Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

The Home School Legal Defense Association was founded in March of 1983. This week we celebrate our 20th Anniversary, and Mike Farris tells the story of those early days on Home School Heartbeat.

Mike:


After Mike Smith and I founded HSLDA in 1983, we continued to assist homeschoolers in addition to our regular jobs. Mike continued his private practice in Southern California, and I moved my family from Washington state, to Washington, D.C. as general counsel for Concerned Women for America.


But within two years, HSLDA had grown enough to need a full-time employee. We hired a young law school graduate named Christopher Klicka in 1985. By the spring of 1987, the litigation load had increased so much that both Mike Smith and I had were needed full-time at HSLDA.


In 20 years, HSLDA has grown from a fledgling idea with a handful of families, to a robust organization representing over 75,000 families across the globe.


Through the 1980s and into the 90s, Mike Smith and I, along with the rapidly growing staff of HSLDA, threw ourselves wholeheartedly into the defense of persecuted homeschooling families. Some faced the threat of jail; others faced the removal of their children from their homes; still others faced long, drawn-out court cases and steep fines.


Today, HSLDA continues as a powerful voice in the defense and promotion of parent-directed education in the courts, in the media, and in the public square. I'm Mike Farris.