Hello, My name is Cherish. My friend Denice is wanting to homeschool all of her children. Her son is currently in PS kindergarten. She is single as her husband died last year. Her three oldest children have LD. She has been told by authorities that she cannot homeschool and that the Laws are different for children with disabilities. Will she lose part of her income, if she just homeschools her children? She is also afraid that the ps system will give her trouble and encourage the state to take her children away. She is a wonderful person who is taking great care to raise her children properly. Please respond soon to my email [email protected]
Re: Write a letter
I would have your friend write a polite letter to the authorities asking for the law that specifically prohibits homewschooling children with disabilities. Like Ohio I don’t think it exists. If your friend writes the letter, I suspect they will stop harrassing her.
Last year I partially pulled my LD child out of school to homeschool because of inadequate programming. I was threatened at an IEP meeting that if I continued to bring him in late to school, he would be considered truant and we could be visited by social workers. I wrote a letter to the principal asking for where truancy was defined as excessive tardies in state or county law as the laws I found defined truancy as excessive absences. Anyway, after consulting their lawyers, they backed off and that was the end of it.
In my case, the district didn’t want me partially pulling him out because they could be legally liable for the cost of remediating him since he was still on an IEP. It would have been fine with them if I had homeschooled him entirely. I am not sure what the school’s motivation is but could just be ignorance. They don’t think a parent can do a good job with an LD child so they wrongly assume it has to be against the law.
The short of it is have her write a letter asking them to put into writing where the law specifically prohibits homeschooling an LD child.
Beth
Excellent advice; thank you
It’s always good to get the facts straight!
And it is an unfortunate fact that a large number of so-called educators in North America are themselves very poorly educated, do not know the information they should, and operate on guesses and old habits.
Exactly what authorities?
What state is the big question. In most states the laws *are* a little “different’ for kids with disabilities — but not that different. In New York there’s more paperwork and testing. In lots of states there are “authorities” who think some strange things about homeschooling, and may even sincerely believe they’re telling the truth about those laws — until they read them.
What with the INternet, you can find out those laws yourself. There are lots of good support groups, too (though I’d shop around for the right one).
Re: Please Help
One other thought. How have her children been diagnosed as ld and what kind?? I took my son out to homeschool because it was obvious he would only be left behind in 1st grade. I wanted to get him some speech therapy and was referred to the county services by pediatrician. County told me they would only test and treat if he was in school. No county services for homeschoolers whcih I now believe is a deliberate move by local school and county to discourage homeschoolers. I also don’t believe legal.
It's legal :-(
They are required to make services available… but it can be on their terms.
I don’t know if the right lawyer with the right judge could steer that in a better direction or not. And some schools see the sense in it (or, more cynically speaking, see that they aren’t paying out as much if the parents are doing most of the educating).
To the best of my knowledge homeschooling is legal in all 50 states as well as canada, and that includes all children. It sounds to me like the school is once again useing lies to try to intimidate some poor unfortunate parent.
Have your friend go to these two sites, the first is the homeschool legal defence fund, you pay them a small yearly membership fee and they provide you with legal help and in some cases services as well.
both of these sites have links to all 50 states.
as far as loosing money, that i dont know about, If she is recieveing money from some government organisation she would have to check with them to see if homeschooling would make her ineligible, again it sounds mighty fishy to me, i have never heard of any gov assistance that mandates children attend public school.
http://www.hslda.org/default.asp
http://homeschoolcentral.com/states.htm