Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Is Homeschooling Legal?

There has been a lot of talk lately about the legality of homeschooling. A lot of folks who know very little about homeschooling are wondering even more these days about that very question.
The laws and legality of homeschooling differs from state to state. Some states do not recognize homeschooling as a legal choice for parents, while some other states see homeschooling as a parents right and therefore definitely a legal choice.
In the state of Florida it is legal to homeschool your child. Homeschoolers in the state of Florida have 3 legal option in which to operate under.
  • option 1 is as a single Home School (under the homeschool law)
  • option 2 is as groups of Home Schools (filed as a Private School)
  • option 3 is to operate under The Private Tutor Law

To find out more about Homeschooling in Florida you can go to http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp?State=FL

"On February 28, 2008, the California Court of Appeals issued a ruling in a juvenile court proceeding that declared that almost all forms of homeschooling in California are in violation of state law. (Private tutoring by certified teachers remains an option.) Moreover, the court ruled that parents possess no constitutional right to homeschool their children." HSDLA

This case proceeding has been a source of many conversations in the past couple of weeks. From my understanding it was never legal to homeschool in the state of California. The only way that a family can educate their kids at home was to declare themselves a private school and to operate under the private school exemption.

In my opinion the only thing alarming about this case is not that homeschooling was declare illegal in California but that a juvenile court Judge can take it upon himself to rule that parents basically do not have the right to make educational decisions for their children and that California parents possess no constitutional right to homeschool their children.

In my opinion this ruling is alarming in so many ways.

To read more about this ruling go to http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/B192878.PDF

To read The opinion of a fellow homeschooler and former Californian go to http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jaminacema/495743/

To read what the HSLDA has to say about this case go to http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/ca/200803060.asp

To here listen to the broadcast "In Defense of Homeschooling" that was on Focus on the Family go to http://listen.family.org/recentdaily/

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