Department of Nonpublic Education- Bullies Homeschoolers

Should homeschoolers hand over electronic information to the State when it has never before been done? How about doing it under threat of school closure?

During this year’s National School Choice Week, I became distracted from the festivities pertaining to the expansions of k-12 educational freedoms. What was my distraction? It was the state… the Department of NonPublic Education … to be specific. This is the arm of the state which provides acknowledgement of receipt for Notices of Intent for NC homeschool families. In other words, this department keeps state records of NC homeschools on file.

So what did the department do? For the first time in my seven years of history with this department(as a homeschool mom), I received an email asking that I submit never before requested records in an email reply, or to log on to the department website and add my school records. It seemed to be a valiant attempt to create a new type of database, collecting info on hohomeschoolers. Homeschoolers are subjected to share school records if the department comes to the school, not through this electronic nonsense. I was told if I didn’t submit the records being sought, then my homeschool would be closed. You can imagine why I woukdn’t take too kindly to this kind of language.

Naturally, I pushed back. I read the statute.

I provided nothing to the State other than a line of questions asking where they thought they had authority to close homeschools for refusal to provide documents online.

After speaking with a staff attorney at Homeschool Legal Defense Assoc/HSLDA it became clear it had no consequence to me as a homeschool mom whether Mr. Cason closed my school, or not. Parents like me would continue to educate how they saw fit.

It does, however, have mild consequence for homeschool kids approaching driving age who are forced to rely on people like Cason to issue the Driver Eligibility Certificate/DEC. Lucky for our family, we had the DEC already taken care of.