The school district of Gilroy, California has been featured in other blog posts here at NewsComm.

• Fear-mongering in California, 28 May 2005
  Ann: A week after writer/homeschooler Cynthia Walker writes an article (above) about how to homeschool in California using a private school or the R-4 affidavit, attendance officer Frank Valadez comes out with an intimidating letter to the editor, below.

• California Courage – defying bureaucratic bullying, 28 June 2005

  Ann: Last month, in a post called Fear-Mongering in California, we saw how one California truant officer is choosing to misinterpret the private school rules by suggesting that homeschoolers submit themselves to his personal opinion of what the law should be. The comments keep rolling in.

A year later, the homeschool climate in Gilroy continues to be officially chilly.

• Gilroy Dispatch, Gilroy, California, 11 July 2006, Education at Home Cut-Off

  Before James Maxwell took over the GHS helm a year ago, school officials allowed homeschooled students to jump into the program after freshmen year. Since Maxwell came on board, he said he’s told parents that students from unaccredited institutions, which includes the vast majority of homeschool programs, will not be accepted as upperclassmen.

I would think that placement testing would be a reasonable way to allow teens who want to go to school to enter without forcing older teens to enter high school as freshmen. On the other hand, it is the high school’s diploma, and if they don’t want certain people enrolling as students, I suppose that making it as hard as possible is one way to go about making sure that the undesirables don’t darken GHS’s door.

Local opinion has a bit of the same slant.

• Gilroy Dispatch, Gilroy, California, 15 July 2006, Drop-Ins Getting Shut Out by Gilroy High School

  What do you call a kid who leaves school at the age of 15 or 16, before graduating?

  A drop-out, of course.

  What do you call a kid who enters school for the first time at the age of 15 or 16, before graduating?

  A drop-in?

  …

  But I don’t think the resurrected policy is fair. GHS is a tax-supported institution, and the parents of drop-ins are taxpayers. Testing for proficiency is an easy enough matter. If a drop-in can prove proficiency in Algebra II and English Composition, he should be allowed credit for those classes. If not, he can take the classes again.

Tags: California truant officer, Gilroy High School, high school diploma, homeschool programs, private school, private school rules, R-4 affidavit, tax-supported institution, Testing

This entry was posted on July 25, 2006 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Regulations, State News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.