HOMESCHOOLING IN VIRGINIA

Question:
I'M NEW TO THIS AND NEED HELP WITH GETTING STARTED. MY ELDEST TURNED 6 THIS MONTH AND ALREADY THE LOCAL SCHOOL IS QUESTION- ING WHY HE ISN'T IN SCHOOL YET. TELLING THEM THAT I FELT THAT HE WAS NOT READY FOR THE FORMAL ENVIROMENT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL DID NOT SIT WELL WITH THEM AND THEY SURE LET ME KNOW IT.

THE WOMAN WHO CAME TO THE DOOR HINTED THAT IF I DIDN'T SEND HIM TO SCHOOL IN SEPTEMBER THAT "THEY" WOULD HAVE TO HAVE HIM "TAKEN AWAY" AS I WAS DISABLED?? I WAS CONFUSED TOO.

SO, I QUESS MY QUESTIONS ARE: WHAT ARE MY RIGHTS? WHAT DO I DO NEXT? AND IF I AM ABLE TO HOMESCHOOL HOW DO I GET STARTED?

Answer:
-First, turn caps-lock off a little sooner. (Think of all-caps messages as yelling as loud as you can. Annoys people.)

Second, I almost never take heed of requests for emailed replies. I figure if the answer isn't important enough for you to come back to the website after it, it isn't important enough for me to bother pasting your email address into the websites line. (Obviously I made an exception this time.) You'll find that this is a common -- although not universal -- attitude.

(Flip side, if a reply to a news posting -- which should itself be a news posting -- shows up in my mailbox, I delete it as soon as I recognise what it is. Which usually means I haven't finished reading it, and always means I haven't replied to it. If someone can't tell the difference between email and news, I'm not sufficiently impressed with their intelligence to care about their opinion on anything else.)

Now to the point: since you have an AOL account the odds are very high that you live in the US or Canada. Homeschooling is legal, and it's fairly easy to satisfy all requirements to do it legally, in every US state, territory, and probably possession, and I think it's pretty much the same in Canada.

However, further details are VERY dependent on what state/province/etc. you live in. Come back to the list with more info and you'll get more help.

And just because it's easy to satisfy legal requirements doesn't mean it's easy to get a school administrator to admit that $7000 a year in funding is about to walk out the door and there is absolutely nothing he can legally do about it.

If you want to homeschool, I *strongly* suggest -- primarily for political reasons -- that you have as little to do as possible with the public schools, because many states have things set up whereby the public schools can get the per-student money for your child EVEN THOUGH THEY DON'T SCHOOL HIM. In this state it takes 2 hours a week of contact with the public school system in an official "homeschool outreach" program for the school to get the entire per-student funding. And I would deny them that if possible.

(I also automatically vote against anything that gives the public schools resources or authority, and will continue to do so until all private schools -- religious and secular -- and homeschoolers have access to all coerced or tax-funded resources available to the public schools, on exactly the same basis as the public schools.)

On the other hand, in most (all?) states, you have a RIGHT to send your homeschooled students to the local public schools for access to such resources as are otherwise hard to find. Group music programs, science labs, athletic programs, and driver's ed are among the most common public-school programs that homeschoolers take advantage of. -It is very important that you get associated with a local Homeschooling organization. One probably exists in your community...certainly in your state. There is also a homeschooling legal agency that will act as your advocate should the public school officials make unreasonable or harassing claims against you.

Again, it is critical that you affiliate with your state or local homeschool organization. -Home schooling is legal in all 50 states. Your child will not be "taken away." I suggest you contact the Virginia Home School Association (you can e-mail them at v...@virginia.edu) to learn more. Meanwhile, if you have a web browser, point it to http://poe.acc.virginia.edu/~pm6f/vhea.html From here you can download the relevant portions of the Virginia compulsory education statute. Keep it on hand for when snoops come to your door. You can also learn about groups in your area here. Give it a try. There's lots of infomation here.