Four major home school associations in Nebraska host events, update parents on home-schooling news, offer support groups, and offer general information on home schooling. These include: Home Educator's Network, Nebraska Christian Home Educators Association, Valley Home School Association and Western Nebraska Home Educators Network.
Co-ops are smaller and more personal than associations; they offer group classes for home-schoolers which are usually led by parents or tutors. Nebraska's largest cities offer several home schooling co-ops, both religiously-oriented and secular. Christian home-school groups include Heartland Home Schoolers, North Platte Area Home Educators and Catholic Homeschool Association of Omaha. Religiously unaffiliated or specifically secular groups include Bellevue Offutt Homeschool Happenings, Nebraska Secular Home Educators, Omaha Area Homeschoolers, Omaha Home Educators Network, Venturing Crew 26 and Sioux Falls Homeschool Group.
There is a buzz of Nebraskan online home schooling activity as one Yahoo Group! discusses un-schooling, a specific home schooling philosophy; and the North Platte Area Home Educators offers used home schooling items for sale, trade and free. The Home School Legal Defense Association, a non-profit advocacy organization, offers a cornucopia of legally-geared resources about Nebraska home schooling on its website, including legal cases, current laws, pending legislation, headlines across the state and webcasts.
In Nebraska, parents who want to home-school their children must submit an "exemption" to the Nebraska Department of Education, requesting their children be exempt from the state's requirement of all students, ages 6 to 18, to attend an accredited school in the state. Home schools are considered "exempt schools." Exemptions may be filed either under Rule 12 based on non-religious reasons --- though students must still comply with immunization laws --- or Rule 13, the religious exemption. The proper forms may be found on the Nebraska Department of Education's Exempt School Program website.