|
Mar
30, 2008 |
With
harrowing tales, a group of parents are trying to get the state to change its
law concerning the withdrawal of students from public school for the purposes
of homeschooling.
Among them is a family from
The school system, they say, responded to their
withdrawal of their children by reporting them as neglectful parents to the
state Department of Children and Families (DCF).
“Instead of getting lawyers and doctors to play the
education school district’s game, my wife and I decided to quietly remove our
children from school, and homeschool them,” said Jeff Kain,
the Ridgefield father. “After we informed the school principal in writing, we
were then reported to the DCF by a phantom school official that has never been
disclosed to us...
“The complaint was ‘educational and emotional
neglect,’” he said.
The time and effort involved in providing a home school
program for children with special needs is the polar opposite of neglect, he
said.
The Kains’ children were
withdrawn from school effective Dec. 11, 2006,
and the complaint was filed with the DCF on Jan. 11, 2007, Mr. Kain said.
In the spring of 2007, he said, the Department of
Children and Families found the case unsubstantiated after one unannounced
visit to their home and one meeting in their offices. “They informed my wife in
that one and only meeting that they were dropping the case immediately,” Mr. Kain said. “There’s a 45 day grace period, where you get it
in writing. It took about 45 days that it was found to be ‘unsubstantiated’ —
that’s the term they use.”
Still, the family was greatly affected by the
experience.
“We felt so coerced and intimidated,” Mr. Kain said. “This is so huge and so demoralizing and
devastating to our family that we hid in our home,” he said.
Closed door
The report for alleged neglect was a final straw in the
Kains’ history with the school district.
“We felt they were closing the door to us, and then we
left and they contacted the Department of Children and Families and we felt
like the door was closed forever,” the
The episode instilled a fear that their children might
be taken from them.
“I am so afraid to have our children legally kidnapped
by a state,” Mr. Kain said.
“...We have two beautiful children we have to be
advocates for, and we feel like we’re being pushed out of a community. It’s the
most terrible thing I’ve experienced in my 54 years of life. We’re hiding in
our home. When we need something, I go to
That was in a long phone
conservation.
Last month, about a year after being reported to the
state Department of Children and Families for “educational neglect,” the
Ridgefield couple provided written testimony to a legislative committee
considering a bill designed to clarify what should happen when parents withdraw
children — in many cases special needs children — from the public schools
in order to homeschool them.
“Parents of families with special needs, comprising medically
disadvantaged, emotionally wounded and neurologically impaired children, are
strained to educate their children alone in the face of scorn for being forced
out of the public schools due to prejudice toward these children,” Mr. Kain wrote to the legislature.
“It is leaving disturbing and interminable scars for
our children. We parents must endure devastating and sweeping consequences from
such indifference, in spite of our appeals to assist teachers by offering our
critical information and our voluntary support.
“After using us as weekly volunteers in the classroom,
they discarded us by falsifying trumped up charges to the DCF here in
A
“The sound of my doorbell strikes terror in my heart,”
her testimony reads. “I can not answer without shouting, to make sure someone
from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) is not on the other side.
“We are a home schooling family in the State of
Connecticut ... Our situation evokes tales from ‘far off lands’ where people
are, or were, persecuted and monitored by their government...”
Attorney Deborah Stevenson, an education lawyer in
Southbury and the executive director of National Home Education Legal Defense,
told the legislature that public schools around the state had been reporting
families to the Department of Children and Family after the withdrawal of
children from the public schools for homeschooling.
“The bill ... is needed because of the improper,
coercive, and abusive actions of school officials who falsely reported, or
threatened to report, more than 40 families to the Department of Children and
Families in this past year alone, simply because they exercised their right to
refuse unlawful demands of public school officials, and withdrew their children
from the public school system...”
The bill would “compel school districts to
unconditionally acknowledge and respect the right of parents when they exercise
their right to withdraw their children from a public school,” she wrote.
