”
Done with school?
”
I asked Sam, who was spending the night. He and Oliver were
putting together a third snack. Teenaged boys are like that.
“Done with school?” I asked Sam, who was spending the night. He and Oliver were putting together a third snack. Teenaged boys are like that.
“Yes! We’re into our second week now. Feels really good,” he replied.
Most of the homeschoolers we know have finished up their year. Some still have to complete a little history or math. The ones who live up on Croy Ridge had their schooling interrupted for a couple of months, while they were evacuated or helping with relief efforts: all very educational, but they have quite a lot of math to finish.
Our family’s homeschooling ended piecemeal. On May 5th, I gave the calculus final to Oliver and his classmates John and Ben. Huzzah! On the 6th, Oliver and several of his rhetoric classmates took their AP English exam at Gilroy High. (Thank you, Ms. Pratt, for accommodating us all.) Anne and her friend Kelsey took their Middle Ages History final on the 19th, and the next day Anne and I took our Latin final. Huzzah!
The kids turned in their last rhetoric essays on the 21st. Huzzah! My Algebra II students took their final on the 23rd. Huzzah! The rhetoric picnic/party/potluck was held on May 28th; 80 kids, with associated siblings and mothers, chatted and ate and played King of the Castle amid the redwoods of Mount Madonna. Five of the students and I had to leave on time to get back to sea level for our Algebra I final. Huzzah! And the next day was Anne’s last nature study class. Huzzah!
I don’t think of homeschooling as being hard. I like learning; I like my kids; the combination usually wavers between satisfying and sheer bliss. But this year was busy, what with homeschooling and teaching math classes and writing this column. It was a relief to be done, to have time for mundane tasks: washing windows, weeding.
To this palpable relief on a private level is joined an unexpected public relief; California Department of Education has reconsidered its interpretation of California statutes and case law.
“We’re simply going to stop saying that every homeschooled child is truant,” education deputy general counsel Michael Hersher said. “I think homeschooling is as individualized as the students and parents and you can’t really generalize. There are children who excel academically and others who are just running the streets.”
Mind you, the law hasn’t changed. For at least 50 years, the law has stated that every child aged 6 to 18 must attend public school, unless he was:
• being tutored full time by a credentialed teacher ( the so-called Hollywood exemption,) or
• enrolled in a public or private Independent Studies Program, or
• enrolled in a private school.
Most homeschoolers complied with the law by filing R-4 affidavits, stating that they were operating (very) private schools in their homes.
About 15 years ago, career bureaucrat Carolyn Perillo formulated the infamous Perillo Doctrine: “Homeschooling, a situation where non-credentialed parents teach their children at home, is not authorized in California.” (No one authorized us to beget our children, either.)
And in recent years, under Superintendent of Education Delaine Eastin, the word “authorized” was replaced with the word “legal” on the Department of Education’s Website. Some school districts attempted to prosecute homeschoolers on grounds of truancy; all such attempts failed.
This year, the newly elected state superintendent of education, Jack O’Connell, requested that case law and statutes be re-examined. As a result, the earlier references that “homeschooling is not legal in California” have been removed from the CDE’s website.
According to Michael Hersher, the department’s current position is that only local school districts have the authority to decide whether a child who attends a private school is truant. Hersher also says that the CDE now refers its daily inquiries about homeschooling to the independent statewide homeschooling organizations.
The whole saga illustrates to power of a bureaucrat, to define, to interpret, to harass, or to help. I’m glad that Jack O’Connell has decided to focus the Department of Education’s efforts on the millions of children who are entrusted to him. This focus relieves my mind and allows me to focus my efforts on my kids and my math students.
Huzzah!
Cynthia Anne Walker is a homeschooling mother of three and a former engineer. She is a published independent author. Her column is published in The Dispatch every Friday.
