Homeschoolers call a truancy bill in Rhode Island a public school power grab
A hypothetical situation of parents using homeschooling to evade truancy proceedings prompted Rhode Island legislators to introduce a bill regulating the transition process. It’s gained pushback from homeschool advocates who say it amounts to competency tests for hopeful homeschool parents.
A parent ends up in family court for their child’s chronic truancy and escapes legal proceedings by transitioning to homeschooling. It’s not a real scenario that’s happened, but one Rhode Island Family Court Magistrate Judge Angela Paulhus fears parents will do, negatively affecting the child’s education and possibly livelihood.
Paulhus oversees truancy cases in family court and was the lone person to speak in favor of the bill. If adopted, Rhode Island would be the first state to expand school districts’ oversight of homeschooling to include competency and capacity standards. States like Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York require parents, in varying degrees, to notify home districts about the alternative instruction, teach certain subjects and handle bookkeeping.
“The unfortunate thing is that parents know when they apply for homeschooling — and they will be approved for homeschooling because of the school committee’s opinion it should be rubber-stamped — then the truancy petition is dismissed,” she told legislators during a Tuesday House Education Committee hearing.
However, Peter Kamakawiwoole told Straight Arrow it’s not a viable reason for the bill. Kamakawiwoole is the litigation director at Home School Legal Defense Association, a group that advocates for fewer regulations on home education.
He feared the bill, if passed, would negatively affect homeschool families and allow a committee to determine a parent’s competency to educate their children.
“The bill would introduce a lot of legal decisions, that school committees would have to make determinations about: the competency of the parents, as well as what’s in the best interest of the child — like the capacity of the parents in order to teach,” he said.
Seventy-eight people showed up in opposition to the legislation, but Paulhus said the bill applies narrowly to neglectful parents who weaponize homeschooling.
Still, Paulhus worried for students who live in homes where substance abuse, domestic violence or general neglect is occurring, and intervention couldn’t be done since the kid isn’t in a formal school.
“We need to know, school committees need to know if these children are in those circumstances before they approve homeschooling,” Paulhus said.
Competency and capacity
Kamakawiwoole dismissed the idea that homeschooling is a “get out of jail free” card. Parents are instead obligated to provide their children with an education.
Rhode Island, he added, already requires families to maintain a registry of their children’s attendance, among other things. Nationwide, homeschooling isn’t largely federally regulated. Lawmakers passed a bill in the U.S. House to consider a homeschool graduate a high school graduate to expand access to jobs, but it has sat in the Senate since March 17, according to Congressional records.
According to Johns Hopkins University Institute for Education Policy, Rhode Island school district committees make the final determinations on whether a child can be homeschooled. Parents are required to submit education plans to a district that should include a curriculum, subjects and details about how a student’s progress will be evaluated. Attendance records are also required.
Kamakawiwoole told Straight Arrow the bill would change to have committees assess a parent’s ability to homeschool, and if the option is necessary for a student. He found it troublesome as it introduced a legal framework that the committees aren’t typically qualified to carry out.
According to the bill, a request could be denied or deferred if an attendance-related petition is pending against the student, if a parent or guardian has criminal or civil offenses for failing to comply with attendance laws, or if the instructor cannot maintain attendance records and reporting.
The bill does make exceptions for chronic absenteeism. That is in the case of “documented medical circumstances, documented safety concerns, documented disability-related needs, or other substantial reasons beyond the control of the parent, guardian or individual having care, custody, or control of the child.”
Parents could appeal a school committee’s unilateral decision to the state’s Department of Education. But Kamakawiwoole said the bill fails to set a legal appeals process for parents who aren’t satisfied with the department’s decision.
“You don’t have to be an attorney to be a member of a school committee,” he said. “You don’t have to have any training in making these legal judgments. So any of these legal determinations that are made by the school committee could never be appealed to a judge who actually is able to make those determinations.”
“I don’t see anything in the bill that suggests that the intention is to turn a school committee meeting on a homeschool program into a battle of expert witnesses, but that would be the only way you can make a competency judgment is through something like that,” he continued.
Bill’s future uncertain
Kamakawiwoole doesn’t know how representatives or Rhode Island’s Senate will vote on the bill or whether it’ll reach Democratic Gov. Dan McKee’s desk.
“The session ends in June, and so it was very late in the session for this to be brought up for an initial hearing and filed sort of at this late date, and so you never know for sure what’s going to happen with the bill,” he said.
The committee voted Tuesday to hold the bill, pending further study.
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