Is Your NH School District Trying to Get Around the Law When it Comes to Home Schooling? - Granite Grok

Is Your NH School District Trying to Get Around the Law When it Comes to Home Schooling?

school-choice1School Choice for New Hampshire has a post up about School Districts that ask more of Home Schoolers and their families than the law allows. You’ll see a few of the “usual suspects,” district who get a lot of attention from the bloggers around our quaint little shop. What’s more important here, however, is that you review the issues being reported and the links to the actual statute, so you can explore whether your district is breaking the law by asking for things that are not required.

It appears that hostile districts deliberately prey upon unaware home-educating families, hoping to take advantage of their trust.

This also brings up a bigger issue. Generally, school boards and districts adopt policies that are drafted by the NH School Boards Association, an organization that advises school boards and acts as lobbyists in Concord. They are funded via local property taxes in school district budgets. The NHSBA is well aware of the home ed statute changes, but did they fail to inform their member districts of the changes and are complicit in allowing them to overextend their authority? The NHSBA is vehemently against all school choice programs, including home education, so this is not a wild supposition. Even though they have a seat on the Home Education Advisory Council, they routinely fail to attend and have yet to nominate a homeschool-friendly person to the council.

Homeschooling families do not need to accept these unlawful requests by districts. It is to their advantage to be aware of the home ed requirements so they do not inadvertently provide extra information to districts that chronically overstep their authority. It is time districts and school boards respect local homeschoolers and follow home ed statutes.

You can find the rest of this great article here. And if you discover a district not mentioned that is “requiring” forms or requesting information to which they are not entitled, please let us know or reach out to Michelle Levell at School Choice for NH.

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