Calm Acceptance

Sounds like you are listening to your heart, and your daughter. Good luck in the coming months and smooth sailing; although, you’ll have to head out of the port and hit a few waves, otherwise it will get boring :)

Seriously, sounds like you are making a good choice.

Best regards.

Andy

Thanks, Andy…yes, definitely listening with my heart to what my daughter, and for that matter, what I need, too.

Hey, Thomas Edison was homeschooled, and Einstein was heard to have said that if he had to attend public school he never would have graduated. I guess some kids just don’t fit with lock-step learning.

Bonita

One small point…

In my state, homeschooling is the right of parents with a few simple restrictions (some I can agree with, so I cannot, ut they are the regs, so…)

We have been successfully homeschooling my youngest child, autistic non-verbal for 2 years + and making progress, if a little slow…

When my oldest child, a (shudder) teenager was having problems at the high school we opted to homeschool her as well. Although she was less than enthused about not seeing her friends daily, etc. and was not very energetic about eing a self-starter she was making some headway on her courses and did like not having to get up at 6 AM to get ready for the busride in.

I found out that the only thing that was necessary to receive promotion was to pass a test given in a controlled circumstance by someone the schools would view as able to give such a test. As my wife and I know many of the professors at the local college we both attended, I drew up a list of those we felt would be approriate for each of the courses that she was working on so I could contact them about giving my daughter her finals.

Well, good thing I called the student recourse person at the district office to check on this. I came to find out that while this would indeed be acceptable, and the district would see her as completing her freshman year and being promoted to sophomore next year, she would not receive a single credit for any class passed that would count towards her diploma! Turns out that while the law allows us to homeschool, and she can get promoted, if she wants a diploma she needed to be enrolled in a formally chartered school public or private in order to achieve credits to count towards her diploma! So the schools have found a way to circumvent my state’s homeschool laws by preventing children from getting the certificate that shows they completed high school, and which is absolutely needed to get hired in many jobs and also to attend college! We were fortunate to get her in a small parochial school that has a good reputation and would also allow her to promote if she could catch up and pass the classes.

Be sure to inquire what your state’s laws and policies are concerning graduation from homeschool. Most states are more than willing to promote grammar and middle school homeschoolers, but I bet most states also will use chicanery like this to get the homeschoolers in the end. Homeschool is the greatest single threat to the public gryst mill and job security there is, more so than private schools most cannot afford or vouchers which will be plagued by vindictive court proceedings for years.

I’m in Texas….which is incredibly open to homeschooling. Actually for her diploma, I will be granting it, and behind the diploma will be a carefully crafted and organized portfolio of what’s she learned in high school at home. There are many very good universities who are actively seeking students who homeschooled and tend to view these ‘documented’ education achievements with high regard. If my daughter stayed in public school, her SAT scores wouldn’t qualify her for a chicken coop…this way, man…she’ll blow them away. As to ‘missing’ friends at school…she doesn’t have any. Most of her closest friends are young adults or grownups. She doesn’t seem to have much in common with her so-called peers.

Also in Texas…they have an exit level TAAS (I don’t know what it’s called in other states), and if the public school kids don’t pass it, regardless of how many credits they have, they don’t graduate.

But, yeah, thanks for the heads-up. I’ll be looking into it.

What happened for me as a brilliant idiot, was that I dropped out of school my freshman year, received special permission to take the GED prior to being seventeen years of age, and started college at sixteen. School bored me to death, and I aced the GED with no special training, all except for math…yech…hated math, but even passed that test.

Bonita

I say,go for it! Have fun,and enjoy the experience. Homeschoolers are a threat.
The last two national spelling Bee winners were HELLO,homeschoolers. The last westinghouse science award was given to HELLO a homeschooler. They are threatened,they sure as hell should be.
Being me,I would still call the office of civil rights. You got all the time in the world to seek justice now. But that is just me,a Mother from Hell,and someone who just can’t give it up. Good Luck to you guys,and give your kid a big hug for me!

