I want to home school and have been investing alot of hours getting to know all about it. I think I have decided on it for the next school season but I want to know your opinions and if anyone home schools after having a CPS case opened and closed? This is the only thing holding me back from saying let's do this.
My concerns are I will draw attention to myself by home schooling thus bringing CPS back in my life.
I would be homeschooling 2 of my children and would follow the laws set in Indiana (which are non-existent basically) but would also like to know if it's wise to move out of the county you had a case in?
Whatever you guys have here to say is going to make my decision a little easier.
You guys are the decision makers :)
Moderators: family_man, LindaJM
Re: You guys are the decision makers :)
I dont have the patience to home school my kids, and this is just ME, if I wanted to teach kids, I would have been a teacher! Which Im not, and never will be.
I personally sent mine to private school after the cps run in. They cannot go into private schools the way they do public schools to interview kids ect because its private property ect. It was spendy, and thankfully, it was the Jewish Hebrew school, so we also qualified for scholarships through the Jewish community.
I personally sent mine to private school after the cps run in. They cannot go into private schools the way they do public schools to interview kids ect because its private property ect. It was spendy, and thankfully, it was the Jewish Hebrew school, so we also qualified for scholarships through the Jewish community.
Re: You guys are the decision makers :)
I homeschooled my children after the 1989 CPS case... but we had already moved to another county. We managed to avoid CPS for ten years until their father was sued for child support, and then he called CPS and one of the allegations was that we were homeschooling - something he knew from tracking me on the web.
I told the CPS worker, "homeschooling is legal in all fifty states". That pretty much ended it, though I did mention our large collection of curriculum materials.
If you're homeschooling and worried about CPS, you have a GREAT resource available to you in HSLDA... regardless of how you feel about their Christian agenda, for a fee (I think membership is about 100 per year) you can get CPS protection in the form of lawyers you can phone on the spot if CPS appears at your door. Back when I was homeschooling, I could never afford it, but I HIGHLY recommend it. If you cannot afford it let me know - I am willing to do some fundraising to help people get memberships to HSLDA. I am not supporting them as a Christian, but only because they've taken positive legal action to help victims of CPS, on multiple occasions.
I did join my state homeschooling association for $30 per year and at one point they were very helpful to me with another legal issue involving homeschooling. A lawyer who is associated with them wrote a wonderful letter on my behalf and the matter was dropped. So.. legal protection is available to homeschoolers... and homeschooling is great for kids, so I say, Go For It!!!
I am an independent homeschooling advocate... these are my links:
http://www.squidoo.com/separation-of-school-and-state
http://www.independenthomeschooling.com
I told the CPS worker, "homeschooling is legal in all fifty states". That pretty much ended it, though I did mention our large collection of curriculum materials.
If you're homeschooling and worried about CPS, you have a GREAT resource available to you in HSLDA... regardless of how you feel about their Christian agenda, for a fee (I think membership is about 100 per year) you can get CPS protection in the form of lawyers you can phone on the spot if CPS appears at your door. Back when I was homeschooling, I could never afford it, but I HIGHLY recommend it. If you cannot afford it let me know - I am willing to do some fundraising to help people get memberships to HSLDA. I am not supporting them as a Christian, but only because they've taken positive legal action to help victims of CPS, on multiple occasions.
I did join my state homeschooling association for $30 per year and at one point they were very helpful to me with another legal issue involving homeschooling. A lawyer who is associated with them wrote a wonderful letter on my behalf and the matter was dropped. So.. legal protection is available to homeschoolers... and homeschooling is great for kids, so I say, Go For It!!!
I am an independent homeschooling advocate... these are my links:
http://www.squidoo.com/separation-of-school-and-state
http://www.independenthomeschooling.com
Sample Document Library
Please keep in mind that none of us are lawyers and we can't give legal advice. We are simply telling you what we would do in a similar situation. It is to your advantage to get a lawyer.
"Evil flourishes when good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke ... so try to do something to change the system ...
Please keep in mind that none of us are lawyers and we can't give legal advice. We are simply telling you what we would do in a similar situation. It is to your advantage to get a lawyer.
"Evil flourishes when good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke ... so try to do something to change the system ...
Re: You guys are the decision makers :)
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See if you can get in contact with some homeschooling groups and see which locality is better for homeschooling. Obviously it would be better to go to another locality to get away from CPS, if you didn't think it was worse elsewhere.
I was persecuted by the school board and traumatized. In this area, different localities handle homeschooling differently.
A word of advice. Don't give the age or grade level of your child on the information given to the school board, if possible.
Also, let the children take standardized tests privately. Give the children the tests yourself if possible. Keep taking tests until you get the results you want. Don't let the school system test your child, and don't give them portfolios. This is what happened to me.
I was cleared for homeschooling for the next year, and then a new person called and contradicted the previous OK, and started nitpicking their portfolios, even though there is no Standard for what should be in the portfolios.
