Families occasionally have to deal with confused officials who needlessly complicate the transition to homeschooling, and that’s understandable. The law for homeschooling is different in every state.
What parents shouldn’t have to do is struggle with legally baseless requirements that are impossible to comply with. HSLDA recently helped a pair of families in two states who found themselves cornered in just such a bureaucratic cul-de-sac.
Both families withdrew their children from public school to start homeschooling. But in order to complete the process of removing the students from public school rolls, officials demanded the parents provide information that didn’t exist.
“I got the runaround from three different places,” recalled Sabrina Hare, who removed her daughter from her Alabama public school kindergarten in September. “I filled out the withdrawal form, and everybody kept telling me I needed more.”
Sabrina had informed the local public school superintendent’s office that she intended to begin operating under Alabama’s private school homeschooling option. Officials from her daughter’s former school then contacted the mom to say she needed to provide “the code” for the cover school they assumed the girl was going to attend. (Cover schools, also called “umbrella” schools, are private or church schools that enable parents to meet legal requirements in some states.)
Officials said Sabrina’s daughter would be considered absent without excuse if they didn’t provide a cover school code. However, under Alabama homeschool law there is no such code.
Different State, Same Problem
The second family encountered a similar situation when the parents withdrew their children from public school in North Carolina to facilitate a move to Texas. (Name withheld to protect the family’s privacy.)
Officials at the North Carolina school said they needed the name and identification number of the family’s new homeschool program to officially disenroll the students. The family was homeschooling in their new home, but couldn’t provide an identification number, because they don’t exist in Texas.
After hearing from each of these families, HSLDA quickly intervened.
Cracking the Code
HSLDA Associate Attorney Samuel Johnson had advised the Alabama family on how to legally withdraw a student from the public school. After Sabrina contacted him about the demand for a cover school code, he contacted the public school.
Johnson informed the assistant principal that under Alabama law parents have the right to choose the form and manner of their child’s education, which includes the right to withdraw their child from public school at any time. He added that the law does not describe any specific procedure for this, so the request for a cover school code lacked any sort of legal authority.
“After I talked to her, the assistant principal was very cooperative,” Johnson said. “She assured me she would let Sabrina know that her daughter would be withdrawn from the school without delay, and that the unexcused absences would be removed from the records.”
Clearing Up Confusion
HSLDA Senior Counsel Darren Jones also attained a swift resolution on behalf of the family who moved to Texas. “It appears that officials from the family’s former school assumed Texas law was the same as North Carolina law,” he said.
North Carolina families typically establish a home education program by registering as a private school on the state Division of Non-Public Education’s website. Parents are asked to give their program a specific name, and upon completing the process, are issued a unique ID number. In Texas, families are not required to submit any paperwork in order to homeschool.
Jones suggested the family send a formal letter of withdrawal, and he followed up with a message of his own to the North Carolina district explaining how homeschool law in Texas made their request impossible to fulfill.
“If needed, we could have reminded North Carolina officials that the family was no longer in their jurisdiction,” Jones added. But the school dropped the matter.
These cases illustrate how HSLDA stands ready to advocate for our members in all kinds of situations, big and small, where the freedom to homeschool is being challenged.