Idaho home schoolers are being challenged by the government to have the
FREEDOM to home school. Idaho State Government wants to stick
their noses in the homes of home schoolers. Idaho State
Government wants to take away FREEDOM. If you are a home schooler
please take action to help those in Idaho. If you are a home
schooler in Idaho I suggest that you take action now. Here is the
latest information:
ICHE ACTION ALERT
TO: ICHE MEMBERS
FROM: BARRY PETERS, ICHE Legal Advisor
SUBJECT: SB1233 Further Alert
DATE: February 10, 2004
A hearing on Senate Bill 1233 in the Senate Education Committee has
been set for 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, February 12, 2004. Although
your attendance at the committee hearing is not needed, IT IS CRUCIAL
THAT WITHIN THE NEXT 36 HOURS ALL HOME EDUCATORS IN THE STATE
COMMUNICATE WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE TO LET THEM KNOW THAT YOU
OPPOSE SEN. BILL 1233. If you have not already done so in
response to the alert sent out last Friday, please take a few minutes
and follow the instructions below to communicate with your senators on
this important issue.
At the end of this alert is a copy of the letter that has been
individualized and delivered this morning to every senator in the
legislature. If you will read it carefully, it provides a more
detailed explanation of the reasons why this bill must be regarded as
an attack on the right to home educate in Idaho.
If you have not already done so, please take a moment right now to let
the senators listed below know your views on this bill. As you do
so, please observe the following guidelines:
1. Be courteous in all communications. A gentle, but firm, message is best.
2. For the subject line of any emailed message please use "Oppose Senate Bill 1233."
3. The salutation should read
"Dear Senator Stegner, Chairman Schroeder, and Members of the Senate
Education Committee:"
4. Use your own words. DO NOT SIMPLY FORWARD THIS ALERT TO THE SENATORS.
5. All mail, email, and faxes
must contain your complete name, address, and telephone number in order
to be delivered.
6. Make your message short
and to the point. One or two sentences explaining your reasons
for opposition to the bill are often adequate. You may add a
sentence or two describing some of the successes you have enjoyed in
home schooling your children. Lengthy explanations are not
usually read, especially when we hope that they will be receiving many
letters. A word of thanks to the senators for serving us is also
appropriate.
7. Let them know that you
"oppose Senate Bill 1233" and ask the committee members to vote against
it when it comes before them.
8. Copy your email to us at
so that we may keep a tally.
9. For those of you that live
in the same counties as either Senator Stegner or any of the committee
members, be sure to let them know that fact so that they have a clear
view of how many potential votes they will be losing if they support
this bill.
10. Keep copies of your
messages as you may wish to use them again in later communications with
other legislators.
11. If you leave a telephone
message, you may give the switchboard operators a single message and
ask that it be delivered to Senator Stegner and the entire Senate
Education Committee. If you send a fax message, you may list at
the top all of the names of the senators that you wish to receive the
message and the switchboard will disseminate it to each of the senators
named.
Contact telephone, fax, and email information is as follows:
Message Telephone for all Senators: (208) 332-1000 or 1-800-626-0471
Fax Number for all
Senators:
(208) 334-5397
Email Addresses:
Sponsor: Joe Stegner (Nez Perce Co.):
Education Committee Members:
Gary Schroeder, Chairman (Latah Co.):
Tom Gannon (Owyhee & Twin Falls Cos.):
Laird Noh (Twin Falls Co.):
John Andreason (Ada Co.):
Ron McWilliams (Canyon Co.):
Jack Noble (Ada Co.):
Elliot Werk (Ada Co.):
Edgar Malepeai (Bannock Co.):
Please also immediately forward this Action Alert to any other home
schooling families whom you know and ask them to respond, as
well. Thank you for acting on this important legislation.
If this alert has been forwarded to you by an ICHE member and you are
not yet a member of ICHE, but would like to be added to our email alert
system, you may submit a membership application online by selecting the
"JOIN ICHE" option on the left side of the home page for ICHE at
www.iche-idaho.org.
Dear Senator:
I write to you as the Legal
Advisor of the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators (ICHE). After
discussions and correspondence with Senator Stegner and with the public
school administrators who are pressing for passage of Senate Bill 1233,
it has become evident that an impasse exists between ICHE and Senator
Stegner over the significant threats that home educating families will
face if that bill becomes law. Please let me explain.
