About Chess
Christian Home Educator's Support System (CHESS) is a cooperative effort on the part of Rolla-area home educating families who desire to work together to enhance the education of their children. It is not intended to replace the role of the local church, but rather to draw together homeschoolers from a variety of Christian perspectives to cooperate in our common goal of educating our children. We are grounded in our common belief in God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and we respect the differences of our individual families in walking out their faith.
CHESS provides a wide variety of opportunities to interact with other families who, like you, are striving to follow the Lord in the home education of their children. Some are just starting to homeschool; others are seasoned veterans; all are an important part of the CHESS community.
Our desire is to simplify our lives by pooling our efforts, so that individual families don't have to continually "re-invent the wheel". If one family is looking for help with something, often others are too! CHESS is about to finding and providing the support, services, and resources home educators need, so that no one has to do it alone. However, we understand that families do things differently. We have decided not to pre-approve all activities before passing them along to families, but to let families decide for themselves what activities they do and don't participate in.
That's one of the ways our CHESS committee can help you - contact the person in charge of a particular area to find out more about an activity in which you are interested that you want more information about. If that person can't help you, they should be able to direct you to the right person.
Currently over 350 families are connected to the CHESS newsletter. Once your family subscribes to the CHESS newsletter, you have an immediate connection to the hub of CHESS activities. There is no formal membership at this time and no fee to be a part of this association; however some activities have a small fee to cover costs. We encourage families to join the CHESS newsletter, a free, private email network, which is used to share information, ideas, materials or requests.
We recognize that different families have different needs, so we have chosen not to define involvement. We encourage everyone to get involved in some way, but all are welcome to join us, regardless of their level of involvement.
We strongly encourage support of and membership in other organizations that work on the behalf of homeschoolers in government. Click here for information on these groups.
CHESS Charter
The CHESS Charter can be obtained via download, by Clicking Here
CHESS leadership
CHESS is directed by a steering committee composed of home educating parents who are willing to serve. Together the committee shares the responsibilities and workload of organizing and overseeing CHESS. Since we are not a membership organization, the leadership team is composed of volunteers, not elected members, and is open to any who are willing to serve.
Each committee member has taken on specific areas of responsibility and is the initial contact for people interested in helping in this area or with questions about an even in that area.
CHESS Steering Committee 2007-2008
| General Area of Oversight/Input | Contact Information |
Suzanna Embry | Extracurricular Classes / Clubs / Sports | |
Tressa Andrews | Email and Website manager | |
Debi Schwertz | Treasurer | |
Dawn Hall | President/ meeting facilitator/ RHAA Sports | |
Judy Cureton | Family Activities and Special Events | |
Amy Quakkelaar | Secretary/ Community Support | |