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PE-Happy District Denies IHIP
A member family in the Island Trees Public School District contacted Home School Legal Defense Association for help after they received several letters from their local school district rejecting their Individualized Home Instruction Plan (IHIP) forms. The sole reason the IHIPs were not accepted was because
the district did not believe physical education was being adequately addressed.
Even though the parents had provided information that their high school-age children were receiving regular PE and that they actively participated in a local gym, the district was not satisfied. What was required, according to the district, was that the IHIP state that PE would be provided for 41 minutes every other day throughout the entire school year. The district also wanted the parents to provide more detailed information on how this was happening.
HSLDA Staff Attorney Thomas J. Schmidt contacted the school district’s attorney to point out that New York law does not require any of this. While a parent must provide for at least two units of PE in high school, this is the total cumulative requirement for grades 9-12. For instance, if parents want to cover PE in grades 9, 10, and 11 but skip grade 12, they can. As long as a total of at least two units are completed during high school, parents are not required to provide a PE program each year.
There is also no legal requirement that parents indicate the number of minutes they will be covering any given subject in the IHIP. The only place a parent must indicate how many hours of instruction are occurring is in the quarterly report. And even in the quarterly report, parents are to state the total number of hours of instruction provided during the entire quarter and not the total number of hours per subject.
After several conversations between Schmidt and the school district’s attorney, the district relented and sent the family a letter saying that their IHIP was in compliance.
— by Thomas J. Schmidt
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