by Jim Brown
A school district in Alaska has voted in favor of more state regulations on home schooling. But the Home School Legal Defense Association says home educators should not feel threatened by the move.
The Kenai Peninsula School Board has recommended language that would authorize the state department of education to “register” home schoolers. The board also amended a resolution to include stronger language in favor of home school accountability programs. One board member reportedly complained that too many home schoolers “need incredible remediation” when they re-enter the public school.
But Dee Black, senior counsel at the HSLDA, says the school board's vote is not an immediate threat to home educators.
“It really doesn't have any force of law,” he explains. “As I understand it, [it's] a resolution that some local school board has adopted — kind of a 'wish list' sort of thing. But before it could really have any teeth, it would have to be a statute that's enacted by the legislature in Alaska.”
Black explains that The Last Frontier state has a lenient home-school law. “The home-school law of Alaska is very reasonable,” he says. “In fact, the statutory language simply says that a child who is being educated in the child's home by a parent or legal guardian meets the compulsory attendance requirement. So that's exactly the kind of law that we would like to see enacted in every state.”
Black says he is not sure what prompted the school board's decision, but notes that state education associations typically do not favor home education and a large number of school districts are hostile to the concept.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
