our model is a different one. We pride ourselves in the fact that we not only offer our workshops and classes on campus, but also that we have a close relationship with you and support you not just academically, but take the whole child into consideration. We also feel strongly to offer a community at our sites, and with our staff, students and parents. We don’t want you to have to go out and figure out vendors and choose from a “park and rec” like offering where you drive your student all over town for workshops and classes. We offer academic support (focus room); workshops and other activities at our campuses. Please check our workshop and academic schedules for more information about what we currently offer.
You can find the current workshops and academic classes on our website. We change our offerings every semester. Our workshops are offered in two blocks of about 10 weeks (one in the fall and one in the spring). While there are sign-ups for the workshops, there were no sign-ups required for academic support in the focus rooms and labs. We also offer some workshops at the park, nature hikes and marine biology classes at the beach. As of the spring 2024, we have partnered with Sports Academy, Redline Athletics, CRPD and Monarch’s Gym.
We offer a Focus Room (study hall) at both facilities. Your student is welcome to work independently (under the supervision of an instructor or credentialed teacher) at the site on M-Th from 9:00-2:00. The instructor can answer questions and help your student, however, they do not teach classes. Your student has to be in grades 5-12 to be able to work at the Focus Room. Your student has to bring his/her materials/books to work in and have the assignments clearly written out, so the Focus Room teacher can make sure the student is doing his/her work. Please make sure to send snacks/water along, so your child can be nourished and hydrated properly.
Students in K-8 are expected to work in 5 areas on a daily basis: Math, Social Studies, Science, English Language Arts and PE. Depending on grade level they are expected to work about 20-25 minutes in K-2 and about 35-45 minutes in grades 3-5 and 45-50 minutes in grades 6-8. Students in high school are expected to take about 25-35 credits (5-7 classes) and work about 50 minutes/class/day. For our 6-12th grade students, we offer academic classes (virtually and some in person ones). Please make sure to check our website for details.
For our high school students, we also have amazing high school guidance counselors who can help you and answer your high school questions. Our high school program offers many paths to graduation, including concurrent enrollment at the local community colleges, classes in different career pathways and creating electives to incorporate our students’ passions. It is very exciting to be a high school student at ROA.
We are passion powered. We want to hear what your student is interested in and passionate about. We love to try to build that into the daily academic work, so we can enhance the students’ learning and interests. That can be in the form of adding or substituting reading materials or creating courses in high school.
ROA has a full SPED team. We have resource teachers, speech, OT and counseling services. We also have school psychologists and work closely with the VC SELPA for guidance and support. We review all IEPs annually and schedule assessments when requested and indicated. We also have students who have 504 Plans which we review and service annually. All IEP services are rendered in person at our facilities. We do NOT offer any virtual services. Please make sure that your student is available for services at either facility. We ask that you work and collaborate with our SPED team to make your student available during the grade level days/times, as our team works with students by grade level (K-4; 5-8; 9-12) at each facility.
ROA has an extensive catalog with A-G (UC approved) classes that our high school students can choose from to make sure that they are prepared to apply to a UC (or 4 year) university. We administer the PSAT and SATs (free of charge to our students) multiple times/year also at our facility. Furthermore, we offer free SAT prep in ELA and math.
We no longer recommend AP classes. We believe that your high school student is better served taking classes at a community college. However, if you would like to discuss AP classes, our high school guidance counselors are more than happy to meet with you about that.