Socks, I’m not going anywhere…you are a wonderful person, and as soon as Christa and I settle in to the new routine, I’d still like to form that parents advocacy group for our area. I’m fortunate enough to be able to homeschool my daughter, not all parents are so lucky and have to deal with the broken system. I’ve learned too much not to share it with others.

You gots my email, don’t ya?

Bonita

>>Well, we both came to the conclusion that this public school thingie just isn’t working out.<<

So glad you’ve reached a place, a time and a plan that is going to
work for you.

I’ve always held on to homeschooling as my safe harbor.
I pulled my son out of kindergarten when the teacher
announced, ‘I want that child on drugs!’ and homeschooled
him for a time.

Sounds like a wonderful adventure! Maybe you’ll like
math better this time around ;-) (or maybe not - so glad
my son’s ld is in reading and writing and not math!)

Anne

.

absolutely friend:-) and you mine?

((((( Bonita)))))

Bonita, have I your permission to post your messages on an education NG I participate in? The reason is there’s at least one person there who thinks that homeschoolers seek to avoid accountability, and homeschool for that reason, and I want to show an example of a homeschooling parent who’s doing it for better reasons.

Yours truly,
Kathy G.

yeppers! I told ya…you’re a keeper. Not only are you knowledgeable, but you have guts. To top it all off, you have heart.

Bonita

Wow, I’m blushing…yeah, sure…if it helps someone else, no problem. Just leave my email out of it though if the board is too hot with flamers. From what I know, homeschoolers are very loving, dedicated people who feel compelled to do what they do for the sake of their child’s education.

Bonita

I want to enroll in your school. What a wonderful experience you have in store! With the marvelous kind of educational program you’re planning, I’m sure other families would love to share the experience.

I’d wish you luck but it doesn’t sound as if you need it. Have fun learning!

Thank you, Sara…the encouragement is very much appreciated. One of the drawbacks, though, to homeschooling…and I suffered much from this in the beginning…is the fear of ‘not being good enough’. It’s really hard to judge oneself without feedback. I began to fear strongly that I wasn’t capable of teaching my daughter what she’d need to have to attend a great college.

I laugh now as I look over what she’s being taught. The math she was sent home with last week were concepts we breezed through by sixth grade. We resumed homeschooling today with ‘light’ lessons, and my daughter half with joy and half with real pain, said her brain hurt because of the challenge. She further explained that she’d forgotten in the last two years of public school what it was like to really have to learn, and she lamented about how much she’d lost in knowledge retention. I asked her if she’d felt challenged at all in public school. She said no, not really, except for the emotional stress.

Once again, today, I realized that I had abdicated my teaching position when I forced her to go back to school, simply because I thought I wasn’t good enough to teach. Well, those official teachers may have more credentials and recognition as ‘real’ teachers, but they didn’t teach my daughter much of anything. I have no idea what the other kids are learning, and I hope and pray they’re doing alright, but there’s absolutely no way my daughter could have qualified for college by this standard of academics. At home, she will. That’s all I need to know.

Bonita

Bonita,

I’ll preface what I want to say with the understanding that there are good, well intentioned, wonderful teachers out there. Those who are, we thank God for and pray for more of them.

Your post here about your own feelings of inadequacy and “feeling not good enough” brought back flashbacks from our due process hearing…

Our story is a long sordid one, which, although slowly fading into the past, often rears it’s ugly little head with flashbacks probably somewhat like those soldiers have from experiencing war. Funny how the brain works, but, remarkable as well.

I was representing our son, as an undiagnosed ld parent, while the district had an unscrupulous, viscious “consultant” representing them. Basically, as witnesses were paraded in to the proceeding, this guy brought both me and my wife up on “the stand” and questioned us. He would always make a point of asking each teacher and administrator about their educational background, their honor merits etc… and build this HUGE pile of educational credentials on the record for each of them. Then, with us, he asked about our educational background. Me, I dropped out of college after one semester, my wife I believe stayed in jr. college for 2 years. He did his utmost to make us feel unqualified due to our lack of educational experience. One of my most hated moments of the entire proceeding was to have to sit there and let him attack my wife, while I had to sit there, shut up and let the bastard go on and on.

