dual enrollment Archives • Texas Parents' Educational Rights Network

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School Lawyers React to Home School Co-enrollment

Written by admin on October 5, 2015. Posted in Constitutional, Homeschooling, STAAR | EOC Testing. Leave a Comment

Last year, TPERN introduced parents to the concept of home school co-enrollment as a means of complying with compulsory attendance laws while holding kids out of school during testing windows. Two groups had a problem with it: school lawyers and some full time home schoolers. While we respect the opinion of the full time home schoolers who teach their kids day in and day out, we strongly disagree that TPERN is encouraging parents to game the system or to somehow demean what full time home school parents do. As to the school lawyers, we continue to be unimpressed with their willful misreading of law and statute in an indefensible effort to defeat parents’ rights to teach their kids at home.

Let’s boil down the school’s argument to its essence: Parents do not have a right to provide instruction at home in academic subjects, religion, citizenship, arts or vocational education if they choose to enroll their kids in public school. When stated on its face, stripped of erroneous citations, it is clear that no school will ever go to court and attempt to defend that premise. If there were ever a plainly unconstitutional argument made by schools, this would be it. No school can deny a parent the right to enroll in both public schools and private educational settings, including home schooling. Now, what can the schools do? They can demand that you enroll as a full time student. Public schools are not required to accept part time enrollees. They may do so if they wish (it is not prohibited in any way), but they cannot be forced to do so. They can record absences as unexcused for grading and credit purposes, if a student misses scheduled classes for home school instruction. As mentioned in our initial article, however, we do believe the parents have a colorable argument that such absences cannot be used to show violations of the compulsory attendance law.

So if a school tells you that home school co-enrollment is not permitted, you should simply tell them (a) there is no law against it; (b) because my daughter is enrolling as a full time student in public school, you do not have the discretion to reject her; and (c) constitutionally, the school cannot prevent me from providing instruction to my child in our home on any matter that I, as a parent, see fit to teach. Some school lawyers cite a TEA decision claiming it rejects dual enrollment. However, that decision merely determined that a school district could not be compelled to accept a part time student for one class a day. If the student had offered to enroll in the minimum number of classes required by the District, we believe the case would have been decided differently.

Let’s be honest. Parents teach their kids at home all the time, whether they are enrolled in public schools or not. This has always been legal and always will be legal. It is outside the scope of the school to say what you can and can’t do in your own home. The only thing that home school co-enrollment changes is the removal of the truancy threat against parents and kids. It is this loss of control the schools fear. That is what is behind all of their protestations. They know they can’t stop you, but they will lie to try to get you to back down.

Stand up for yourselves and your kids.

Fighting the Opt Out Truancy Threats: Dual Enrollment Home Schooling

Written by admin on August 12, 2014. Posted in Constitutional, Homeschooling, STAAR | EOC Testing. 17 Comments

Schools are actively brandishing the threat of truancy charges against parents who exercise their fundamental liberty rights to direct the education of their children and protect them from abusive testing regimens. Schools have sent threatening letters and in some cases actually filed truancy charges against both parents and children if they missed10 days (unexcused) in a six month period or more than three days in a four week period. We have seen letters threatening to file truancy charges against nine year old students, even though the statute only makes truancy criminal if the child is between 12 and 18 years of age. It is less clear if parents can be charged for truancy of children under age 12 because of the confusing way the statute is written. One argument would say that the days missed calculation applies to students of all ages for purposes of charging the parent. Another argument would say that the days missed calculation can only be determined by reference to the age of the child, and therefore parents can’t be charged if the student is under 12. We predict schools will take the first interpretation and file charges against parents and force them to argue in court, at risk of conviction, that the second interpretation should prevail. We do not believe schools will file against any student under age 12. (Please file an Incident Report with us if they do)

Rather than depend on legal semantics to fight the charges, parents do have other options. Please note, none of these options have been tested in court. There is always a risk that a judge may reject them, but we believe they are legally sound. The first option is the withdraw/re-enroll option discussed in a previous article. The main requirement here is that if charges are filed, you must demonstrate that you have an actual home school program during the time of disenrollment that includes a study of good citizenship. Curriculum purchased or downloaded from the internet, along with assignments from the days of withdrawal would support this factual finding. Of course, if you take this route, you are faced with multiple withdrawals and re-enrollments during a school year. This is a time consuming undertaking. We also believe local school boards may try to pass policies to combat this if this approach becomes prevalent. For this reason, we are proposing a new approach. Again, this approach is legally untested, but we believe it to be valid and consistent with state law.

The approach is what we call Homeschool Co-Enrollment. At its heart, Homeschool Co-Enrollment is the essence of what schools should seek in a family’s approach to education. In Homeschool Co-Enrollment, parents are actively involved supporting and supplementing the academic development of their child. Homeschool Co-Enrollment exists informally in many ways. Sunday School classes, academic tutoring centers, and family reading times are all examples of homeschooling that we engage in informally, not to mention giving homework help and quizzing your child to prepare for tests. Our proposal is for a family that intends to take their kids out of school during STAAR testing to make this relationship formal.