IOWA
Fast-paced Legislative Session
Iowa has had a very busy legislative season. The Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators (NICHE) and HSLDA have been able to work together closely to stop most of the bad bills. Mary Syverson of NICHE deserves special credit for her tireless efforts with legislators at the state capital.
House Bill 168 would make attendance mandatory for any child under six years old who had once been enrolled in a public or accredited private school. Under existing law, the compulsory age is six by September 15. HSLDA opposes these kinds of bills, which are becoming more and more common across the states. Parents ought to have the right to withdraw a child from kindergarten if that child is not doing well. H.B. 168 would prohibit that. The same bill would also tie the driver's license to school attendance until age 18.
A number of "learnfare" bills have appeared which would tie welfare benefits to school attendance. These bills were originally intended to prohibit truants from receiving welfare payments, but some Democrats added civil penalties for middle class families, to keep the legislation from appearing too "harsh" to the poor. Home schoolers have worked long and hard to get the public and legislators to realize that civil penalties for truancy are a real threat to home school liberties. Criminal penalties can only be applied if the state proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is genuinely criminal. Civil penalties, in contrast, can be applied with a mere preponderance of the evidence. In home school cases, this regularly means the difference between conviction and freedom.
Senate Bill 264 would kill the portfolio option for home schoolers. Although HSLDA has been unhappy with the way the department of education has regulated the portfolio option in the past, significant and positive changes have been made in the last year or so which make this option available to more families. S.B. 264 would kill this option completely, just when it is finally becoming useful. The sponsor of this legislation seems to be very ignorant of how and why the portfolio option works.
Finally, a driver education bill (originally S.B. 186, now S.B. 143) was introduced and made it out of the relevant Senate committee. Home schoolers have been working for several years now to make parent-taught driver education a possibility in Iowa.
As you can see, this flurry of legislative activity can be very hard to keep up with. We encourage every home school family with e-mail to link up with their local support group or state organization to make sure they can receive timely information on a regular basis.