Well, since I was representing our son, I had to question all of them when it was our turn. I couldn’t help myself and asked each of the male “educators” if they fathered the child in question, or the female “educators” if they bore the child. Then got into the area of… have you ever diapered him? have you ever comforted him at night when he wakes up with night terrors? do you know what his night terros were about? do you ever talk to him in the afternoon, at home, after school? etc. etc. etc. You get the picture. Well, I couldn’t make myself a complete idiot and ask myself the questions, but I did run my wife thru all this as well, and at least got the parental side of things on the record for the hearing officer.

We ended up withdrawing from this hearing “without prejudice”, which the district fought like crazy to deny. They lost that, and after finally finding someone unqualified to represent us at a 2nd hearing, we ended up losing :(
but so goes the saga. I couldn’t accept the loss, and filed in Federal Court to appeal the hearing.

Needless to say, your post brought up old memories of being a parent trying to help one’s child, and being made to feel unqualified by those who claim to be the only ones capable of teaching. With very few exceptions, my faith in the system is extremely shaky at best, my disgust with the “experts” (most of them) for thier lack of ethics and honor is still a sore spot for me and I guess your post hit a nerve. Hmmm, thought I was getting past all of this.

A funny post script to all of this. Flash forward to today. Our son is now turning 20 soon. He is attending a local jr. college (2nd year) and he loves it! He is working part time at a local hardware/lumber yard type store. He is predominantly taking early childhood education classes. One of his teachers came up to him recently and asked/bugged him as to why he isn’t working with children, she thinks he would be marvalous, and will help him get work with any district anywhere he wants while he pursues a degree (am/pm type program stuff, I guess). As with all young adults, he gets frustrated at the job he is at, and so he is semi-actively looking to see if there is openings within the district which we fought so vehemenously (is that a word?) for so many years! My wife is concerned that he will “get hurt” if he applies and they shun him because of who he is, I can’t help but LAUGH OUT LOUD at how ironic it would be if he actually either got the job, or caused one of the higher ups a huge case of dysentary when they see his name on an application. My hunch is they are so inept, it would not be caught until after he is hired, if he opts to follow thru. The thought alone brings a smile to me; I love irony.

Most importantly, you are making the right decision, you are saving your child and accepting the responsibility of doing what needs to be done; you will reap the rewards when the time comes. I’m sure you’ll do great, don’t sell yourself short!

Best regards,

Andy

ps/ As I am aging, the old addage of “of all the things I’ve lost, I believe I miss my mind the most” comes to mind. Anyway, I am attaching an old, tattered letter I sent off to the Learning Disabilities Association newsletter years ago for you or others who are new to this bb. Our battle was waged prior to the invent, or at least access to the www and fantastic bbs such as this one. The computer I typed all of our legal documents on was a 288 or something like that; the monitor was a black screen, the type was green. The paper came off a roll with those little holes on each side that had to be carefully ripped off (dot matrix?). All the research for laws was in a law library (.15 per copy, per page), and I am so blown away with how far things have come in such a short time. To have access to all the information, to make contacts with the likes of Dad, Socks, KathyG, and so many others who have come, gone, stayed, returned to the bb it is absolutely incredible! Most importantly, to have the reassurance of not being alone in the struggle must bring such an incredible comfort.

Anyway, here it goes (for those of you who have read it already, you can back out now while there’s still time)………………………………………………………….

Attn: LDA, State of CA
GRAM PUBLICATION OPEN LETTER TO PARENTS

Re: What was learned from the nightmare of a Learning Disabled Parent of a Learning Disabled Child attempt to obtain a FAPE in our local district.

To Whom It May Concern:

First, I ask your patience, because I, like my son, have a learning disability. I have difficulty with handwriting, so I always type. Typing makes the words legible, spell check makes the paper presentable, however, unfortunately, they have yet to invent the program to unscramble the word processing of a dyslexic mind.

