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| Date: From: Subject: | 12/6/2011 12:37:47 PM Home School Legal Defense Association New Jersey: House Bill Increases Legislative Threat |
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====================================================================== From the HSLDA E-lert Service... ====================================================================== New Jersey: House Bill Increases Legislative Threat Dear HSLDA Members and Friends: Your calls are needed to stop a new threat that has arisen to your right to homeschool in New Jersey: A4372, filed by Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle. It is identical to Sen. Loretta Weinberg's S3105. The bill treats every homeschool parent like a suspected child abuser by requiring them to file documentation of annual medical exams by September 1. It requires parents to submit each child's name, birth date, and homeschool instructor's name every year by August 1. A mandatory portfolio would be due June 30. Bureaucrats would have virtually unlimited power over what families must include in the portfolio. Huttle's bill gives the State Board of Education dramatic new power over homeschool families. The board's regulations could mandate exactly how all the bill's requirements would be enforced, including what medical information must be submitted. The board could define homeschooling itself. This bill would turn New Jersey's current sensible legal framework for homeschooling into a morass of regulations and burdensome red tape. With three filings sent to the local public school every year for 42,000 homeschooled children, overworked public school staff would have yet more burdens added to their shoulders. With identical bills now filed in both houses of the legislature, the situation is more serious. If both bills should pass in their own respective chambers, no vote in the other chamber would be needed for the bills to become law. Action Requested Please make five phone calls by Friday using the contact information below. Remember to be courteous. 1. Call both your members of the General Assembly. Use this link to find their phone numbers: http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=13041 2. Call Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver at (973) 395-1166. She is the speaker of the New Jersey General Assembly and controls its business. 3. Call Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan at (908) 757-1677. He is the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, where A4372 has been referred. 4. Call Assemblywoman Joan Voss at (201) 346-6400. She is the vice chair of the education committee. The representatives may not be familiar with the bill yet, so give a short word of explanation when you call. Your message can be as simple as: "A bill was filed and referred to the education committee, A4372, that would turn New Jersey's sensible legal framework for homeschooling into a complicated morass of regulations and red tape. Don't add new burdens to school staff, taxpayers, and parents. The current homeschool law is working. Please oppose A4372." Or you can frame your own message using information in this email. Background Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Education Network of Christian Homeschoolers of New Jersey (ENOCH), Catholic Homeschoolers of New Jersey (CHNJ), and New Jersey Homeschool Association (NJHA), and others, are united as a task force in opposing S3105 and A4372. You can view the bill online: http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=13042 Complicated rules always foster needless conflicts, and if the new bill is enacted, this would become an everyday occurrence. After the state board adopts regulations, local school systems would adopt their own requirements, creating an additional layer of red tape. New Jersey would overnight have one of the worst homeschool laws in the nation. The New Jersey tax base and overall economy could suffer as homeschool families avoid (or leave) the state. The outstanding academic achievements of homeschool students has been documented by many studies. Homeschoolers typically score 30 percentile points above others on standardized tests. Since homeschoolers score the same in states with heavy regulation and states with light regulation, adding new regulations is highly unlikely to help academic performance (source: Dr. Brian Ray, "Home Schooling Achievement," 1997). The bill appears to be an effort to shift the blame for DYFS failing to protect endangered children to homeschoolers. DYFS needs to be fixed. The current New Jersey homeschool law is working. The New Jersey Senate and General Assembly have their own procedural rules that usually result in a moderately paced legislative process. However, each house has the power to suspend its own rules and act with astonishing speed. We need to be especially diligent now because it is possible that Huttle and Weinberg are looking for an opportunity to rush their bills through as we near the end of the legislative session. Thank you for standing with us for freedom! Sincerely yours, Scott Woodruff HSLDA Senior Counsel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -> Can you call your attorney at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning? Our members can get in touch with their attorney even after business hours, when they have a legal emergency. Wouldn't you like this level of service? More reasons to join HSLDA... http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=1100 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ====================================================================== 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. ====================================================================== | |
