| From the HSLDA E-lert Service: |
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| Date: From: Subject: | 9/6/2006 3:54:03 PM Home School Legal Defense Association California--Continued Support for Family Protection Ministry Is Necessary |
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====================================================================== From the HSLDA E-lert Service... ====================================================================== California--Continued Support for Family Protection Ministry Is Necessary Dear HSLDA members and friends: HSLDA has been partnering with Family Protection Ministries for 20 years to advance and protect your freedom in California to be able to teach your children at home. FPM is our eyes and ears in Sacramento. They monitor more than 6,000 bills each legislative session to make sure that your freedoms are protected. When they discover a bill that potentially could affect your freedoms, they prepare a position paper on that bill and we consult together to plot our strategy. In many states our primary legislative strategy is to send out electronic alerts asking our members to contact their legislator and express their desires regarding a particular bill. However, because of the expertise, experience, contacts and skillful efforts of Roy Hanson and Jim Davis of FPM, you generally do not even have to be engaged in every battle to stop provisions that would reduce your freedom. This is extremely important in light of the fact that California does not have a specific "homeschool law" that exempts us from public school attendance and we have more freedom without one. Our primary legal way to homeschool is through the private school exemption, which provides us with much freedom. Drawing attention to ourselves as "homeschoolers" too often could create confusion and closer scrutiny of homeschooling in the legislature and this is not in our best interest. Roy and Jim of FPM have the wisdom to know when the troops are needed and when they can personally resolve the danger without calling out a massive alert. Let me give you an example of a few of the many bills which would have been extremely dangerous to our freedom and that FPM has quashed over the years without great fanfare and tooting their own horn. S.B. 950 would have introduced habitual truancy into the Welfare and Institutions Code for the first time. The effect would have been to make the failure to send a child to school an additional category of child abuse and require Child Protective Services to initiate investigations for each allegation. If they were not satisfied with your explanation of attendance in a private school, they could file a petition in Juvenile Court and you would have to appear with your children and have a so-called "friend of the court" appointed to represent your children and inform the judge as to what is in the child's best interest. This is a very scary thing for any family to have to endure. Every year bills are introduced to lower the compulsory attendance age from 6 to 5. That would mean you would have to start formal school one year earlier. FPM has been used by God to miraculously stop every effort to do so. S.B. 650 would have created a daytime curfew for the entire state of California. If you live in a city or county that has adopted a daytime curfew, you know what a nuisance it is. It restricts your freedom to move about in the daytime as you are subject to stop and citation if your children are in public during public school hours. In essence, it confines your children to their home during public school hours. This takes away some of the major benefits of homeschooling--flexibility and spontaneity of a homeschool program. FPM led the charge to successfully defeat S.B. 650 and three similar statewide daytime curfew bills. S.B. 276 would have required mental health exams for all Californians every three years. You're saying "I can't believe that." Well, you live in California and this is the type of legislation that is routinely introduced. Without the efforts of FPM, these types of bills would become law. Maybe the greatest victory FPM achieved for homeschoolers, which you probably never heard about, was the defeating of A.B. 424. It would have created an appointed commission to rewrite the sections of the Education Code that deal with private schools. This would have opened up discussion of our private school exemption. This could have been absolutely tragic. We could have lost our current level of freedoms and become highly regulated. FPM stopped it behind the scenes without having to notify you to make a call or visit your legislator. There are many more victories we could share but for the sake of your reading time, I will stop. However, I do want to tell you about one of the positive bills they got passed without your having to be involved. FPM secured sponsorship and support for A.B. 2749 which significantly changed the law for the better for all Californians and especially homeschoolers. As a result of their efforts, social workers and police officers conducting an investigation of child abuse or neglect must inform you of the allegations against you at the first contact. HSLDA and our families were frustrated over and over because of officials refusing to disclose the nature of the false allegations against our families. As a result of FPM's efforts, officials now have to tell us the allegations. This is invaluable in our efforts to advise you at the door should a CPS investigation occur. FPM is unlike HSLDA in that they are solely supported by donations. Without your generous giving in the past, none of the above victories would have occurred. The challenges to maintain our freedoms in California are greater every year and therefore FPM's needs are greater. Additional personnel is required for them to provide the outstanding advocacy we are used to from FPM. I am asking each member of HSLDA to make a generous gift to FPM to ensure our continued freedom to homeschool in California without intrusive state control. My thanks goes to each of you who are already giving generously on a monthly or annual basis to FPM. Make your tax-deductible gift payable to FPM, and mail it today to: FPM P.O. Box 730 Lincoln, CA 95648-0730 Your freedom as you know it today depends upon having a strong voice in Sacramento to keep the liberal legislature from imposing their radical views on home education as they have been doing to the public schools, colleges and universities in California. Because of the importance of California, HSLDA must continue to be able to partner with FPM while they are at full strength to be successful in maintaining our freedom to homeschool in California. Thank you for prayerfully considering what God would have you do to support Family Protection Ministries. God Bless, Mike Smith ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -> How many of your friends would pay your legal fees? As a member of HSLDA, you have 80,000 families standing with you to protect and advance homeschool freedoms in the United States and foreign countries. More reasons to join HSLDA... http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=1106 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================================== The HSLDA E-lert Service is a service of: Home School Legal Defense Association P.O. 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If this is an invalid email address or you have other problems, please reply to webmaster@hslda.org. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: This is considered a private and confidential message from HSLDA to its bonafide HSLDA E-lert Service subscribers. HSLDA cannot attest to the authenticity of copies posted, forwarded, or sent by any party other than HSLDA. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: Please do not reply or otherwise use this email address; hslda@hslda.org is for broadcast purposes only and is not intended to receive incoming messages. We cannot reply to any email sent to this address. If you have comments or questions, please send email to info@hslda.org or call HSLDA at 540-338-5600. HSLDA members can also email staff directly through the Members website at http://members.hslda.org/contact.asp. Thank you for your cooperation. ====================================================================== | |
