School Official Crosses the Line, Literally, to Investigate Family

It was just a business card, but when Kali Lindsey returned from her son’s soccer practice one day in September to find the tiny rectangle of ink and paper affixed to her front door, its presence provoked an unnerving realization. A public school official had crossed state lines to investigate her family.

Kali contacted the office indicated on the card, the Director of Pupil Personnel (DPP), in the Kentucky school district where she and her husband had homeschooled their children for four years. What baffled Kali about the attempt to contact her family is that since July of 2024, they have been living and homeschooling across the Ohio River in Illinois. Even though state law did not require them to, they had informed the school officials that they were moving and “terminating” their homeschool program in Kentucky.

After failing to receive a satisfactory explanation for why Kentucky officials were bothering them in another state and worried that they would come back, Kali called HSLDA.

“We have a long history of defending homeschooling families against government overreach,” said Jim Mason, HSLDA president. “Officials routinely devise new homeschool requirements or processes which are not supported by law. What these officials fail to realize is that, in addition to posing an affront to liberty, these false mandates can hurt families by provoking anxiety and even trauma.”

Courtesy letter goes missing

Tj Schmidt, HSLDA senior counsel, immediately contacted the DPP on behalf of the Lindsey family. (In addition to serving as an administrator, the DPP enforces Kentucky school attendance and truancy laws.) Schmidt explained to the official that the actions of his office violated protocol for several reasons.

To begin with, the Lindseys had done nothing to trigger an investigation regarding their children’s school attendance. They had followed Kentucky homeschool law during their tenure in the state. Each year they homeschooled, the Lindseys filed a notice of intent with the local board of education no later than the middle of August.

When they moved to Illinois, the Lindseys sent a letter announcing their change of residence to officials in the Kentucky district where they had resided.

“They sent this letter as a courtesy,” Schmidt noted. “Nothing in the law requires such a notice, but the family wanted to avoid confusion about their homeschool program. It is outrageous that the sort of complications they were trying to prevent ended up occurring anyway.”

The DPP admitted to Schmidt that the family’s letter had been received. In fact, he was able to locate this letter after Schmidt’s first phone call. The DPP was unable to explain why the Lindsey children had remained on his list of homeschooled students, or why more than a full school year passed before he located the information.

Instead, school officials decided to track down the Lindseys and cross state lines to check up on them when their office failed to receive a homeschool notice from the family in August of 2025. The entire time the family was in Illinois, which treats homeschool programs as private schools, similar to Kentucky, but requires no notice in order to establish the private homeschool program.

It was the failure of basic filing procedures, and the ensuing presumption by officials, that most disturbed Kali and her husband.

“The whole thing just felt odd and off,” Kali said. “They went to a lot of trouble to track us down. If it was just an issue of them not having paperwork from us, why didn’t they just send a letter?”

Broader issues at stake

Schmidt posed a similar question to the DPP, asking why it was necessary to send an official to contact the Lindsey family in person, at their new home 40 miles away and across state lines.

Schmidt said, “I asked the DPP, ‘As soon as you realized the family lived in Illinois, why didn’t you simply close the file?’” The DPP explained that it seemed like a good idea at the time as another official in his office had observed that his own home in Kentucky was “not far” from the Lindsey’s address in Illinois, so it seemed reasonable to simply drive to their house.

Not so, Schmidt countered.

“We all have a fundamental right to travel and move from state to state,” Schmidt observed. “It’s a basic freedom, and we don’t need permission. In my opinion, it is patently unreasonable for a school official to travel out of state to try to enforce compulsory attendance requirements when you no longer live in the state.”

After their conversation, the DPP assured Schmidt that the Lindsey family had been removed from the district’s rolls and would not be bothered again.

Still, Kali said the incident revealed how easily their prerogative to homeschool in peace can be violated.

“It’s hard to feel like they’re not picking on you,” she said of the Kentucky DPP’s office. “Did they think this was going to come across as anything other than intimidation?”