Tiny Error, Texas-Sized Problem: Mom Faces Court Summons over District’s Mistake

When Amy W. hand-delivered a letter to the local public high school announcing her intention to begin homeschooling, she thought that would end her involvement with education officials. Instead, months later, she found herself asking HSLDA for help preparing for a court appearance.

Amy was summoned to answer allegations of truancy—and this in a state where the freedom to homeschool is supposed to be as wide open as the prairies where buffalo once roamed.

“Even in places like Texas, where the law is especially accommodating, homeschooling families can still run into legal entanglements,” explained Darren Jones, HSLDA senior counsel. “This happens for several reasons. Officials might not understand the law. Or, as in Amy’s case, important information about a specific student might fall through the cracks.”

Due diligence

Amy followed HSLDA’s recommended procedure when she withdrew her daughter from public school in August 2024. She submitted a letter stating her intention to homeschool, formally asking officials to remove her daughter from the school rolls.

This step is important even in states such as Texas that do not require parents to file any sort of homeschooling affidavit or notice. Our legal team suggests that parents communicate with school officials in this way to prevent the kind of problems that Amy ended up facing anyway—through no fault of her own.

In October, Amy received an email from the public school district asking for the name of the school her daughter was currently attending. The message said officials needed the information so they could enter it in the statewide student database.

Amy replied that her daughter was being homeschooled, which she had indicated in August. Her daughter’s former school had even provided a receipt for her August letter via email. The district then sent a courteous response, which led Amy to believe the confusion over her daughter’s status had been resolved.

Caught in the system

Then, in the first week of April 2025, a school official telephoned to ask again where Amy’s daughter was going to school. A few weeks later the mom received a summons to appear in municipal court on suspicion of truancy.

At this point Amy asked HSLDA for help.

“Once a person enters a government system,” she observed, “one error, one T not crossed, one I not dotted, will keep a citizen in that system. I knew I needed legal assistance.”

Jones learned that Amy’s legal woes stemmed from a single error. Her daughter’s educational status had been improperly coded in the district database.

Jones contacted the school district to point out that Amy had been diligent in conveying the proper information to officials, and that the situation should never have been escalated to the point where a court appearance was called for. He added that HSLDA was prepared to represent Amy before a judge, should that be necessary.

He noted: “I’ve flown from Virginia to California before for exactly this reason—to stand in court with a member who’d been wrongfully charged because of a school’s administrative error.”

Fixing the code

The day after he corresponded with school officials, the district’s executive director of student services telephoned Jones to apologize and say that the court summons had been withdrawn.

Amy said she was relieved to get the news.

“I do feel that if HSLDA had not stepped in,” she said, “the re-coding of my child’s status would have remained a low priority and probably delayed. This could have led to more contact and pressure from officials.”

Jones said he sympathized with Amy’s frustration. The family shouldn’t have faced the threat of legal proceedings, especially in a state with such homeschool-friendly laws.