If a state-imposed regulation increases the cost of
homeschooling in all state municipalities, which organ of government – the
state or the municipality – should absorb the costs? Should a state tax credit be given to
homeschooling parents?
A parent who chooses to homeschool his children is not
relieved of the tax paid for public education. In effect, he or she is paying
twice to educate his child: once for an anonymous child who receives the
benefit of the public school tax dollars that his child is not receiving, and again
for the additional costs of homeschooling.
And the costs added to homeschooling by Senate President Pro
Tempore Looney’s imperative reforms, according to a March 15th story
in the Hartford Courant – “Looney: We have to keep moving” -- is sizeable. Education
Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said, the Courant noted, “that 1,800
children left public schools for homeschooling in the last fiscal year, along
with another 3,700 who departed public schools to attend private schools. The
plan [moved forward by Looney], Russell-Tucker said, “would involve one-time costs of about
$150,000, plus ongoing costs of about $400,000 per year, both of which have not
been included in Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget of $28.7 billion for the
fiscal year that starts on July 1.”
While Looney has praised the intrusive bill, he has not told
us why so many families are leaving public education. Looney has claimed
several times that increased homeschooling oversight is a priority for him.
“The problem right now,” Looney is quoted in the Courant “is we have one of the
lowest levels of homeschool regulations in the country. We are way behind in
terms of regulation… Last year, there wasn’t really time. It was too late for
the committee process last year. The children’s committee is really going to be
on it this year. I hope to see the strongest bill possible, but whatever we can
get support for, I’m for.”
One way to hobble a preferred educational product –
homeschooling, private schooling or Catholic schooling – is for public schools,
conspiring with powerful legislators and unions, to impose monetary burdens on
the competition. Another is to impose a stifling uniformity on all education. Looney is one of those neo-progressive pests
who believe that nothing on God’s green earth – including gas powered leaf
blowers – is beyond the ken of the state’s business-stifling, ever-growing
regulatory apparatus. Looney has not yet drawn up a regulatory scheme for the
state’s bloggers, who remain free to express themselves robustly without any neo-progressive
regulatory chains on their ankles.
Melissa Cordero of
Bristol has a world of precious direct experience in homeschooling much broader
than Looney’s. According to the Courant:
“She has been
homeschooling for about 15 years and has worked in the trenches of the system.
Her five children range from a 2-year-old to a 20-year-old junior who is
studying business at the University of Connecticut. She believes the
homeschooling system has been working well, and the bills concerning tighter
oversight should be dropped.
“Homeschooling is a
beautiful thing because we’re not keeping our kids in a one-size-fits-all box
like in the public schools,” Cordero told The Courant in an interview. “I think
we should proceed the way we have been. It feels like an attack on
homeschooling.”
The homeschooling
families, she said, are essentially being punished for the problems with
high-profile child abuse cases in Waterbury and New Britain that were under the
purview of the state Department of Children and Families.
“Those were DCF
fails,” Cordero said of the cases. “Why was that missed? I feel they’re using
this as an excuse to come after homeschooling. It’s a shame they’re taking
those two cases and pinning it on homeschooling.”
“Based on my 20 years
of practice with children and adolescents here in the state of Connecticut,”
psychiatric nurse practitioner and educator Andrea Adimando noted at the
hearing, “homeschooled children have consistently presented as some of the
brightest, well-rounded, inquisitive children I encounter. Their parents are
typically highly committed to a wide range of educationally-appropriate
activities using multiple experiential and standard methods, and the vast
majority of these children consistently present as cognitively older than their
stated chronological ages. Rather than create a database of parents who choose
to homeschool or privately school their children, the state should focus this time,
effort, and money into providing increased education to educators and
healthcare professionals on recognizing signs and symptoms of emotional,
physical, and educational abuse and/or neglect, as well as providing
improvements to the DCF processes that would ensure reports do not go
un-acknowledged or un-investigated due to poor funding or over burden
administrators. Should a student who carries with them risk factors for abuse
or neglect, previous evidence of such, or active DCF cases be suddenly withdrawn
from a public school setting, this absolutely should be treated as a red flag
and report should be made.”
To put all this in a nutshell, most of the parents who
testified at a public hearing on homeschooling regard Looney’s attempt to fix
what is not broken as a political affront rather than a serious attempt to
prevent child abuse. They have argued persuasively that DCF, in the Courant’s
words, “had previously investigated Mimi’s family for abuse and neglect
allegations and her removal [from public school] did not remove the burden of
the agency’s investigation into her welfare. Rather, homeschool advocates blame
negligence by DCF for the girl’s death. Her family is looking to sue the agency
and lawmakers have said they are also looking at reforms.”
“Mimi” Torres-Garcia was an 11-year-old girl named Jacqueline
found dead behind an abandoned house in New Britain She weighed only 27 pounds
at the time of her death. The chief medical examiner’s office has ruled that
her death was a homicide and said she died from fatal child abuse of
starvation.
There are two important questions that should be decided before homeschooling is reformed” unnecessarily by union friendly, neo-progressive legislators: 1) Who done it? Who is responsible for the murderous abuse of that child? And 2) Who, other than Looney, unfriendly to homeschooling, should decide what the nature of homeschooling should be?
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