Thursday, May 17, 2018

"Homeschooling" and abuse: no connection, same as always

According to this article, the "homeschooling" family recently found to have abused their children significantly had not filed required legal notices, had previously been investigated by social services, and the father of most of the children had previously been convicted of a crime in a plea deal for an indictment mentioning at least four felonies.


In other words, contrary to my previous comments on this matter, this is not in fact a case where a family successfully used "homeschooling" as an aegis against investigation.  It is a case where under-prosecution for crimes and failed social services interventions lead to nasty abuse of children.


Really, as a homeschooling dad who values the freedoms we have and also wants to protect children, it strikes me that the best thing we could have is notification of intent to homeschool combined with actually providing social services the resources they need to do their jobs correctly.  And as a reader of the "HSLDA Court Report", I can say that yes, that means with a culture of honoring the 4th Amendment by getting warrants and not just threatening one's way into a home.

3 comments:

Elspeth said...

I was actually surprised to learn recently that there actually are several states where no filing of intent to homeschool is required. I had no idea, and here I was thinking homeschooling was easy peasy in Florida!

On a positive homeschool note, as one of his last gubernatorial hurrahs, Rick Scott has signed legislation clarifying to local districts that there are limits to the amount of intrusion they can impose on homeschooling families.

I'm gonna miss Rick. Not only was he a good governor, he seemed wholly uninterested in sensationalism or photo ops.

Elspeth said...

Link:

https://www.redefinedonline.org/2018/05/fpea-sending-out-letter-about-new-home-education-program-to-superintendents/

Bike Bubba said...

He's going to put an HSLDA lawyer or two out of work if more governors do the same thing. It seems like about a third of HSLDA legal requests have to do with school boards deciding they need more information than the law requires or allows.

thanks for the link!