Covering my...

I mentioned that the other day we had to go track down the form that homeschoolers in our state are required to file each year so that we can continue to legally homeschool our kids (ie. show they aren't truant).

According to the law, this is supposed to be a simple form which contains the name and ages of any children being homeschooled, address, name of the parent, and parent's signature. That is what the OSPI (Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction) long ago determined was the information districts needed to ensure that if they weren't being held accountable for a students education, then someone else was (ie. the parents). Any child of compulsory age (8 in WA) not in school, and without the proper paperwork filed, is then considered truant. The law, and OSPI, also state that the form be filed directly with the superintendent of the school district.

That all seems simple enough, but for some reason they have to make it harder than it is. Last year I just mailed a copy of a generic form I had downloaded from the Washington Homeschool Organization website, which saved me from knowing firsthand how difficult it can be to fulfill my obligations under the law if I choose to do all of this in person. I went to the campus of the local "homeschool" program, and they couldn't find the form. They sent me to "the main office, since you'll need to turn it in there anyway", which I assumed meant the administrative building - you know, because I have to file it with the superintendent an all. I went there, and nearly gave the poor lady in student services a coronary - her getting defensive, and me trying delicately to determine who in the land may actually have this form, and where they expected me to take it, without making her feel personally attacked. She told me where to get the forms (the administrative building of the "homeschool" program - ie. the school district office that oversees families that educate their kids at home through the district, not the independent homeschoolers), and said that she "could tell me where in the building the superintendent was located" but she was "pretty sure that no one was going to let me turn the form in to him". In other words, they were going to prevent me from following the law, which, if they decided to get technical about it at a later date, would technically make my kid truant. School policy doesn't supercede state law last time I checked, no matter how much easier it is for them to try an compartmentalize all of us families that don't enroll our kids in a traditional program.

Eventually I tracked down the needed form. Now how to get it to the superintendent. I already knew of three separate families that had tried to take their forms to the superintendent's office, and were threatened with security. That didn't seem an appropriate environment to exposed my 9 year old to. As it was, she was raising many perplexing questions, like: why wouldn't the school district want to follow the law? and why would they tell you to do something different from what you are supposed to do? Interesting questions with complicated answers. After much deliberation, and discussion with some other homeschool leaders around the state, I decided that the next best course of action was to send our signed form via certified mail, return receipt requested. (Can you tell I like to get worked up about things?) I mailed it yesterday, and unfortunately it will be arriving at the Admin building today, Saturday. No one will be there to sign for it. It will go back to the post office, waiting to be signed for by whoever goes and picks it up. I wonder if anyone will claim it. Sigh. I tried.

Oh, and just for their education, I included a copy of the law with the pertinent parts highlighted. You know, so they can get their act together.

So now that I've probably brought way too much attention on myself and my family, I decided that I'd best start keeping better track of what we're doing in our homeschooling. I'm not required to keep a record of what we do, only to make sure that we cover the eleven subject areas: reading, writing, spelling, language, math, science, social studies, history, health, occupational education, and art and music appreciation (and test or assess our child annually). I'm thinking though that if anyone should ever like to make my life difficult, it would be handy to be able to whip something out that showed that we had indeed been covering everything.

Happily, our state's law actually recognizes the unique character of homeschooling:

"...all decisions relating to philosophy or doctrine, selection of books, teaching materials and curriculum, and methods, timing and place in the provision or evaluation of home-based instruction shall be the responsibility of the parent"

and "...the legislature recognizes that home-based instruction is less structured and more experiential than the instruction normally provided in a classroom. Therefore, the provisions relating to the nature and quantity of instructional and related educational activities shall be liberally construed."

Which means that playing on Webkinz world counts for reading (kinzchat, the newspaper), math (figuring out how much Kinz Cash you need to make in the arcade so that you can afford to go on Vacation and still have money to spend in the gift shop), and occupational education (computer skills). And taking care of the family pets counts as occupational education and science. When a late night discussion turns to Hannibal marching elephants over the Alps, and we stumble upon a documetary of Hannibal, Carthage, and the Punic Wars, then we've covered history and social studies. An email about an opportunity to see Vaux's swifts coming in to roost for the night in a large chimney stack in a local town, and leads us to investigate their habits, adaptations, and migratory routes. I'd say that about half of our homeschooling looks fluid like this, where we stumble into learning, and about half is semi-planned out in advance by me, with input from N. and my observations of how things are going guiding that plan. So now I'm just journalling what we do at the end of each week, in case somebody decides to care, LOL!