On a quiet stretch near the Fulton-Gwinnett County line, a new kind of learning space is taking shape — one without a single desk lined up in a row.
Homeschool Haven Collective, which opened its doors for a soft launch in April, is preparing to welcome its first full cohort of families for the 2026-2027 school year. The organization isn’t a school, a co-op or a franchise. It’s something North Fulton homeschooling families say has long been missing: a dedicated, drop-in space where kids who learn at home can also learn alongside each other.
“We’re not doing any direct instruction,” said Dr. Rugayya Romain, founder of Homeschool Haven Collective. “Families still own their homeschooling. We provide community, enrichment and support.”
A teacher, then a homeschool mom
Romain has spent more than 20 years as an educator. She’s also homeschooled her own two children, now 15 and 17, for most of their academic lives — a fact she describes with a laugh as job security turned personal calling.
“I’m an educator by trade, and then I’ve homeschooled my children 14-plus years, like since they were babies,” Romain said. She started homeschooling when her daughter was almost 3 and her son was 11 months old, after taking a break from full-time teaching.
Both of her children turned out to be early readers, and once they were tested into an online homeschool charter program, they placed well ahead of grade level. That pushed Romain to keep going.
“I really needed to steward that,” she said. “I understood how Georgia does it with ages, and I just wanted to make sure they had the full potential.”
Her family tried a hybrid school and a private Christian school along the way — Romain even taught at the latter — but homeschooling remained the constant. Somewhere along the way, a familiar problem kept surfacing among her circle of homeschooling friends: There just weren’t enough quality places nearby for their kids to get enrichment and social time without driving all over metro Atlanta.
“We were driving so far, or we were going to five different places for five different things,” Romain said. “It just kept coming up, even amongst all of our friends.”
Filling a gap in North Fulton
Georgia’s homeschooling population has grown steadily since the state legalized the practice in 1984. Nearly 90,000 of Georgia’s 1.7 million K-12 students were being homeschooled during the 2024-25 school year, according to the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Hub, making Georgia one of the top homeschooling states in the country.
Fulton County alone reported about 3,000 homeschooling students during the 2023-24 school year, while neighboring Gwinnett County reported nearly 5,000.
Romain said that growth, paired with a lack of local options for older homeschooled students, was the push she needed to open her own space.
“What if we could create our own space that would provide that support for homeschool families, and not take the support away from them?” Romain said she remembers thinking.
Homeschool Haven Collective serves students in grades two through 12 — a deliberate choice, Romain said, since many existing homeschool co-ops in the area cater mostly to younger children.
“As they get older, there becomes less opportunity for them to have enrichment, to have peer interaction,” Romain said. “We want to provide that.”
How it works
Families bring their own curriculum and choose a level of access, from limited drop-in hours to an extended-access premier membership. Trained facilitators supervise the space and offer light academic support, but the instruction itself stays with the parents.
“They might need help studying for a test, or the parent might say, ‘I need them to get these three things done while they’re here,’ and we make sure that happens,” Romain said.
The Johns Creek facility includes collaborative workspaces, quiet study areas and a library that Romain calls her favorite part of the building. She said she’s hoping to grow the library’s collection to include more books by local and Black authors.
Looking ahead, Romain said she also wants to add clubs in speech and debate, music, podcasting, writing, engineering and entrepreneurship, along with academic testing services to help families meet Georgia’s standardized testing requirements, which apply every three years starting after third grade.
The collective held its first local homeschool expo on July 18, drawing exhibitors, service providers and families from across the area — an event Romain said grew out of conversations with other homeschool partners in the community who wanted something closer to home than the larger, regional conventions.
“It was an amazing turnout,” she said. “We were able to bring some great families out, and they were able to make different connections in the community to support their family in multiple ways.”
A resource, not a replacement
Romain is quick to point out that homeschooling doesn’t have to look the same for every family or last forever.
“I have such a passion for parents just having the option,” she said. “I feel like they should have the option to do what’s best for their child. … Sometimes people homeschool just for a season, maybe for a year or two, and maybe long term. But they should have the option and be able to have the support to do it.”
That includes guidance on choosing curriculum, something Romain also offers through educational consulting. Homeschool Haven Collective has partnered with several curriculum providers, some of which have placed sample materials in the space for families to review in person.
“Even as a teacher, I used to be on boards where we were picking curriculum for whole counties,” Romain said. “But homeschool is a whole different gamut. It’s endless.”
As Homeschool Haven Collective heads into its first full school year, Romain said the goal remains simple: give North Fulton’s homeschooling families a central hub, rather than a scattered patchwork of options.
“We just want to be a support to the homeschool community,” she said. “That’s our goal. Be there for them.”