Anyone who has lived through / survived the hellish experience of help seeking within the public school system for a child will know that this letter has the capacity for a 1000 page novel; I will do my best to be brief.

Our son was diagnosed with “LD” by the public school Psychologist in the 1st Grade. He was given an IEP, which was to begin his 2nd Grade year. By the 3rd Grade, with minimal and no provision of the services specified on his IEP, our son was floundering terribly. His areas of deficit were dysgraphia, dyslexia and other assorted invisible disorders, which clearly affected his performance in school.

By the second month of his 4th Grade year, having no RSP (as specified on his IEP), and no Counseling (as specified on his IEP), our son tried to slam his head through a window at home. He told us, with tears streaming down his face that he would rather die than go back to school, “where the teachers did not understand, and the kids were so mean about this handwriting”. He was 9 years old.

My wife and I sought help from the school; and the rest is documented history. Of course, it is also documented that the school claimed he was doing fine in class, the problems were coming from the home.

We (my wife and I) attended countless IEP Meetings (with and without advocates), we have attended Mediation Conferences (with and without advocates), I have represented my son in State level Due Process Hearings, and I have represented our son, alone, in Federal Court.

I know what it is like to be a learning disabled parent, seeking protection for our learning disabled son from a system that allows a school district to hire the representation of a “consultant” whose sole purpose is to keep the district from providing those services which are due the child by law. (I could go on and on about this one extremely unfair practice that is tolerated, the fact is, everyone knows this happens, and the child is still left without help, unless the parents can afford the services of costly consultants or attorneys).

I know what it is like to have an inexperienced advocate intervene and represent our son at Due Process Hearing, and have to sit back and watch an absolute kangaroo court in progress, while the Dean of the McGeorge School of Law presided.

Perhaps I need to digress for a moment and explain that during this time I was working, and unemployed at times, in the construction industry here in Southern California. It is common knowledge in the business world for sub-contractors to be loyal to the general contractor; the reason is simple, future contracts mean more guaranteed income. Even in the blue-collar world of construction, it would be abundantly clear that if the “inspector” worked for the General Contractor, the quality of homes could be jeopardized by the “partial” decisions made by a biased inspector. How obvious must it be for a law school like McGeorge School of Law to be a contractor with the State Department of Education to side in behalf of school districts whenever possible?

In June of 1991 McGeorge’s Year to Date Statistics show that the total number of Due Process Hearing Decisions rendered, parents did not obtain the services they fought for in Due Process 70% of the time!

If the hearing Officer finds the district to be within compliance, then the State does not have to enforce any “laws”, because there was no violation! This is absolutely ludicrous. The burden is entirely on the parent, and the power is entirely in the system.

I speak from experience. I will gladly provide a list of all the names and numbers of “protective agencies”, government employees, political figures etc., who were well aware of our son’s predicament. This is not limited to, but includes Chief Liaison to President Clinton, the Federal Dept. of Ed, State Dept. of Ed., Protection and Advocacy, the Governor’s Office, Congressmen, Assemblypersons, Senators, local agencies, OSEPS, OSERS, Office for Civil Rights (the list is endless)… The bottom line is there is no help, only a terribly tangled web of beaurocracy the feeds off of our taxes, and is simply impotent, inept and incapable of enforcing the laws that were written to protect children. The blatant and total failures of these public officials to enforce protections is disappoint, to say the least; corruption of this magnitude would not go on, if it were not tolerated at the higher levels.

I have scores of letters I sent to attorneys and agencies (and their responses) from across the country, begging for help for our son. My only request was to either enforce the law and provide him the FAPE he required, or release him from the system, and provide us with the funding to ensure he be educated and not destroyed.

