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KENTUCKY

District sends outdated documents

The Whitley County Board of Education recently sent a packet of information to all local homeschooling families. Upon reading the contents, several Home School Legal Defense Association member families had some concerns and quickly contacted our office. When HSLDA reviewed the packet, we discovered that the district was using several documents that were long outdated or unnecessary.

The packet contained a form entitled Private, Non-Profit School Declaration of Participation, a Home School Enrollment Form, and several documents from the Kentucky Department of Education that were at least 8 years old.

Kentucky homeschooling families are not required to fill out or return a Declaration of Participation form. While public school districts are required to offer certain services to private schools, a private homeschool in Kentucky is not required to fill out this form unless its students desire to participate in services through the public school.

The Home School Enrollment Form requested more information than can be legally required from parents. Please visit HSLDA's "Forms and Resources" section of our website to access the most up-to-date forms and to ensure that your district is not requesting more information than the law requires.

As for the Kentucky Department of Education documents in Whitley County's packet, they were quite old and quite wrong. One paragraph went so far as to state that "education is a fundamental right in Kentucky. This fundamental right cannot be denied by anyone, including parents." While the first portion of this statement was correct, the second was not. The second portion, along with the rest of the paragraph, implied that a local school district could accuse a family of denying their child's fundamental right to be educated simply because they were homeschooling him. A child's fundamental right regarding education is to have a free, public education from the state available to him. It does not include the interference of the state in a parent's fundamental right to direct his child's education.

HSLDA Attorney Scott Somerville pointed out the legal problems with this packet and suggested that the Whitley County Board of Education update its paperwork. We do not expect a further recurrence of this problem for families in Whitley County.

— by Thomas J. Schmidt