“Parents should not have to fear the loss of custody of
their children simply because they exercise this right.”
State’s concerns
A lawyer with the State Department of Education offered
a different perspective on the controversy.
“We’ve got a number of different statutes that relate
to home instruction,” said Attorney Laura Anastacio.
“But essentially what we have are dual obligations. Parents have certain
statutory obligations and school districts have certain statutory obligations.
“Local boards of education are required to make certain
that children who reside within their school districts are attending public
school, or they have to contact the parent and make sure that the child is
receiving equivalent instruction elsewhere.”
School personnel are also “mandatory reporters” under
state child protection statues: They are required to report suspected cases of
abuse — not just beatings, but all kinds, including the “educational abuse” of
not providing a child with adequate schooling.
“They have to report cases of possible educational
neglect, if a child isn’t being educated.” Ms. Anastasio
said.
The state Department of Education has advised districts
on how to proceed.
“We came up with a recommendation that school districts
adopt a twofold approach: First, that they require an annual ‘Notice of Intent’
and in that ‘Notice of Intent’ the parent is saying for this school year, I am
going to educate my child in the home and I will educate the child in the
subjects listed here that are taught in the public schools.
“And then we also recommended, although they don’t have
to do this, that at the end of the school year they set up a meeting with the
parent — we call it a portfolio review — so the school official can just take a
look at what that child has been doing, so they can know he was instructed in
math, in science, in social studies, all the subjects that are taught in public
school.
“From what I’ve heard, there are some parents who feel
that that’s very onerous on them,” Ms. Anastacio said.
“If they’re not able to make a determination whether
the child is being educated, then the DCF laws under Title 17-A do require the
school districts to report possible cases of educational neglect.”
Superintendent Low
Ridgefield Superintendent Deborah Low began a
discussion on the issue by explaining what, by law, she couldn’t talk about.
“I can never comment on any situation involving individual students or their families,” she said.
State laws require that children be educated, she said,
but do permit home schooling.
“Families have the right to do that, with the
expectation that the education would be comparable — ‘equivalent’ I guess is a
better word,” Ms. Low said.
“...There is an expectation by the state that the
student be educated,” Ms. Low said. “Again the parents can choose to do it on
their own, with the expectation that it’s the equivalent instruction. That’s
the only state expectation that there is — it’s a big one...”
As to reports that might have been made to the
Department of Children and Families, Ms. Low —
who came to
“The reports to DCF are a totally different issue, and
there are laws governing when districts are expected and required to report,”
she said. “...School people are considered mandatory reporters” if they have
concerns about children, she said.
Committee hearings
State Senator Judith Freedman, whose 26th District
includes
“It was very interesting. There were quite a few of
them, and they were all treated differently,” she said. “I think the local
school systems go after them on truancy and get DCF involved, and call it
neglect, or whatever you want to call it, because the kids aren’t in school.”
The school districts’ and state departments’
perspectives on the issue went unrepresented at the hearing, Senator Freedman
said. Attempts to introduce the bill in previous years never got far.
“School people? There wasn’t anybody there, which I thought was very
interesting,” she said. “This bill has always gone before the education
committee and they’ve never done anything with it, so this time it came before
the children’s committee. We’re obviously going to have to send it to the
Education Committee.”
While he is interested in the bill before the
legislature, Mr. Kain said he did not view it as the
most important point.
“To me the real issue is: Why are people home
schooling?” he said. “Are they being threatened? Are they not getting the
resources the schools have? Are they being bullied?” he said.
“Simply choosing to homeschool does not equal
educational abuse!,” Mr. Kain
said. “It’s an oxymoron.”
“The fact is, some public schools are not providing a
free and appropriate education for special needs children, although they
receive federal and state funds to do so.
“We now have to pay the expense of homeschooling
while also paying taxes to a public school district that failed to provide our
children with a safe and appropriate education based on our children’s special
needs.”