Home school parents fend off rule changes in Alachua County

Proposed home education rules in Alachua County caused a stir among local families and home school advocates around the state and beyond.

But district leaders withdrew the proposed policy changes after dozens of parents packed a school board meeting Tuesday night. Among other things, they argued the district did not have the authority to require them to submit documents beyond those required in state law.

Roberts
Roberts

After hearing from parents and other home school supporters for more than an hour, Owen Roberts, the district superintendent, pledged to rework the policy changes before bringing them to the board for a vote. As the Gainesville Sun reported this morning, he also apologized for district officials whose treatment of home-school parents drew complaints.

Local parents objected to the wording of the proposed rules, which used the word “request” to describe a parent’s notice of intent to start a home education program (which they said implied the district might deny one). The proposal would also have required new home-school parents to submit documents proving their residence and guardianship of their children, which state law does not require.

Florida’s home school statutes require parents to submit their children’s names, addresses and birth dates to their local school district before starting a home education program. Parents also have to keep portfolios of academic work, and records from evaluations of their children’s progress.

Other Florida school districts have recently been at odds with home education advocates over rules they say impinge on parents’ freedom to educate their children as they see fit.

In an interview last month, Tj Schmidt of the Home School Legal Defense Association (who also spoke at the Alachua meeting), said the group is keeping an eye on other districts that ask parents for information beyond what the law requires or create other hoops for them to jump through.

For parents facing additional questions from districts, he said, the concern is often, “Where is this going to end? … Where do you draw the line for parents who are in compliance with the law?”

At Tuesday’s school board meeting in Gainesville, dozens of parents lined up to speak against the proposed rules, and to counter stereotypes about home schoolers. Jennifer Sanders told the board that students taught at home were winning state robotics competitions and landing scholarships to attend the nearby University of Florida.

“I want the board to recognize our contribution to the community at large in educating our students,” she said during the meeting.

At the end of the workshop, Roberts, who took over as superintendent last year, said the district would revise its proposal to follow the outlines of state law, and that he “will not support any policy that will take away the rights of parents.”

“I believe that parents are a child’s first teacher,” he said. “That you cannot take away.”


Avatar photo

BY Travis Pillow

Travis Pillow is Director of Thought Leadership at Step Up For Students and editor of NextSteps. He lives in Sanford, Fla. with his wife and two children. A former Tallahassee statehouse reporter, he most recently worked at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University, where he studied community-led learning innovation and school systems' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. He can be reached at tpillow (at) sufs.org.