One of LDA-CA’s past presidents, Joan Esposito, had written a GRAM which clearly outlined the problems parents like us have experienced. She is one of the only ones who understood the frustrations of what we were going through. (I can only imagine that she has an entire file cabinet with our son’s name on it!) I continue to thank God for her strength and compassion for our kids. The gauntlet is excruciating, the retaliatory actions of a school district are disgusting, and designed to exhaust parents. Our son’s last “active IEP” was his 4th Grade IEP, which was never enforced. He is currently going into the 10th Grade!

After 6 years of attempting to “right the wrong”, and taking both the local school district and the state dept. of Ed “to task”, I have only learned that I could do the impossible for our son. That was to survive the stress of war, stay married to his mother, see that he finally get an appropriate education (outside of the system), and move on with our life.

I have since passed on my “law library”, a virtual war chest of cases, laws and protections for learning disabled children to a local (San Diego) advocate. She has my permission to copy and pass along any and all data I compiled; including phone numbers, addresses etc. My hope and prayer is some other parents may get the help our son never received. It was quite a paradox to find all the protections, and rights our child had, yet been completely incapable of finding any authority to enforce the law!

My wife and I went to a leading “special education attorney and we begged for her to help; she felt to “untangle this case at this stage” it would cost an estimated $70,000.00, at least. It might as well have been $70,000,000.00, if you can imagine the devastating news to hear such a proposal. The up front money was to be a minimum of $15,000.00. I don’t know about anyone reading this letter, but that is a substantial amount of money which we did not / do not have! It is probably noteworthy to mention that there are not very many lawyers who specialize in the highly complex field of special education law; and those that do, usually work for school districts and the states, those that don’t are extremely expensive!

Out of necessity for our son, I virtually became the closest anyone will probably come to being a lay-lawyer in the highly specialized field of Special Education Law. For over 2 years, I stood alone, as a parent, in Federal Court, without an attorney, and did the best I could. With my wife’s help, we won some Motions, lost a few, and even had Court Decisions OVERTURNED, without help from attorneys! Truly, I will admit that the damage and suffering of such battles was more psychological and detrimental to peaceful family existence, and the fall out was financial, emotional destruction. It was as close to divorce and stress that I will ever hope to experience for the rest of my life.

Ultimately, the Federal Court Judge Ordered me to find an attorney for our son, because, if I did not, he said that our son’s case would lose at the Appeals level, due to the child not being properly represented in Court. What an irony, even if we could have won at the first level, they would have had it overturned because of how he was represented. Again, after an exhaustive search, we finally located a young, fresh out of Law School attorney, who offered to represent our son “pro bono”. Remember, we had been in Federal Court for over a year prior to her having even graduated from Law School! Within 3 months, our son’s case was closed, and the State Dept. of Ed and the local school district were absolved of any responsibilities.

I believe it is important that you understand the following, which is of public record in the Federal Court system in Southern California:

1. The District admitted to not providing services on our son’s IEPs.
2. The District could not provide original copies of documents where my name was added to agreements. (Reviewed by a documents fraud examiner).
3. The District failed to properly diagnose our son’s disabilities.
4. The District contracted a Dr. (for $14,000.00, on record)) to diagnose our son during the pending court case, to determine “what would have been appropriate 3 years past; when this same district had tested him 7 times within 12 months during the time in question.
5. State level investigations were useless.
6. OCR findings were biased and inaccurate.
7. McGeorge School of Law hearing transcripts are of record, and the Hearing Officer’s failure to acknowledge or address blatant violations of Special Ed Laws are abundant.
8. Numerous other violations of Education Law were proven clearly on Court Records.
9. Our son NEVER had another “active” IEP from the time when we filed for Due Process; the two parties (parents and district) could never come to agreement, so…

Our son’s case ended over a year ago. The scars my wife and I carry may never go away. Time is the healer and seeing our son doing well as a soon to be 10th Grader is the soothing ointment to assure us we did the right thing. He has no IEP, he gets no special help, and he is working very hard. He is alive, healthy and we are grateful. We stood by our child and did what we thought we had to do, protect him at all cost.

