That would buy you a lot of a lot of manipulatives

Via the Deacon's Bench, two families in NYC are ponying up $25,000 a year to pay tuition for a Catholic School education that quacks like a Homeschool Education.

When school is dismissed at the end of the day, there's nothing unusual about seeing a rush of children plow through the doors in a frenzy of excitement. But instead of the student body pouring out of the new Academy of St. Joseph, little Sebastian Reardon and Intonina Machniewska-Schlussman are the only students leaving to go play.

That's because at the Catholic school in Greenwich Village, Sebastian and Intonina are the student body.

"It's a great school and we're willing to experiment, just try it out," says Gosia Machniewska-Schlussman, Intonina's mother.

And it's an experiment that costs $25,000 a year in tuition to test. But because Sebastian and Intonina are the only students in their pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes, they are receiving individual hands on attention from their teachers, which suits their parents just fine.

"I wanted a small environment for him and Catholic education would be good for him," said Emily Reardon, Sebastian's mother.

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Machniewska-Schlussman says she's not worried about Intonina not being surrounded by other students and missing out on the ability to socialize. "We are going to the park. She will have plenty of interaction with plenty of classmates from previous school," she says.