Oh, Bother
I have been blissfully living a life free of homeschool laws. In Korea, as the family of a US soldier, the education of children was placed firmly under the responsibility of the parents. Put them in the school provided on base, or one off base or homeschool – they didn’t care, as long as you were indeed educating them.
Then we moved to DC. Several years ago, DC attempted to enact some outrageous homeschool laws that included pop home inspections. Those laws were struck down immediately and the powers that be were way too concerned with other things to bother with better laws. As a result, all you had to do was notify the schools if you were pulling a child out of a DC school. That was it.
Well, that all changed last month. Now we have to notify the Office of the State Superintendent of Education that we are homeschooling. We have to keep a portfolio of our children’s work and provide a copy of our high school diploma. If the OSSE determines there is cause for worry, they can request up to 2 portfolio reviews a year.
Through the grace of God, my high school diploma was not in non-temp storage like usual. Non-temp storage is your stuff the military stores for you when they attempt to cram you into a house too small for your soldier’s rank. It’s free, but the catch is this – you cannot access those things until they are delivered to your next assignment. For various and sundry reasons relating to 5 years worth of non-temp storage being delivered at the same time as all our other household goods, having a one month old baby and general unpacking lethargy, we missed the 30 day deadline to send things back into non-temp storage here.
The point is, and I do have one, my high school diploma was available to be copied and sent in as demanded requested.
The funny thing is, this law just came to the table a few months ago and was passed last month. And yet they set a deadline of August 15th to have your intent to homeschool form in. Apparently, the OSSE estimates there to be 130 homeschool families in all of the District of Columbia.
Let that sink in for a moment.
With a population of 588, 292 (according to the census), only 130 of them homeschool. I have to say that on our base alone there are 70 families registered in our homeschool group. So that means that there are only 60 additional homeschool families in the entire District.
I’m imagining the single filing cabinet that has been set aside to accommodate 260 pieces of paper (intent form plus a copy of diploma).
Someone is going to be very surprised on Friday as the mail starts to pour in.
I did my part to plug up the system and took a moment to fill in the form and copy my diploma.
I may have a slight problem with authority, but I’m not actually going to break the law.