Adding insult to injury, after the case was closed, we received legal documents from the school district’s attorneys’, attempting to bill us for the legal costs they incurred! Some of these costs included the depositions they took of our son’s “expert witnesses”, a document fraud examiner and a Neuropsychologist; both who are highly qualified specialists. These testimonies clearly demonstrate among other issues the district’s blatant failures to diagnose our son’s disabilities, their (district’s) inability to explain how my signature ended up on a copy of an education contract that I had refused to sign. The irony is the district DID NOT enter these depositions as evidence after their attorneys deposed these witnesses, I DID!

My advice to anyone who will listen. If you are an advocate, thank you for your strength, courage and perseverance, and for trying to help protect our children. To you parents, until there are drastic changes in how the laws are enforced, do what you have to do to save your child. Our experience dictates that it might be wiser to pull your child and put him/her in a safe non-public environment as soon as possible. The money will be more effectively spent there, and less stress placed upon your family.

You see, for those of us who do not have a lot of money, we need to determine where best to spend the limited resources we have on what we find to be most precious to us, our kids. Moreover, for those who have enough money for attorneys and consultants why would they spend it on fighting a system? They can afford the tutoring, counselors, private educations…

Absolute power corrupts, and all the laws in the world are useless, until they are enforced. God bless you Joan, Mary Ann, Chris, Sandy, Adele (retired), and the rest of you advocates who fight for our kids!

Sincerely,

Andy

Ps/ Everything we experienced is of public record; I wish (pray) to God somebody had the time, money and courage to look at what clearly was the “Anatomy of a Public School’s Failure”. What has happened to my family, and specifically to our child, is the story of one; however, it will clearly show what happens to all who get involved and try to help a child (anyone’s child).

Oh, Andy…I am saddened for both you and your wife and what you suffered through. What strength and love it took to fight such a system for your son’s sake. Hindsight is so damn 20-20, isn’t it?

I think I caught a taste of what you went through. I was spending godawful copious hours trying to present what I hoped was an ‘open and shut case’ just to obtain adequate minimal services for my kiddo. I was worried, harried, upset, disgusted and so many other negative emotions. To top it all off, I wasn’t convinced that once having obtained the services I was looking for, whether it would benefit my daughter’s educational needs given the limitations of the public school system and special education services delivery.

Maybe there are teachers out there more intent on the students than sustaining the bureaucracy, and if there are, I’m sure the political pundits have them as discouraged as we were…so, I wonder whether they have the ability to buck the system anymore than we have. I can’t help but view the entire public school system as a complete failure, and I’m not alone in this either on a grass-roots level or by the qualitative and quantitative measurements of the ‘experts’. The results are basically in regarding that question…America’s public school system is woefully inadequate to prepare our youth for an academic future. They, of course, continue to cry out for more funding…yet I point to repeated studies showing that private schools pay their teachers far less, have huge class sizes (30 or more) and still manage to produce better results than the public schools. Funding really isn’t the problem. And I don’t have a clue why the system is so broken. I just know it is and needs to be scrapped and started over from square one.

The bleeding out of students withdrawn from public schools to homeschools or private schools is comparable to a revolutionary war cry. The government won’t continue to listen to the excuses much longer, nor will the taxpayers. We can’t afford to pay for failure, especially when it affects our children and our future as a country. Ergo, I save my receipts for all money paid to educate my child. Someday, the privatization of the educational institutions in America will happen, and on that day, I’ll be given the freedom to choose how I want my child educated, and my taxes won’t be coerced from me to fund the local failing schools.

Think on this, parent or educator…if parents were given the freedom to choose, how many students do you think the current public education system would have enrolled? Nary a one, I would venture to guess. What an accusation that possibility holds toward the whining public schools who say they’re underfunded and that parents aren’t involved enough nor does the community support them. There’s a saying…those who excuse themselves, accuse themselves.

The public school system is a real case of the Emperor’s New Clothes. We all see how very naked they are.

Bonita

I of course,have to comment,just can’t help it,don’t know how to keep my mouth shut.

