I don’t think you need to home school to achieve that safety. We send our kid off to daycare everyday, with caregivers who have at most an associate’s degree and are watching 12 other kids per teacher, and yet they can all manage Samson’s care safely. The key is having the numbers, having a simple-to-use care plan tailored to the skill level of the person doing the treatment, an open line of communication with someone at the school and having someone close by who can come in an emergency.
The way I see it, the worst lows and the worst highs Samson has ever had have been on our watch – sure we are doing way more of the care than his school, but they are with him approximately 40 hours per week and are still managing to keep him safe using our very minimal guidelines. Could his control be even tighter? Sure, but it can be done safely.
I would suspect home schooling has other downsides. I have a friend who homeschools her 4 kids and it seems like the only way she can swing it and it’s not terrible is because she’s part of a co-op that teaches the curriculum to them two days a week and she’s more like a lab assistant. That also means they have a “class” of about 20 or 25 other kids. Though she was a national merit finalist in high school and super smart, etc. there are certain subjects for her (mainly math and science) where I would really be concerned her kids were getting short shrift if she was the one doing the teaching. WE all have those gaps in our education. Plus, my sense is that homeschooling requires more than smarts; it requires a certain parent-child dynamic that gets more challenging as the kids get older.
Also, is there not a chance that your wife might want to go back to work in a few years, given that at least a few of your kids may wind up being in college by then (not sure their ages but I’m assuming)? Homeschooling would push that line down far into the future, possibly indefinitely. Although maybe not – my homeschooling friend actually does two jobs, they’re just on the weekends. And I could see homeschooling for part of the day and working part day if that was an option.