When giving the curriculum at the beginning of the year, just say:
English, math, social studies, and science. Don't list any of the state Standards of Learning, any published curriculum, etc. This woman tried to hold me to every last one of the state Standards of Learning for 3 children, even though that was only listed as one of the resources. I guess the children had to read all the books in the library, as that was on there also. And the oldest child was 18 already.
I called the school board and asked them if my children had to come to the hearing, and the lady said, No. When I got to the hearing, they asked where the children were. One lady on the school board tried to ask me if I had a college degree, and their lawyer wouldn't let her ask me. But when I casually said something, then they said I had opened the door for them to grill me on the subject.
Meanwhile, during all this crazy stuff, I filed for Religious Exemption. Normally they grill the children on their religious beliefs, because they Can, under VA regulations. The chaiman of the Board kept trying to get me to say I homeschooled because of my beliefs on evolution, but I didn't get it - that he was trying to help me. The home-school advocate explained it to me later. In the end, they let me continue home-schooling, but I never gave another lesson - I was so traumatized.
My children were essentially school-drop-outs, not that it made much difference. They just went to work when they were 14 and became independently wealthy by the age of 16. My son went to tech school and was a substitute teacher at the local Technical school at the age of 21, without a GED. He taught grown men who had their own Heating and A/C businesses. When he went to get a loan on his second house, the loan officer asked him if he was a loan officer himself.
After the girls were self-sufficient, they took classes for GED, and ended up trying to teach the class themselves in order to help the other students. They argued with the "Right" answers that the teacher gave, and demanded that she call the publishers and have them correct the wrong answers. Finally, they quit the class in disgust, thinking it was a waste of their hard-earned money. I told them that if they wanted to go to college, then that was more of the same. If they didn't like a GED class, they wouldn't like college.
My fondest memory of college was Home Ec, when we had teams of students cooking peas for 5 min, 10, min, 15 min, 20 min, 25 min, 30 min, etc. Forty years later, I still feel guilty that my Father mortgaged his house for the third time to pay for this. I should have stayed home, gotten a French cookbook, and gone shopping at International Safeway. It would have been a lot cheaper.
.
See if you can get in contact with some homeschooling groups and see which locality is better for homeschooling. Obviously it would be better to go to another locality to get away from CPS, if you didn't think it was worse elsewhere.
I was persecuted by the school board and traumatized. In this area, different localities handle homeschooling differently.
A word of advice. Don't give the age or grade level of your child on the information given to the school board, if possible.
Also, let the children take standardized tests privately. Give the children the tests yourself if possible. Keep taking tests until you get the results you want. Don't let the school system test your child, and don't give them portfolios. This is what happened to me.
I was cleared for homeschooling for the next year, and then a new person called and contradicted the previous OK, and started nitpicking their portfolios, even though there is no Standard for what should be in the portfolios.
When giving the curriculum at the beginning of the year, just say:
English, math, social studies, and science. Don't list any of the state Standards of Learning, any published curriculum, etc. This woman tried to hold me to every last one of the state Standards of Learning for 3 children, even though that was only listed as one of the resources. I guess the children had to read all the books in the library, as that was on there also. And the oldest child was 18 already.
I called the school board and asked them if my children had to come to the hearing, and the lady said, No. When I got to the hearing, they asked where the children were. One lady on the school board tried to ask me if I had a college degree, and their lawyer wouldn't let her ask me. But when I casually said something, then they said I had opened the door for them to grill me on the subject.
Meanwhile, during all this crazy stuff, I filed for Religious Exemption. Normally they grill the children on their religious beliefs, because they Can, under VA regulations. The chaiman of the Board kept trying to get me to say I homeschooled because of my beliefs on evolution, but I didn't get it - that he was trying to help me. The home-school advocate explained it to me later. In the end, they let me continue home-schooling, but I never gave another lesson - I was so traumatized.
My children were essentially school-drop-outs, not that it made much difference. They just went to work when they were 14 and became independently wealthy by the age of 16. My son went to tech school and was a substitute teacher at the local Technical school at the age of 21, without a GED. He taught grown men who had their own Heating and A/C businesses. When he went to get a loan on his second house, the loan officer asked him if he was a loan officer himself.
After the girls were self-sufficient, they took classes for GED, and ended up trying to teach the class themselves in order to help the other students. They argued with the "Right" answers that the teacher gave, and demanded that she call the publishers and have them correct the wrong answers. Finally, they quit the class in disgust, thinking it was a waste of their hard-earned money. I told them that if they wanted to go to college, then that was more of the same. If they didn't like a GED class, they wouldn't like college.
My fondest memory of college was Home Ec, when we had teams of students cooking peas for 5 min, 10, min, 15 min, 20 min, 25 min, 30 min, etc. Forty years later, I still feel guilty that my Father mortgaged his house for the third time to pay for this. I should have stayed home, gotten a French cookbook, and gone shopping at International Safeway. It would have been a lot cheaper.
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Re: You guys are the decision makers :)
You have every right to homeschool your children and don't ever let CPS tell you otherwise. In fact, you can make the argument with all that goes on in public schools these days, your children are safer.
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