Andy,we known each other a long time:-) I feel that oddly we probably have some sort of genetic link,if not the bond of fighting for what is right in the world.

Just went to an awards ceremony. The 2002 moral courage award. Awarded to a friend by the board of county commissioners. My friend and her family spend more than 1 million dollars fighting this county school district. Yes,1 million. The fight? Started because they,the school,stopped speech therapy without consent.Their child,a child with downs syndrome,didn’t benefit from the court battles,but other children did. My friend knew,as the County commisioner stated,as her family,stood proudly at the podium while the county commisioner spoke ,early on that their fight would never present the Free and Appropriate public education that was her child’s right,they knew,as he grew older,that this fight would be for others,not themselves.As the commissioner mentioned the 1 mil., another friend stting by me,another parent advocate who had her own fight,(published in Family Circle 3/2001 ,if one would like to read it),leaned over and whispered in my ear,”okay ,now tell us how much YOU spent”. I started to laugh quietly. The commissioner spoke on. NO one spoke of the special ed. director locking educational files up in her office,making the office of civil rights threaten to withhold federal funds to get them out,only to have them falsified when they left her office. This director lost her job.
They didn’t mention this when they spoke,they didn’t mention the battery of psychiatric testing they made my friend go through,they didn’t mention the Judge throwing the case out of Federal court because he was tired of hearing about it. Literally. They didn’t mention the hours she spent with me while I wrote state complaint after state complaint. They didn’t mention the hundreds of families that this one family helped by forming STAND,a grassroots advocacy group in this area,that has now effectively helped hundreds of families in my state. It didn’t matter,why? They didn’t mention all that this family went through,the speech was disrupted by my friends son. He simply grabbed the microphone from the commisioner,and proclaimed to the audience,THANK YOU! We understood. The audience stood up one by one,until no one remained seated,a standing ovation,everyone clapped turning directly to this family,the commissioner took his seat,we continued to clap.
Like this family,there will be another family after them,and another after that,change comes,not for our kids,but for the ones after them.One day,our kids will have their own kids,and those kids,well they’ll say,”but you have on no clothes”.They will be the ones to speak the truth,why? Because we taught them how.We taught them to speak the truth.

Socks…while what you wrote about and went through is so uplifting, it scares the helloutta me.

Is the public school system really that corrupt? I just chalked it all up to social retardation and pack mentality…but what you presented is downright evil. Is this sort of thing going on all the time or in isolated cases?

Wow…what a buncha goats those people are, and how’d they ever get in charge of our little lambs?

Bonita

When a school district is pushed,when they are in fear of setting a precedence,they can be incredibly evil. While our county had a cancer,truely corrupt,I believe there are other district’s out there. Anytime they have a attorney on retainer with unlimited funding to fight in court,it becomes not a pretty sight. I did not go through this,a friend did,and because of what she went through, I didn’t. This is my point,and I will always be grateful,to the families before me,and will endeavor to help the families after me.

School systems are not self-correcting. There aren’t those “checks and balances” we’re taught about in Civics class. So even people who start out doing a reasonable job may — innocently or otherwise — do great harm. They can go talk to others on their “leadership team” and tell each other what a great job they are doing and even sleep at night, knowing they have defended their school dollars from the “greedy, money-sucking parents who demand everything for their children” (aka parents who don’t want their kids illiterate and on Skid Row when they could have been … anything… with an education). Since it’s set up so that they don’t have enough money and there aren’t good ways of disbursing what they do have fairly, adversarial roles are awfully easy to slide into, and once *one* party does it, there’s no undoing it.

Now, I think it’s interesting that there are getting to be enough homeschoolers that there’s clout behind the numbers. School could be reinvented. It would be nice if it were designed with those little checks and balances…

We just had a funny or not-so-funny newsflash in our great state of Texas. None of the members of the Texas Education board send their children to public schools. Either they’re in private schools or homeschooled.

Things that make ya go hmmmmmmm…….

Bonita