Home schooling used as truancy loophole
BevK December 28th, 2005
http://news.monstersandcr…ruancy_loophole
A Sioux Falls school administrator says a state law that allows parents to educate their children at home is being used as a truancy loophole.
Bill Smith, director of instructional support services for the Sioux Falls School District, said the district sees about 10 cases a year in which parents file a request to home school their child to avoid being prosecuted because their child is not going to school, the Sioux Falls Argus reported.
The district is considering submitting a proposed change in law that would stop parents who are in legal trouble because their child is truant from being able to file for home school status.
This is not new. This quote comes from an article in the Southern Illinoisan in April 2005, “Home-school mom charged with allowing truancy.”
“It’s what I call an end around,” Garnati said. “These are parents who have no intention of home-schooling their child. Unfortunately, there is no law on the books that criminalizes improper home schooling. What concerns me are those children who are chronically truant from school.”
Then there is this case from HSLDA.
New homeschooling family charged with truancy
The Anderson family had withdrawn their child from the public school to homeschool. Their second grade son had been repeatedly beaten up while attending the public school. In October 2002, they received a summons to appear in court for truancy.
I guess its the timeline that distinguishes between people choosing to homeschool and then being charged with truancy as opposed to people charged with truancy who decide to file homeschool paperwork.
I’d also hate to see any state come up with rules for proper homeschooling. I’m sure most unschoolers would be labeled as improperly homeschooling. I just see more problems. And it seems that if you are charged with allowing your children to be truant before you decide to homeschool them, you can still be prosecuted for that. Let the courts decide whether there’s a legitimate case against the parents or not. That’s what happened with Anderson family. Their case was dismissed by the judge. You hate to see any family have to go through what the Andersons did, but that prosecutor is probably going to make sure that he has the goods before he tries that again. More regulation of legitimate homeschoolers doesn’t seem like the best solution to this problem.
