Virginia
Disputes Resolved
In the summer edition of the Court Report several challenges to Virginia home schoolers in various school districts were listed. By God's grace through intensive negotiations on the part of HSLDA’s legal staff, nearly every situation has been resolved. Only a couple are still pending.
Home School Law Conflicts Settled
More than in any previous year, local school districts have imposed on home schoolers arbitrary policies which contradict state law. Several counties have challenged home schoolers because their children scored below the 40 percentile. Many of these situations involved families who had their third graders tested in the public schools. After HSLDA discovered that the Virginia Department of Education made a mistake on the scoring of third graders tested, our legal counsel confronted the local officials with those facts. Several school districts then decided to recognize the home schoolers as having satisfied the law.
Other counties in the state (such as Rappahannok and Stafford) refused to recognize the submission of evaluations in lieu of test scores as a legal option. Louisa County decided this year to prohibit anyone without a college degree from home schooling. Prince William County and a couple other school districts told families who decided to withdraw their children from public school that they could not home school until next year because they had missed the August 31 deadline. By God's grace, however, all but two of these situations have been resolved by HSLDA.
Numerous school districts have rejected evaluations because they were not thorough enough, and other school districts have rejected home school families’ learning objectives for similar reasons.
Religious Exemptions Advance
One of the most important developments in the state is that the Virginia Supreme Court has decided to hear the Johnson and Morgan v. Prince William County School Board case (Record Nos. 900988 and 900989). This case involves two HSLDA families who were denied statutory religious exemptions by the Prince William County School Board in 1988. The school board gave no reason for the denial. Chris Klicka of HSLDA appealed the case to the Circuit Court, arguing that the school board’s decision was arbitrary, exceeded its authority, and was an abuse of its discretion.
After the Circuit Court affirmed the school board's decision, the case was appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals, who then bumped the case up to the Virginia Supreme Court. Early in September Attorney Klicka argued the case before three Supreme Court Justices in order to convince them to take the case since they had the discretion to either accept or reject it. On September 24, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed to take the case. We are excited about this tremendous opportunity to clarify the religious exemption law.
Attorney Klicka will be submitting a brief to the court next month, and oral arguments will eventually be scheduled before the full court early next year. Please cover this case with your prayers, asking the Lord to work in the judges’ hearts so that they might rule justly.
Other developments include the granting of religious exemptions to the Wilkersons in the City of Newport News, the Taylors in Clark County, and the Spears in Page County. Numerous religious exemptions are still pending throughout the state. Some areas (like Colonial Heights and Hampton City Schools) have been giving HSLDA members seeking religious exemptions a difficult time.
The Wade v. Mecklenberg County School Board religious exemption case, after pending almost two years, has been voluntarily dismissed by HSLDA because the Wade family moved out of the county. During the two year appeal, however, this HSLDA family was able to continue to home school without any monitoring or controls.
Note: Members who have been granted religious exemptions but have not notified HSLDA, should send a copy of their religious exemption letter to our office. These letters are very helpful to the legal staff in persuading other school districts to grant religious exemptions.
