If you haven’t had a chance to read the World Net Daily article noted in yesterday’s post, Judge orders homeschoolers into government education, it’s critical that you do so now. Also, one of our readers, Crimson Mom, has written an excellent & very informative post on her blog regarding this court ruling that has potentially far-reaching effects for homeschoolers’ freedoms everywhere. May I strongly encourage you to read her post as well: CA Judges: Parents Have No Constitutional Right to Homeschool.

As noted in yesterday’s post, Randy Thomasson, of Campaign for Children and Families, commented that the government school system sometimes lies to parents about homeschool law and sited an incident where a parent was told three specific lies. Ending my post yesterday, I said I would share regarding my experience when we pulled our granddaughter out of public school to home educate her.

In all fairness, I have to say that I don’t think that all public school officials intentionally lie about the law, I think that sometimes, perhaps many times, they just don’t understand the law. In our state, PA, the homeschool law is very ambiguous and has many interpretations. Thankfully, before bringing our granddaughter home, I had done a fair amount of research and believed I had a good grasp of the PA homeschool law.

Appropriate papers in hand, knees knocking, I went to the school district office, to submit the necessary paperwork. Unfortunately for me, it was lunch time and the only person available was the superintendent. I know he towered over me by at least four feet & to say I felt intimidated would be an understatement!

By God’s Grace, I maintained a cool exterior, announced my intentions and handed him the required paperwork. He took his time looking through it (I know it took him at least an hour to look at the 3 or 4 pages). He then slowly turned to me and stated (misnomer #1): “We need a copy of the mother’s highschool diploma.”

By PA law, this is untrue. A copy of the parent’s diploma is not required. All that is required is an affidavit stating that the parent graduated from high school – that is proof enough. Even though I knew his ‘request’ was not true, my nerves got the best of me & I gave it to him – darn.

Second “lie/misinformation” – Eyeball-to-eyeball, he asked, “Is your granddaughter still in school?” Truthfully, I could answer “yes” because she was that day although I knew it was her last day.

Without breaking eye contact, he sternly replied, “Good, because you may not begin homeschooling her until you receive permission from me which can take two to three weeks. Do I make myself clear.” I said “I understand what you’re saying.”, but I knew he was wrong. It’s one of the few very clear requirements in the PA law which states that once the appropriate paperwork has been turned into the school district, homeschooling can begin immediately.

Needless to say, I was shaken by this encounter, went home and immediately contacted the PA Department of Education, Homeschool Division, just to make absolutely sure I was correct in my understanding. I spoke with the head of the department and was assured that I was 100% correct. Furthermore, this woman wrote a letter addressing both of these issues and sent a copy to the superintendent.

My granddaughter began her home education the next day.

So, was this man intentionally lying, was he just misinformed or was he having a little ‘fun’ at my expense? I don’t know and I don’t pretend to judge his heart motives.

My point? – parents, know your state’s law. Look for support groups, yahoo groups specific to your state and read the homeschool law for yourself. Know it. If you have a law that’s ambiguous like PA’s, don’t accept the first interpretation you find. Do some research. My post on Homeschool Support Resources gives some ideas of where to find the information you need to understand the homeschool law in you state. If you need more help, let me know!

Has anyone else had similar encounters? If so, how did you handle them? I’d love to know!

Sue

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.