The following articles spotlight homeschooling parents who are active in their communities, and beyond.

• WLNS, Lansing, Michigan, 13 July 2006, Questions Raised About School Board Member Home Schooling Children

  While Day will be making decisions she hopes will lead to change, her young kids don’t actually attend the district’s schools. Day has been home schooling her children for the past year.

(One wonders if the same questions are raised about empty-nesters who run for the school board but whose children attend college.)

• Victoria Lookout, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 10 July 2006, Military family moves south for school

  Yanis Greer is taking her home-school skills and her three children out of their Signal Hill home and into a Mexican classroom.

  For a year, she’ll teach Grades 1 through 3 at the Hogar de Refugio Infantil (Shelter for Children) on Mexico’s west coast. For her children, this will be their first introduction to a formal school setting.

• The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, 9 August 2006, Rescue group: No more forgotten felines

  After surgically repairing their wounds, the cats were sterilized, vaccinated, tested for feline AIDS and leukemia and treated for parasites. Then the work of calming their fears began. Each cat was placed in a loving foster home to be socialized.

  “They’re so fragile when they come to us,” said “foster parent” Connie Newby, a home-schooling mom, who uses the foster cat program as a combination service project/life cycles course for her children, Jessie, Teddy and Billy Rose.

• Hartford Advocate, Hartford, Connecticut, 10 August, 2006, (article now cached) Up in flame

  Initially, Judy Aron thought the message that popped up on her computer in early July was a harmless nuisance. “I never knew who he was. I didn’t have a clue. It was just some person sending me an e-mail,” Aron said. “I sent a very cordial e-mail back. It seemed to be a laughable thing.” …

  “Are you insane? You are running against Andy Fleischmann and you think you have a viable chance of winning this election,” Kaplan wrote. “For the fact alone that you are crazy enough to home school your kids and 98% of this town sends their kids to private and public schools, you will not have any shot at winning.” …

  In her reply, Aron thanked Kaplan for his interest in her campaign and defended her chances in the election and her choice of home schooling her three children, noting that Fleischmann has publicly stated his support of home schooling. She didn´t receive a response. Later, while speaking with friends, she learned Kaplan was a campaign coordinator for Fleischmann´s reelection effort. …

  To make amends, Fleischmann called Aron, suspended Kaplan from the campaign for two weeks and told Kaplan to write a letter of apology to Aron.

• NHELD transcript of speech at Home Educators Network in the Rhode Island (HENRI) Conference, 12 August 2006, The Reluctant Patriots

  I have never been very politically minded. That is something I must change. I can no longer rely on the freedoms forged by those who came before. The days of quietly homeschooling thinking that we will be left alone are fading away. Our local politics matter more than many of us realize. I would like to share with you the experiences that have led me to spending this lovely Saturday morning with you fine people. …

  At the meetings, we were told things like “How do I know you are educating your children at All?” and “Who polices these homeschooling parents?” The Chairwoman of the SC told the Providence Journal; “We are not telling them what to read, we are telling them they have to read.”

  Some committee members were even angered when other homeschooling parents in the district called to ask them to vote against the proposed policy. These were elected officials who could not understand why they were being called and told callers that the matter was already decided. …

  You know things are out of balance when an assistant superintendent addresses a group family home learning parents saying that he or she is “here for the children” and the subcommittee nods in agreement. How is it that an administrator pulling in salary and benefits in excess of $80,000 a year can have a greater vested interest in seeing strangers children succeed more so than the parents of those children?

Thanks to all.

Tags: Home Educators Network, home-school skills, home-schooling, homeschooling parents, Judy Aron, military family, NHELD

This entry was posted on August 21, 2006 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Activist Homeschoolers, News-Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.