As you may recall, on
February 5, 2004, an earlier bill, Senate Bill 1209, passed the full
senate on a 34-1 vote. That bill made a number of changes to the
Idaho Code occasioned by the deletion several years ago of the Youth
Rehabilitation Act and its replacement by the Juvenile Corrections
Act. Senate Bill 1209 took care of the minor changes that had
been needed to bring the code up to date and to make it internally
consistent. This bill already has made the changes needed to
revise section 33-207 so that it refers to the Juvenile Corrections Act
instead of the Youth Rehabilitation Act.
Senate Bill 1233, on the
other hand, does something dramatically different. In truancy
cases and cases of educational neglect, it will remove from the
juvenile court judges the flexibility they now have in dealing with the
parents of the juvenile. Instead, this bill will impose a regimen
of mandatory convictions. Regardless of how minor the educational
neglect or truancy may have been, the parents will automatically be
guilty of a misdemeanor crime, punishable by up to six months in
jail. The following hypothetical illustrates the dilemma posed by
this bill:
Charges are brought against a home educated student under the Juvenile
Corrections Act. After hearing all of the evidence, the juvenile
court judge concludes that the education provided by the parents is
superior to that offered in the public schools in all subjects except
for physical education. Because of this shortfall, the judge
concludes that the child is not being "otherwise comparably instructed"
as is required by sections 33-202, 33-206, and 33-207 of the Idaho Code.
Under the Juvenile
Corrections Act, the judge has tremendous flexibility in dealing with
the family. Under that Act, the judge may simply order the child
to be dually-enrolled in physical education courses at the local public
school to make up for this deficiency. Since the offense was
minor and assuming that the parents are cooperative, no further action
need be taken against the parents at all. If the parents are not
cooperative, the judge may enter a specific order against the parents
without convicting them of a crime (see Idaho Code sec. 20-522).
If the parents refuse to obey that order or if the educational neglect
had been significant and intentional, the judge may convict the parents
of a misdemeanor crime (see Idaho Code section 20-526). The
Act's overall intention to provide flexibility to the judge in the
juvenile proceeding is evident throughout the Act, but may be
particularly seen at sections 20-501, 20-511, 20-522, and 20-526 of the
Idaho Code.
All of this flexibility will
be lost in cases involving home educators if Senate Bill 1233 becomes
law. In every case where a judge concludes that a home educated
child's instruction is weak in some subject, that judge will then be
required to convict the parents of a misdemeanor crime. This
effectively will require that the parents be convicted in every case
where the home educated child's training is found to be substandard in
any subject, regardless of whether the violation was intentional or
negligent, material or minor.
It should also be noted that
Senate Bill 1233 will not make convictions for truancy or educational
neglect any easier for prosecutors to obtain. In fact, forcing
the issue into a criminal venue (as opposed to a juvenile venue) may
actually further burden investigating agencies to observe the more
stringent protections afforded to suspects in criminal
proceedings. In truth, this bill will only force the judge to
impose heavier sanctions, even for relatively minor violations while
making it more difficult for prosecutors to obtain convictions.
What possible benefit there might be from this form of mandatory
conviction is difficult to understand. The bill's provision
allowing the judge to suspend his sentence should not be understood as
giving the judge discretion whether or not to convict the parents of a
crime. Even if the judge decides to suspend the sentence, the
parents' conviction for criminal activity will remain on their record.
The bill includes an
emergency provision calling for the bill to go into full force and
effect as soon as it is passed and approved by the governor.
However, Senator Stegner informed the Senate Education Committee at the
print hearing that he was not aware of any particular pending cases
that this law would effect. More importantly, it is worth noting
that during the past four years, not a single case of genuine
educational neglect has been identified in the state of Idaho under the
informal protocols established between the Idaho Department of
Education and ICHE. A summary of those protocols and the outcomes
of all of the cases referred for investigation during the past four
years is attached to this letter.
In the view of ICHE, Senate
Bill 1209 has already made the changes needed to update the provisions
of section 33-207 of the Idaho Code to correct its references to the
Youth Rehabilitation Act. Senate Bill 1233, on the other hand,
raises the stakes unnecessarily in an arena where violations have not
historically been found. It imposes draconian penalties in
situations where a judge's sensitive touch is needed.
