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IOWA

HSAPS—Why You Should Be Wary

Home School Legal Defense Association has been very cautious about Iowa's home school assistance programs (HSAPs) since they were written into the home school law. HSAPs provide supervision for home school families—although the law does not define or limit what this "supervision" entails. For every home school child enrolled in a HSAPs, school receive almost $2,000.00. This can cause trouble, because in our experience money can make schools do strange things.

In order to be in compliance with Iowa's home school law, families must have some sort of supervision. Enrolling in an HSAP is only one of the legal options available to families. (The other options are independent home schooling, which provides no money to the public schools, and dual enrollment, which gives the schools a few hundred dollars.) Unfortunately, many families who decide to home school simply call their school district to find out how to get started. Many school districts never mention that there are other options.

One Iowa family who wanted to begin home schooling was told they would need to sign up with an HSAP, but since their school district did not have an HSAP, they were told to "open enroll" in another school district which did. Many days and much paperwork ensued. When their HSAP supervisor started announcing home visits, the family finally snapped and called HSLDA.

HSLDA will not accept as members families who wish to be enrolled in HSAPs, but we do cheerfully accept members who are in HSAPs and want to get out. We accepted this Iowa family and have begun the process of getting them out of the legal tangle of an HSAP. The situation is more difficult because the family applied for open enrollment, which requires a four-year commitment to the new district from the parents. Fortunately, this will not be a real problem in this case—as it turns out, the child they are home schooling is not even of compulsory attendance age. We urge families not to rely on the "advice" of the public schools!