Here we go again another school official (County School Attendance Officer Dave E. Collins III) is trying to give homeschoolers a bad name (Probably because he is afraid of losing his job). His complaint "Last summer, we had two couples out in the county who were home-schooling their kids. I think one kid was 16 and one kid was about 14 or 15. The kids were working on the farm in the day. The law does not allow us to question the parents. The way the law is written, the parents could circumvent the law by claiming they are home-schooling the children at night."
And what would be wrong with homeschooling your children at night? Many public school students hold after school jobs. So why can't a homeschooling family work on their farm during the day and homeschool at night? The law is 100% right in NOT allowing school attendance officers to dictate when a homeschooler can homeschool.
Another complaint Collins has "Another frequent problem is that of students who dropout of public school during the year and then register with school attendance officers to be home-schooled. What is the problem? Should parents be forced to keep their children in a unsuitable public school until the end of the school year, just so Collins will not have to do extra work? Public school students are free to transfer to another public school at anytime during the school year. Parents should have the option of deciding to homeschool at any point in the school year. After all, lots of parents do not know the condition of the public schools until after their children start attending them. And even if you are perfectly happy with the school one year you may not be the next. All public school teachers are not suitable teachers.
Then he goes on to rant about how a public school parent couldn't get her son out of bed in order to go to school and had to call the police. What on earth does that have to do with homeschoolers? You can bet a homeschool Mom could have gotten her kid out of bed without police intervention.
