Posted on 05/24/2016 3:31:33 PM PDT by Sopater
Homeschool families in Clinton County, Kentucky, were surprised to see themselves mentioned in their local paper as a topic of discussion during the recent school board meeting. On May 18, the Clinton County News reported that local school officials intend to conduct random audits of area homeschool families this summer because they want to “ensure that all children in our county are getting a rigorous and effective education.”
Home School Legal Defense Association opposes any such audits as unconstitutional. We are also troubled by what appears to be the underlying motivation for this proposed meddling by school officials: money.
During the school board meeting the district did acknowledge the constitutional right of parents to teach their children at home. But they said they intend to audit homeschool programs to “ensure that all children in Clinton County have access to the best education possible.”
It appears that this scrutiny of homeschool programs in Clinton County is driven by two factors. According to the district, Clinton County has seen a 10–15 percent increase in homeschooling over the past few years. Dr. Julie York, the district’s director of pupil personnel (DPP), indicated that she believes this trend will continue and that “it is still the school district’s responsibility to make sure that the student is educated.”
Lost Revenue
The district’s finance director, Mike Reeves, also spoke at the May 8 school board meeting and estimated that the district will lose almost $300,00 in Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) funding. (Given that there are approximately 85 homeschool students in Clinton County, HSLDA estimates that the actual amount of SEEK funds that the district will not receive would be closer to $435,000.) While Kentucky spends approximately $9,316 per pupil from federal, state, and local funds, the Kentucky Department of Education estimates that Clinton County’s SEEK funds will be $5,118 per pupil for the 2016–2017 school year.
It is obvious that Clinton County sees the increase of homeschoolers as taking money away from the district, and this is likely a significant reason in officials’ desire to increase scrutiny of homeschool families. Interestingly, the Clinton County News reported that Dr. York “noted that there was something of a misnomer in that the funds that are received from the state are, in turn, spent on students.”
As soon as we learned of the article and the school board meeting, HSLDA Staff Attorney Tj Schmidt notified homeschool leaders and groups across the state.
A Challenging Law
Schmidt also wrote a letter to Dr. York pointing out that many years ago the Kentucky Directors of Pupil Personnel (KDPP) and several statewide homeschool leaders, including Christian Home Educators of Kentucky (CHEK), acknowledged the challenges of applying Kentucky law to individual homeschool families.
In Kentucky, parents who teach their child at home are operating a private school. As such, they are required to provide instruction in various subjects for at least 1,062 hours over a minimum of 170 days each school term. Parents also maintain attendance and scholarship records (i.e. report cards) for each child.
Under the Best Practices Document drawn up by the KDPP and homeschool leaders, as long as parents provide their notice that they are operating a private homeschool program within the first two weeks of the beginning of each school year (generally by the second week of August), they are presumed to be operating a bona fide school. No records should be demanded unless the school district has evidence that parents are not educating their children.
Schmidt reminded Dr. York of this state policy and pointed out that school officials cannot simply show up at a homeschool family’s home and demand records as they might of a more traditional private school. We hope that Clinton County will respect the Best Practices Document and will drop their intent to randomly audit homeschool families in the county.
We never actually had to do that, but we practiced several times. Our boys knew the score.
Mine do. They also both finished their curriculum several days shy of the state mandate, so we made up other things for them to cover to get the minimum number of days in.
Remedy? Ha! That's often their opening move. If you don't want to talk to them or let them in, you will immediately be told that "we can do this the easy way or the hard way."
Auditors of homeschoolers would undoubtedly be functioning under the same authority, and with the same powers, as the state's child protective services. That means if you don't cooperate they have the power to take your children, on the spot. Any cop they call will back them up. Any judge they explain it to, a day or so later, will also never find fault with them. Your lawyer is likely to tell you to cooperate. Your gun? That's worse than useless, you stand to lose your child, your freedom, and a significant amount of money and property.
The worst home school is still better than the Psychological Brainwashing Centres the govt runs.
As a homeschooler, I think the people like you should leave me and the education of my children alone! If someone comes by to “audit” me, they will be sorry.
They are homeschooling because they see society devolving into bizarre world. These are the people protecting their children from the nuts whose educational goals are prioritizing men in women’s bathrooms and revisionist history.
These are the kids that the libs are being kept from getting their dirty hands on, that will come out childhood somewhat modest minded, with faith, secure in whom they are, a idea that America can be and is a great country with great ideals, and correct knowledge of what it used to be without it being Soviet-erased out of the books. Makes the left crazy. They can’t stand it.
The left hates homeschooling because they can’t tell you what bathrooms to have.
They tried this in NC, although here they actually expected homechooling parents to bring their children to the police departments for the meetings. That idea got shot down in a hurry.
Years ago, I believe it was Massachusetts, the state took it upon itself to check up on home schoolers at home, and if I remember correctly, a judge found it unconstitutional.
When we ran into local and state folks trying to make rulings about homeschooling it was usually someone beholden to the teachers unisons spearheading it.
So homeschoolers showed up.
Our political class learned that on should never pick a fight with a group of committed and motivated people, who have all day, and can make the fight a unit study, on government, or philosophy, and give high school credits.
If you are right, somebody won the lottery that day!
“Hopefully it starts to rain while the auditor is waiting on the front porch to speak with my attorney.”
Principal Rooney in “Ferris Bueler’s Day Off” comes to mind. Hope the folks “unknowingly hosting the visit” have a bad a$$ed dog!
That's because it was flat contrary to the law. It sounds like Kentucky's law makes "auditing" of a homeschool's records a possibility, whether it's by the local district or the state.
I've always refused to share my records with the state. If they want to call me and make an appointment, I'll be happy to show them that we have vaccination records, attendance records, and test results. Once they've verified the existence of these documents, they can get off my doorstep or I'll call HSLDA.
Absurd. The best education possible, for any given child, would be expensive. First, because it would require tutoring by an expert - in fact, by the finest expert tutor. Not the finest expert tutor in Clinton County, or even in Kentucky. The finest tutor in the world.So we see that “the best education possible” for an individual cannot be delivered to “all the children in Clinton County.” One thing we know is that parental involvement and support is sine qua non for a good education. Another thing we know is that homeschooling is the ultimate in parental involvement in education. Yet another thing we know is that even if the parent is not herself (or himself) an expert at teaching academics to children in general, s/he is ineluctably the first and primary teacher of the child.
“Ensure that all children in Clinton County have access to the best education possible” is a chimera. To propose it as policy is to make “better” the enemy of good enough. Let the homeschoolers audit the government schools by the standard of “ensure that all children in Clinton County” government schools "have access to the best education possible” and see how Clinton County likes that.
Will they be auditing poblik skuls? will teacher unions be audited? Will they audit the government and themselves?
How in the heck would THEY know?
Harassment. Plain and simple.
Yes, it was contrary to the law and we pushed back.
Perhaps if the Home School Legal Defense Association provided independent audits. There are many ways to work it where you won’t be offended or threatened. You just have to get active in your school district.
But if you’re a home schooler, I support random audits, including teachers in public and private school and students in public and private schools to ensure they are meeting or exceeding academic standards.
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