North Dakota
Certification on the Way Out?
In December and early January, HSLDA filed appeals in cases involving four North Dakota families: State v. Dagley (S.C. No. 870180, Morton County Court, June 1987), State v. Lund/Reimche (S.C. No. 870266, Bottineau County Court, March 1987), and State v. Anderson (S.C. No. 870261, Stutsman County Court, August 1987). The basis of HSLDA’s arguments in each appeal was the evidence, provided by the state’s task force, that certification is unnecessary. Although a decision in favor of any or all of these families would involve overturning an earlier North Dakota Supreme Court decision (State v. Patzer, 382 N.W.2d 631, N.D. 1986), both Michael Farris and Michael Smith, who prepared the appeals, are hopeful that the court will see that the weight of evidence now clearly lies in favor of the families, especially since the state’s own education experts on its homeschooling task force were the ones to conclude the certification requirement is unnecessary.
The state recently convened a special task force to study the homeschooling situation and to explore alternatives to the certification requirement which would still satisfy the state’s interest in assuring that its children are educated. This task force consisted only of professionals chosen by the state department of education—no homeschoolers were consulted or involved in any way.
The task force came up with several different proposals for teacher qualifications, none of which included certification. One of the task force’s proposals suggested that homeschooling parents have only a baccalaureate degree, while several other alternatives were proposed which would be less restrictive for parents to comply with than the current certification requirement. The proposals of the committee were presented to the North Dakota legislature in the form of House Bill 1523. The bill provided for parents with a bachelor’s degree to be approved, providing their children “made satisfactory progress as compared to the same standards of promotion . . . for the public schools.” Unfortunately, the bill came up one vote short of the majority it needed to become law.
This study and the narrowly defeated bill have given homeschoolers new hope, because the conclusions of the task force are an official admission by the state’s own education professionals that certification is not the least restrictive means of achieving the state's interest in education. HSLDA hopes that this study will convince the state supreme court that the certification requirement must now be declared invalid.
The final decisions in these cases are still several months away, so please continue to keep North Dakota in your prayers as families continue to face difficulties and opposition while the certification requirement is still in place.
Also in North Dakota, the Melin case, which had been decided in favor of the family, is being appealed by the state. The case had originally been dismissed, and the judge had issued a memorandum opinion stating that he found the family not guilty of violating the compulsory attendance statute. The state is appealing, however, because it argues that the judge was incorrect in finding the law unconstitutional. In addition, the state’s attorney argues that teacher certification is the least restrictive means of achieving the state’s interest, and that the family’s religious beliefs do not render the application of the compulsory education statutes burdensome and therefore unconstitutional. HSLDA attorneys are answering this appeal, and hope to convince the court, as in the three North Dakota Supreme Court appeals, that the certification requirement is both burdensome to the family’s religious beliefs and unconstitutional because it is not the least restrictive means of satisfying the state’s interest in education.
The Van Inwagen family, whose request to homeschool was denied, recently had a hearing before the Hazen School Board, at which attorney Farris appeared on behalf of the family. They plan to appeal the board’s decision to the State Department of Public Instruction, and so this second hearing will serve as an official record of the denial of their right to homeschool. The Evans family, another family in the same district, was permitted to homeschool because their child was older than the Van Inwagens’ (the argument of the school board was that the Evans child, having been homeschooled for a couple of years already, probably couldn’t function well in the public schools, while the Van Inwagens’ child was young enough to still be “helped” by the public schools).
At the hearing, the school's attorney attempted to introduce a copy of the “minutes” of the school board meeting at which the Van Inwagens were disapproved for homeschooling. The document produced by the lawyers was two pages long, and was purportedly an excerpt of the entire minutes, detailing only the discussion of the Van Inwagens’ case. However, the entire official copy of the minutes from that meeting were only two pages long in total, and dealt with the Van Inwagens in only a short paragraph. The lawyer had blatantly forged the minutes and attempted to pass them off as the actual record of what had happened. Farris located one of the school board members who had been present at the meeting and the board member stated that none of the events listed in the forged &lduqo;minutes” had ever occurred, and that the original two-page summary of the school board meeting was the only record of the meeting. When Farris confronted the school’s lawyer with the falsity of the document, he admitted that he himself had written it (and not the school board business manager, as the document indicated) and then attempted to withdraw it from evidence. This incident is just one example of the blatant violations of justice and fairness faced by some homeschooling families.
Farris intends to use this example of injustice on the part of ht school authorities to press the Van Inwagens’ case in their appeal from the school board's decision. HSLDA hopes to show that the school board applied an arbitrary standard in basing its decision on the age of the children, and therefore that it wrongly denied the Van Inwagens’ request. Again, please keep both the Melin and Van Inwagen family in prayer as they continue their battles to homeschool in North Dakota.
