We homeschooled our kids for quite some time. One daughter went back to school in eighth grade because she wanted to go to public school for high school (so we figured eighth would be a good transition for her). The other tried to follow the same path, but due to some medical issues, it didn’t work out. She started eighth, went back to homeschooling; started ninth, went back to homeschooling. This year, she should have been in tenth grade. A few months ago, she decided to go back to public school again, but this time in an non-traditional public school rather than the regular high school. Right away, I got a call from a school system bean counter asking us to turn over our homeschool records, including attendance records.
Yeah. How about not? Of course, we ended up arguing about it, and the school employee got quite frustrated and snappish. But I’m not going to do anything that’s not required by law or that might set a precedent that the school system will try to push onto other homeschoolers.
I explained all this to the employee, to no avail.
1) The homeschooling laws do not say that records have to be turned over to the school system;
2) When my other daughter went back to public school, and when this daughter tried public school before, these records weren’t requested--why are they suddenly important?;
3) What’s the point? They aren’t going to give her credit for her homeschool hours (ie, she’s basically starting over as a 9th grader), so since they are treating her academic record as if she never homeschooled, then why do they want the homeschool records?
4) Less than one month after the start of the school year, she turned sixteen-- which is the age that ends compulsory attendance. So for most of the school year, she wasn’t required to attend school, anyway;
When I repeated that we’ve never had to hand over the records before, she said that the homeschool monitor usually takes care of that-- funny, we haven’t had a homeschool monitor in YEARS; so if some monitor has been handing over attendance records for us every year, she’s just been pulling the figures out of the air.
So I refused to hand over the records. The employee said, “Fine. I have to send these records to the state. I’ll note here that you refused to comply.” Hmmm, sounds suspiciously like that old public school chestnut of “marking your permanent record,” LOL. I was never intimidated by that AS a student, and I’m sure not worried about it now.
So I laughed when I received a letter from the school system a few days ago (my husband said, “uh oh, you really pissed them off this time").
The letter demands that we contact them immediately about standardized testing for my daughter, as the law requires that homeschooled children be tested in grade 10. The complication of course, is that the school system has already done testing for this year, so I would likely have to pay out-of-pocket for it.
EXCEPT . . . if you read the notes above . . . my daughter is in public school in NINTH grade this year . . . ROFLMAO! So she won’t need testing until next year.
It does piss me off a little, though, because the homeschool monitor never did contact us about testing. But I just assumed it was because my daughter was over 16 (school is not compulsory and therefore neither is testing). But it’s irrelevant at this point.
So I can’t wait until Tuesday, when I can call the school employee again and point out the error in this new “crisis” that they’ve invented.
I get way too much enjoyment out of pissing people off.
