Legal / Legislative Updates

Watch Those Deadlines

While Home School Legal Defense Association’s goal is to help improve homeschool laws across the U.S. and roll back as many restrictions as possible, it is important that families be familiar with the current law in their state and follow it. By not paying attention to deadlines and neglecting to file required paperwork, homeschoolers can open themselves up to unnecessary suspicion and tangles with government officials.

Minnesota homeschoolers know that their paperwork must be filed with the local school district by October 1 each year. Every year, HSLDA continues to correct school officials who confuse this deadline with other dates and who suggest that homeschoolers who have not submitted their notification by these incorrect deadlines are truant.

— by Michael P. Donnelly

Caseworker Jumps to Conclusions

In one district, a family was turned in on a number of erroneous allegations to the school district by relatives who disagreed with the family’s choice to homeschool their four children. When caseworkers and a police officer showed up at the family’s house, they intimidated the family through a show of force until the parents allowed their children to be questioned.* Fearful that they might be taken away from their parents, the children were unable to respond as quickly and accurately as the caseworker expected. Furthermore, the family had recently moved, and they unfortunately had not filed any paperwork with their new school district proving that they were home educating.

Based only on the lack of paperwork and the results of the unfair interview, the caseworker jumped to conclusions and reported a finding of educational neglect. Although the family could not demonstrate that they had complied with the state homeschool law, they were not neglecting the education of their children, as the caseworker assumed.

The result of the reported finding was more social worker contact with the offer of “support services.” Frustrated with the unnecessary, escalating contact with social services, the family chose to appeal the caseworker’s finding and asked HSLDA for help. Although the family was not an HSLDA member family at this point, we decided to assist them in making their appeal. HSLDA provided the caseworker with additional information verifying the family’s homeschooling program, and the case has now been closed, ending the ongoing social worker involvement in this new member family’s homeschool.

Unfortunately, this pattern of suspicion is repeated by caseworkers all too often in Minnesota and other states. While not all caseworkers are against homeschooling, enough are either ignorant of education laws or suspicious of homeschooling to cause trauma to many innocent families.

In addition to advocating for homeschooling at the state and national level, HSLDA serves members who encounter social services agencies. For information on the latest victory HSLDA has achieved in the area of social services investigations, see Active Cases on page 38. To read the text of this important decision, visit www.hslda.org/az1.

— by Michael P. Donnelly