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LEGAL/LEGISLATIVE UPDATES
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ACROSS THE STATES
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Prosecuted for the wrong address
Ohio law requires homeschoolers to notify the superintendent of schools in the school district in which their child resides of their intention to educate a child at home. If a family moves during the school year, they may ask their previous school district to forward a copy of this notice to their new district. What happens if the new district never receives the notice?
When Catherine Warwick* and her family moved to Toledo, they filed all the paperwork required by Ohio law with the Toledo superintendent. Due to family difficulties, Catherine had to move out of her apartment during the course of the school year into a home that she thought was in the Toledo public school district. It turned out she was wrong. She was really a few blocks into a neighboring district.
Unbeknownst to Catherine, she was reported for truancy to the superintendent of her new district. When school officials could not find Catherine's homeschooling notification, a truant officer came to Catherine's new apartment building and peeped in mailboxes to try to figure out which apartment was hers. The officer picked an apartment number and left notes there, followed by certified letters, but Catherine never responded. That is because she never received any mail from the school district. The first she knew about a problem was when a deputy sheriff arrived with a summons for her to appear in court.
Fortunately, Home School Legal Defense Association was able to intervene just hours before Catherine's hearing. School officials in Toledo were happy to fax proof that Catherine had been legally homeschooling in their district. A flurry of phone calls to court officials and the prosecutor's office resulted in an agreement to hold off prosecution until the new school district received Catherine's paperwork. After Catherine waited through an agonizing afternoon, all charges against her were dismissed.
- by Scott W. Somerville
* Name changed to protect family's privacy.
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