Should You Notify the School When You Start Homeschooling?

Here’s a question we get asked a lot and my typical answer:

Q. If I am withdrawing my child from public school to homeschool, should I send a withdrawal letter to the school?

A. Generally, yes.

Parents frequently ask about what steps to take when withdrawing a child from public school to homeschool. The homeschool law gives no instructions about the process of removing a student from school—only that a homeschool notice is due within five calendar days “of withdrawing from a public or nonpublic school.”

Does that mean a withdrawal letter isn’t necessary? The homeschool law is concerned with what a parent must do to legally homeschool. It doesn’t have anything to say about public school attendance.  

Here are three reasons we generally recommend that families provide the public school with a withdrawal letter:

1. Sending a withdrawal letter alerts the school that your child will no longer be attending.  

Does the school keep calling and wanting to know where your child is? It is usually because they don’t know!

After you file a homeschool notification, your child is no longer required to attend public school. However, you still have a relationship with the school. There are still administrators, teachers, and attendance officers who will observe that your child isn’t in their regular seat on Monday. A withdrawal letter lets them know that they are not responsible for your student.

2. Sending a withdrawal letter means you aren’t relying on the school district office to pass the message along to your local school.

Your homeschool notification goes to the school district superintendent. This puts the district on notice that the child will be homeschooled, but that doesn’t mean this information gets passed on to the school.

Remember, unlike some states, in Ohio you aren’t required to tell the superintendent where your child was previously enrolled. Don’t rely on the school district to inform the school.

(Plus, if your notice gets forwarded anywhere, it is often to an Education Service Center, putting another level of bureaucracy between you and your school.)

3. Sending a withdrawal letter can keep the truant officer from showing up at your door!

If they don’t know what happened to your child, public school officials are required to follow the steps for truancy investigations, which can escalate to a truant officer coming to your house or a sheriff’s deputy showing up with legal paperwork. While this can often get cleared up by showing you’ve been legally homeschooling, all that stress can usually be avoided in the first place by providing the public school with a formal notice through a withdrawal letter.

Don’t know where to begin with a withdrawal letter? Members can access HSLDA’s attorney-reviewed Ohio Withdrawal Letter here.