Across the States
More Families Told to Enroll
Repeating a pattern Home School Legal Defense Association dealt with in the 2006-2007 school year, public school officials are again telling some of our member families that they are required to fill out an online “enrollment report form” in order to run a home-based private school.
Most of the problems originate when a parent pulls their child out of public school in the middle of the school year. In some cases, the school official will fill out an online form for the parents. Furthermore, the Indiana Department of Education (DOE) sent out a memo last year specifically asking public school officials to enroll all homeschooled students online.
However, none of this “enrollment” is required by state law.
A parent operating a home-based private school is only required to provide to the DOE the number of students in the school by grade level “on request of the state superintendent” under Indiana Code § 20-33-2-21(b). An online form on the DOE website requesting enrollment information is not sufficient to legally obligate a parent to submit this information.
The DOE’s stated purpose for collecting this information is to have “a centralized record for tracking homeschool enrollment data statewide.” But the DOE has no legal authority to collect or record this type of information from homeschoolers. HSLDA will continue to work to protect the privacy of homeschoolers from unlawful efforts to undermine it.
—by Thomas J. Schmidt
