YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Korea Superintendent Charles Toth said home schoolers still can attend DODDS activities, whether it be sports, choir, science lab or language classes.

To be eligible, however, families must be command sponsored — meaning the family members must be on the sponsor’s orders to South Korea — and register with the school system, he said.

Registration, he said, often is the biggest challenge.

“Their enrollment is a benefit for getting resources,” he said. “It’s a benefit to them and a benefit to us.”

Enrollment determines more than space. It gauges how much money and staff each school gets, he said — so the higher the enrollment, the healthier the budget.

Estimating how many children will turn up at overseas schools each fall is a constant struggle, Toth said, referring to overcrowding problems at Osan Air Base near Suntan in fall 2004.

Both Toth and Melinda Waterbury — the local contact for parents who want to apply for government money for home schooling — said they suspect some military families in South Korea home-school out of necessity, because they’re not “command sponsored” and not automatically eligible for DODDS.

Waterbury said she knew of families near Osan who home schooled this year because of the overcrowding problems.

Toth said the key to using DODDS’ programs is an ongoing dialogue with the school principal.

For more information, call Dennis Rozzi, assistant superintendent of DODDS in South Korea, at DSN 738-5197.