North Carolina Homeschool-ology

Homeschool Discounts

How to Get Educator’s Discounts

Educator discounts are available to homeschool parents in North Carolina from many stores and online providers. Stores, events and venues that offer discounts to educators will require that you verify you are an “official” North Carolina Home Educator. For information on where to purchase an ID card, or how to get a free ID card for teachers or students, click HERE.

Once you have completed your Notice of Intent to Homeschool, sent the NCDNPE the required documentation, and received confirmation from them that your Homeschool has been registered in the State of North Carolina, you are an “official” homeschool! Congrats!

Now you can print a verification card (free) by logging on to the NCDNPE WEBSITE.

At the main page for Home Schools, you will see sections for Information, Homeschool Forms, etc. – you need to click on the section under Home School Forms that says “Print a Homeschool Verification Record”.

Then Follow These Steps To Print Your Verification:

  • Login to Your Account
  • Enter You User Name & Password
  • You Can Then Manage Your Account, or Print Your Official Registration Record & Verification Card

This verification record lets people know that you have set up a homeschool and that your school is listed with the State.

This card is online where you can re-print it each year. The card/registration record has the current school year date on it, so you will need to logon to your NCDNPE account each year.

While you are printing your ID card, it is the perfect time to be sure that all the information that the DNPE has is accurate and up to date.

⇓ Keep scrolling if you are looking for the list of businesses that provide a homeschool discount ⇓

Updating the NC Division of Non-Public Education

Change your address if needed, and if you want to, add any new student information.

The NC statute only requires that we keep our attendance, testing and vaccination records in our homes to be reviewed if requested, it doesn’t require us to add student information (sex, age, grade, test type etc.)  to the NCDNPE database, but it is helpful for them to have proper student statistics, so if you are comfortable with it, you can easily update them at the website.

In the “olden days” of NC homeschooling we filed our NOI and got back one precious peach/orange/salmon/Mercurochrome colored card (where did they get that cardstock anyway?).

We were then firmly informed: “you-will-only-be-issued-one-card-ever-so-hold-on-to-it-with-your-life-and-don’t-lose-it-at-the-zoo!”

Thanks to the state’s new technology, we no longer have to fear risking our lives in a house fire to run in after the  “one and only” card that verified our homeschool!

⇓ Scroll down for the list of Discounts ⇓

Discounts and Even Free Stuff

In North Carolina, your homeschool ID card will get you in to the NC Aquariums and the Zoo FREE.  You do need to register in advance. See their websites for the details.

Why Another List?

  1. Because when people post those teacher’s discount lists,  they are trying to be helpful, but often they do not follow up to see if homeschoolers actually qualify for those discounts.
  2. Some of those discounts have been negotiated by religious/expensive membership groups such as HSLDA and thus, if you are secular homeschoolers, or not a member of that group (HSLDA requires an annual fee), you cannot get the discount. (ex. Minecraft educational memberships & Creation Museum discounts)

Homeschoolers Are Not “Teachers”

Some businesses offer discounts only to teachers or students with a school email ( .edu ) or with a teacher ID # for a public/private school, so for the purposes of a discount, homeschoolers don’t actually qualify for them.

According to a representative with at IDME, (a large verification company used by many businesses to verify eligibility), they are not able to use any form of identification other than those the businesses have specified so our homeschool ID #’s may not qualify us.

An example of this is the Lenovo/Dell computer discount that is on a lot of “teacher discount lists” but is NOT currently available to homeschoolers, because IDME is not allowed to accept homeschool ID #’s as verification. (as of the date I checked  summer 2017)

A better choice for discounts on technology is HP or Apple who offer discounts on their products specifically to homeschoolers!

Anyway as a result of following up on some of these discounts on teacher lists and being frustrated, I decided to offer a list of discounts that I as a homeschooler actually have verified as pertaining to home educators & not just a copy of a list I found on the internet of discounts for “teachers”.

Help Homeschoolers Find Your Business or Products

If you want to help by contributing information about discounts that are not listed here, send me the information.

  1. Help homeschoolers bond together and support businesses that recognize them as the unique educational entities they are! If you are a business, or have products that you offer discounts to home educators, please let me know about them.
  2. Help me spread the word so that other home educators can enjoy the privileges of educator discounts and free stuff! The more we get the word out about them, the more businesses will realize they should offer discounts to home educators in order to gain us as customers and to gain our good will.

Educators’ Discounts List For Homeschoolers

Message Merit Here If You Have Discount Information You Would Like to Add