In light of the superior academic results enjoyed by home educated
students in Idaho (who attain average scores on the 84th percentile on
the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills and the Tests of Achievement and
Proficiency), instead of discouraging parents from undertaking this
successful adventure, the legislature should look for ways to encourage
parents in that direction. The effect of this bill could
potentially erode the millions of dollars in savings that the state
enjoys each year since it is not required to pay for the education of
these children. Since credible evidence of families abusing their
freedom to home educate in Idaho is essentially nonexistent, the threat
of automatic criminal convictions and jail time for minor educational
shortcomings is inappropriate.
The home educators of the
state of Idaho, therefore, strongly encourage you to oppose Senate Bill
1233 when it comes before you for consideration.
Cordially yours,
Barry Peters, Esq.
BP/cc
Copies: Board of Directors & Members of
Idaho Coalition of Home Educators
Encl.
SUMMARY OF HOME EDUCATION COMPLAINTS:
Outcome of Complaints Received by Idaho Department of Education
& Investigated by the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators
(2000 - 2004)
For a number of years, the
board of directors of the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators (ICHE)
heard rumors of educational neglect from professional educators and
various members of the state legislature. Those reports claimed
that there were a significant number of children in the state whose
parents claimed that they were teaching their children at home when
they were, in fact, giving them no education at all. Dr. Robert
Fontaine, the Accreditation and Elementary Services Coordinator at the
Idaho Department of Education at the time, claimed that he received an
average of two such reports each week.
In its extensive experience
with the home education community, ICHE had not encountered such
situations. Because these reports were almost always third or
fourth-hand anecdotal accounts, they were extremely difficult to verify or refute.
Nonetheless, ICHE wanted to
know if those reports had merit. They also wanted to silence the
false rumors concerning home education if they did not.
Consequently, as the outcome of a meeting during the 2000 legislative
session with Representative Wendy Jaquet, Dr. Michael Friend, and Dr.
Robert Fontaine, ICHE agreed to set up an informal arrangement with the
Idaho Department of Education. It was agreed that the
department's Accreditation and Elementary Services Coordinator would
serve as the conduit to pass to ICHE all such reports or complaints
received by the department. Those reports would then be forwarded
directly to former Representative Robert Forrey, an advisor to ICHE and
a former employee of the Department of Education.
Mr. Forrey agreed that he
would personally investigate each situation brought to his attention to
ascertain if the parents in question were having genuine difficulties
in educating their children. If they were, it was agreed that
ICHE would offer assistance to the family through the ICHE Regional
Coordinator responsible for the region in which the family
resided. With the wide array of excellent diagnostic tools and
curricula available to home educators, an effective educational program
could then be designed for the individual needs of each home
situation. If the parents were truly unwilling or incapable of
providing competent instruction for their children, ICHE would
encourage them to place the children into other private or public
school settings.
That system was instigated
in 2000. At the end of one year, ICHE met with those who had
requested that the system be set up to report on the first year's
outcomes. The results: not a single complaint had even been
forwarded to ICHE for investigation.
State agencies then put out
the word to all of the school districts in the state encouraging school
district and law enforcement personnel to pass on all such complaints
to the Accreditation and Elementary Services Coordinator at the
Department of Education.
Eventually, a cluster of
twelve complaints was forwarded to ICHE in late 2002. In 2003,
the number of complaints forwarded to ICHE dropped back to just
three. Each of those fifteen complaints was carefully
investigated. The results of all of the reported cases for the
entire life of this program to date, each of which was reported back to
the Department of Education as promised, were as follows:
Outcome of Inquiry:
Complaining party failed to respond to letters and calls: 7
Complaint did not involve home educated child: 6
Complaining party failed or
refused to identify the family about whom the complaint was made:
2
Student was not the proper age to be subject to compulsory school law: 2
Complaining party or public
official indicated that the situation was resolved or under control: 2
Family and curriculum assessed and found legally adequate: 1
Family and curriculum assessed and found not legally adequate: 0
*Note that some complaints fell into more than one category.
In short, the massive
problems with home education perceived by the professional education
community now appear not merely to have been overblown, but essentially
nonexistent.
Bart Buskey, Meridian, Idaho email at:
