New Homeschooling Collective Set to Instruct Nearly 300 Students in its First Year

Erin Loechner and her family moved to Montana from Indiana because of a “spiritual experience.” She, her husband and their children are in the throes of building an off-grid cabin in the mountains. With the children pitching in on those efforts and learning about construction, the situation lends itself best to teaching them at home.

In fact, Loechner has long taught her children — Willa, 14, Leo, 10, and Hattie, 5 — in a homeschooling environment. While Loechner’s own parents were both public-school teachers, when it came time to educate her own children, Loechner was living in Singapore and the family was traveling often. It felt, to her, like enrolling them in the school system presented an option to show them the world; educating them at home gave them a chance to experience it.

As her children adjust to their new home in Montana, Loechner has found a new resource she hopes will help them get the most out of their schooling in the By Faith Homeschool Collective. Her students will begin their first classes at the collective, based in Evergreen, starting next week. The collective’s first semester kicked off Monday. Ahead of that start date, it hosted an Aug. 26 open house for students and families to see the space and meet their teachers.

“We haven’t really met anybody that’s gonna be in their individual classes,” Loechner said at the open house. “So, we’re excited to just get to know different people and hear their stories.”

By Faith Homeschool Collective is a new option for parents and students in grades pre-K through 12 opting to homeschool in the Flathead Valley. Established this year by Crystal and Dan Clark, the new collective has pitched itself as taking over for Flathead Enrichment Classes, which previously served as something of a hub for homeschooling families.

Crystal, who has homeschooled her own children, used to teach at Flathead Enrichment Classes and has watched as the valley’s homeschooling numbers have boomed in the last decade.

Formerly somewhat fringe, homeschooling has become more mainstream in recent decades as movements to legalize the practice across the nation came to bear fruit in the 1990s. More recently, some have embraced the practice in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a burgeoning movement for parents’ rights in the education sphere.

In the last 10 years in the Flathead, homeschooling enrollment has grown by 66% at the elementary level, and by 75% at the high school level, per the county superintendent of schools’ most recent statistical report. As of Oct. 6, 2025, 942 elementary schoolers in the valley were being homeschooled. Another 227 were homeschooled at the high school level. Those figures fall below a homeschooling peak that hit the Flathead in 2020 but still remain higher than pre-pandemic levels of homeschooling. And, Crystal points out, those figures may not truly reflect all the parents educating students in the home, as Montana’s requirements for homeschooling students are relatively lax and rely on parents self-reporting to county superintendents of schools.

For Crystal, who has spent nearly two decades navigating homeschooling her children, the opportunities presented via a collective are beneficial. It allows students to receive instruction from and learn to respect other adults; gives them a chance to learn subjects their parents may not be equipped to teach; and provides opportunities to socialize.

As she and her husband Dan have gone through the process of getting By Faith off the ground, Crystal has leaned into her experience in the homeschooling community to recruit teachers and help spread the word about the opportunity.

Students who enroll pay an annual fee of $100 for the collective, which helps cover insurance, rent and administrative costs. From there, Crystal explained, each teacher operates as an independent contractor and sets their own fees for their classes. The collective is offering courses from “Cooking Around the World” to “Heirloom Metal Art,” and more traditional school subjects, like Spanish, science and physical education. Some courses were previously offered at Flathead Enrichment Classes, while others are new options.

The efforts have been effective: 296 children are enrolled for at least one class in the collective this fall. Crystal said the collective will also accept late enrollments as it gets off the ground.

At the Aug. 26 open house, parents said they were excited about building connections with other homeschooling families and at the chances their students would have to learn through the collective.

Anna DeLay, a mother to one of the collective’s students who will also teach a songwriting class for four students this fall, said her son will take art, science and physical education through the collective. He’s her fourth child to go through an educational journey via homeschooling — she has three older daughters who’ve graduated already.

“I mean, it’s just, the possibility of knowing more people in the community and getting more involved,” DeLay said. “Like I said, for his sake, he really hasn’t been that involved. So, it’s gonna be new for him.”

And Loechner, whose three children each picked a class to enroll in this fall, said she’s excited for them to meet new people in their new home.

Willa, Loechner’s oldest, said she’ll be taking a Wearable Art class at By Faith. As the experience kicks off, Willa said she looks forward to being at a place with “good vibes and nice people.”

“There seems to be a lot of people our age, and the teachers are really nice,” Willa said.

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