How's the new year starting off, everyone?

[patriciaredstone]

Hi Jeff!

Thanks for keeping us posted.

We have been BUSY this week with preperations to begin studies on Monday. This will be the first year I have designed the curriculum ... Here we go into the eighth grade. I have anchored the year on Geoffrey Blainey's A Short History of The World and the World History Chart. We will be following civilisations chronologically through art and architecture, philosophy, science, technology, music and the good ol' dependable war, plagues and pestilence. The reading will be intense. I found some great books which I hope to post with short reviews. He will be starting off the year with Wangerin's The Book of God.

Unfortunately, we have political hassles this year. The California Department of Education has declared homeschool illegal this year unless the parent is credentialed. But no one I know is taking them seriously.

[janine]

Hey, patriciaredstone, good to \"see\" you.  Hope all's well.

\"Unfortunately, we have political hassles this year. The California Department of Education has declared homeschool illegal this year unless the parent is credentialed. But no one I know is taking them seriously.\" -- patriciaredstone

So, I suppose this means that every single teacher who sets foot in a public California school is fully & properly credentialed?

[patriciaredstone]

[!--QuoteBegin--][/span][table border=\"0\" align=\"center\" width=\"95%\" cellpadding=\"3\" cellspacing=\"1\"][tr][td]Quote (janine @ Sep. 01 2002,3:29)[/td][/tr][tr][td id=\"QUOTE\"][!--QuoteEBegin--]Hey, patriciaredstone, good to \"see\" you.  Hope all's well.

\"Unfortunately, we have political hassles this year. The California Department of Education has declared homeschool illegal this year unless the parent is credentialed. But no one I know is taking them seriously.\" -- patriciaredstone

So, I suppose this means that every single teacher who sets foot in a public California school is fully & properly credentialed?[/quote]
Yeah, righhht.

It's all about the $7,000 they are not getting for our child's enrollment. They could fix the problem by having \"open school\" policy which allows children who study at home have access to the school ... let them play football with the team, play in the bands, sing in the choirs .... take courses on an elective basis. If they'd just be that flexible, voila! they'd have our moola. My impression is that they are humiliated and refuse to respond like any good business who wants to adapt to public demand. They want all the money and they want to spend it their way. It is a very inflexible, unimaginative system which is turning out inflexible and unimaginative students.

[Jeff]

So far, so good at our house.  The youngest two, who are in the public school 4th grade, are having to adjust once again to the long days and an increase in the amount of homework.  My youngest went from a very nurturing teacher (one of our elders' daughters!) to what appears to be the opposite end of the spectrum!

On the home front, my 13 y/o daughter's routine is pretty similar to last year and my wife continues to do her great, great job working up unit studies for her and monitoring her development in the 3 R's.  I am working with my 15 y/o son on Geometry this year (so far no problems other than his motivation!)  We were able to get him into a Biology course with other homeschoolers and it looks like that is going to be a great environment.  We picked him up this afternoon at 5 at a local park where they were collecting pond scum, etc for examination under the microscope next week.  

Hope you all are meeting with success as well and look forward to hearing your experiences when you have time to post them!

[Jeff]

I saw that!  I was under the impression it was still under consideration in your legislature and had not yet passed into law?

May God bless you all with state representatives that are filled with His Spirit and will fight this!

[patriciaredstone]

Jeff,

There have been no changes in the law. They have hired new lawyers to reinterpret the existing laws about establishing private schools. Technically speaking the term \"home school\" in California has always been interpreted as enrollment in the school districts canned \"home school\" program. Anyone who does not want to enroll in \"home school\" must file a private school affidavit and establish a \"private school\" in your home. We have done it every year without a hitch. They request no records, test scores or sample curriculums. But this year we do not qualify to file since we are not credentialed. So the lawyers are saying that we are acting against the law if we continue to teach our son without being enrolled in the home school program designed by the school district under the supervision of credentialed teachers. But the only reason they would declare a student truant who is privately schooled in his home would be in response to a citizens complaint because only the local school district is responsible for truancy. It's all about money. This year the California public schools are almost 30 billion dollars in the red. It appears to many that they are scapegoating home schooling families for this deficit due to the hundreds of thousands of Californians pulling their children out of the school system in order to educate them at home. Why else would these old laws suddenly have a hostile interpretation for private schools? Our only question is how do we file for a private school affidavit without being able to meet the requirements to file an affidavit? I guess we will just do what we have always done in the past. I will be suprised if anyone comes hunting us down.

All this means to us is that we will lay low this year. No sending my son out into the neighborhood to run errands during public school hours. It will be a bit of a hassle ... but hassles are what makes the world go around ...

[Jeff]

Can you all set up some kind of \"private\" school where several homeschool families are all under the umbrella of a certified teacher?  Sounds like it won't be too long before a lawyer for the \"good guys\" figures out a way to beat this interpretation.

We just got back from a great fellowship.  We met some folks through a homeschool group several years ago and have continued to work together for quite awhile.  One of the families has made the decision to send their son (my oldest's good friend) off to a boarding school.  The father is from Ghana and that is a tradition there.  There probably twenty or thirty people present at the park to celebrate this decision and to send the young man off as a Christ's ambassador to Andover, Mass.  The group was very cross-denominational and even included some non-Christians (neighbors and other friends) but the prayer time as we all gathered together and laid hands on this young man was very moving.