BANGOR – Seventeen years ago when she began educating her sons at home, Linda Williams was a pioneer. Now, she’s just part of the crowd.

“If we went out during the day, people used to ask me why the children weren’t in school. Now it’s much more accepted. Lots more people are doing it,” the Bangor mother of four boys said recently.

Williams never expected to find herself at the vanguard of a national movement.

“We were just doing what we wanted to do and felt like we needed to do,” she said. “We had no idea where it was going.”

In fact, the number of home- schooled children statewide has risen by 200 to 300 each year since 1994, according to the Maine Department of Education. Last year, more than 4,500 children were taught at home, a far cry from 20 years ago when there were fewer than 10.

There’s so many children being home-schooled today that there’s even a local foundation providing them with scholarships. This year the Maine Children’s Scholarship Fund, a nonprofit educational organization in Bangor, began awarding $500 grants to people who home school their children. This year, seven awards were made out of 16 applications.

Parents typically are drawn to home schooling for philosophical or religious beliefs, or because they like the idea of providing an individualized or enriched program, said Edwin Kastuck of the state Education Department.

In a few cases, parents are taking children on extended trips or trying to keep some semblance of school going for kids who are ill, he said.

Williams and her husband, Ken, wanted their sons to be able to learn at their own pace, and to have the freedom to develop individual talents and abilities.

Linda Williams also was adamant that her sons not be subjected to the latest theories about learning.

“The educational system is trendy, and I didn’t want to be part of a group that’s being pushed this way and that,” she said. “I didn’t want my children to be part of an experiment.”

Deciding whether to home school may be the hardest part of the process. Once the decision has been made, parents are asked by the state to complete a simple four-page application indicating the kind of support system they intend to use. For example, they are required to consult with a teacher or another home-schooling parent.

Choice of curriculum and texts is up to them, and many are available for home schooling.

They have to agree to teach for an adequate amount of time each day, and to hold school for at least 175 days, the minimum number required by law.

Parents also consent to an annual assessment for their children, either by a certified teacher who reviews their work, or through a standardized achievement test.

That yearly review process received some attention a year ago after Sen. Peter Mills, R-Skowhegan, proposed a bill requiring home-schooled children to take the Maine Educational Assessment in grades 4, 8 and 11, just like children in public schools.

The proposal was shot down after hundreds of home-schooling families converged at the State House to protest. In the meantime, Mills discovered that many parents hadn’t been sending in their children’s annual assessments.

In the end, the Education Committee asked the department to follow up on the delinquent parents “to see if we could get a handle on how many kids have dropped through the cracks,” Mills recalled this week. “We know there are genuine truants in that population, and we don’t know where they are or who they are or how many there are.

“The problem is there’s no distinction between the superparents who have the time and devotion to stay home and educate their own children and those who have simply allowed the kids to drop out,” he said.

But Trina Millett of Hermon, co-chairwoman of the Bangor Area Home School Support Group, says that’s a different issue entirely.

“You’re not talking about home schooling by parents who care about their children’s education, but about people who aren’t doing a good job parenting,” she said.

Last year, the parents of 671 home-schooled students, out of 4,500, failed to return proof that they had conducted assessments in the 1999-2000 school year, said Kastuck. He notified them that they were required to by law.

This year, only 16 families representing 26 children have failed to submit assessments, and Kastuck says their home-schooling applications will be denied if they don’t get them in. Kastuck said he has never turned down an application since be took his job in 1993.

Worries about how home-schooling parents are doing are largely unwarranted, said the Rev. Renee Garrett of Bangor, who home-schooled her two oldest sons and is now doing the same with her youngest.

“Probably 98 percent of people who choose to home school are hyper-concerned about their kids’ education,” said Garrett, who regularly confers with a teacher about her child’s progress and assesses him using tests created for a home- schooling curriculum.

Jeannie Brookings of Bangor never had any doubt that home schooling was working for her son Jack, now 18.

But she knew for certain after he read a play about the 1929 Scopes trial, and then happily entered into a family conversation about the theory of evolution versus creationism.

“You know he’s read the play because he’s enthusiastic, not because I gave him a test,” she said.

If Annette Jurczak of Hudson had sent her children to public school she knew they’d learn about Isaac Newton and Christopher Columbus.

But she and her husband decided to home school figuring their children likely wouldn’t hear that Newton believed God was behind his scientific theories, or that Christopher Columbus knew the earth was round because he read it in the Old Testament.

Other residents jumped on the home-schooling bandwagon after their children had already experienced the traditional classroom.

Gabrielle Moulton of Bangor decided to home school her three children after she saw police cars in the Cohen Middle School parking lot.

“Why should I send them someplace where I really didn’t feel comfortable,” she said.

This year, 16-year-old Hannah Kates-Goldman is taking a couple of classes at Bangor High School, but getting most of her education on her own.

“I hated [the idea] of grades,” she said. “I felt that learning was geared toward testing. I needed the freedom to learn my way, not being told what to do all the time.”

Now, among other things, she is working on an internship with a peace organization, watching university level video lectures on political science, reading voraciously, writing poetry and taking advantage of local lectures and speakers.

“I’ve never seen her so happy,” said her father, Sol.

Sixteen-year-old Timothy Foster also has blossomed as a home- schooler.

Traditional education wasn’t working for the intellectually gifted Holden boy, according to his mother, Nedra.

“The repetition was killing him. He’d get bored,” she said. “If you aren’t the norm, it’s very hard to fit in.”

Now Timothy builds radio controlled airplanes, repairs computers and takes flying lessons. He has volunteered at a veterinarian’s office and visited Downeast School to teach students how to make paper airplanes.

“He’s been able to explore many more things than he ever could in a school setting,” said his mother. “I’ve watched him grow into this wonderful young man with so many interests.”

Ten years ago, Sandi Labonte of Bangor wondered if she was up to home schooling. “I worried that I had to know everything about every subject – but it’s really a matter of giving them the tools to find the answers and guiding them along,” said the mother of two sons, now 18 and 22.

She ended up being stricter than a traditional teacher might have been.

“We wouldn’t begin another subject until we had mastered the first one,” she said.

Her husband, Norm, thought of another benefit.

“No snow days,” he said.