Pointless Prosecution
    In October 1998, a single mother in Virginia found a local school district representative knocking on her door. This mom had pulled her son out of school due to his persistent allergies, intending to educate him at home. Despite written excuses from her doctor, including a visit to the emergency room, school officials were not willing to accept her plans to begin home education. Although she filed a notice of intent, they refused to accept it. The deputy sheriff claimed he had heard reports that, despite the child’s alleged sickness, he had been seen “riding his bike” around town. In spite of Home School Legal Defense Association’s best efforts to respond to the district’s concerns, the mother received an arrest warrant in late October.
    HSLDA contacted school officials and provided sufficient medical evidence to persuade the district—eventually—to acknowledge the notice of intent as valid. Meanwhile, the family conducted a legal home education program pursuant to the home school statute. We asked the deputy sheriff to dismiss truancy charges against the family. He refused to dismiss the charges at that time, but agreed to postpone the case until late December, to give the child’s doctor an opportunity to indicate whether the child’s earlier absences really had been due to medical problems. When the doctor wrote a letter indicating that the child really had been sick and that the home schooling was now resolving the medical issues, HSLDA promptly and confidently requested a dismissal.
    Despite all this evidence, the prosecutor insisted on taking the case to court. He said, “I just want the judge to see what goes on with this home schooling.” HSLDA attorney Scott Somerville and Deb Pegram of Specially Gifted Evaluative Services appeared in court on behalf of this family, even though the criminal truancy prosecution only involved days of school that had been missed before the child began a home school program. The parties agreed to postpone the case once more, with the stipulation that the child would take the end-of-year assessment required by Virginia’s home school law.
    In April, the child was evaluated and found to have made dramatic improvement in his academic results. HSLDA again requested that the prosecutor dismiss charges against this family, but he refused to drop charges until the very day of the trial. It was not until he got to the courthouse that he finally dismissed the case.