Today I asked our legal counsel to advise us as to what the best choice is for us in his/their opinion for 2007, 2008, and the rest of our years homeschooling in VT. We have some good ideas but obvioulsy need to consult with our lawyers first.

This whole can of worms is something I would studiously avoid if I could. Especailly now. I don't know if I can handle the stress, but we really don't have a choice in the timing. I was supposed to be making this phone call 2 months ago (but) the world changed before that.

It is a rollercoaster ride: some days are more up than others. I've learned to turn from the phone (Prosecutor's office, etc. ) to my children's lessons. Being with them is so much more accentuated now- their kind innocence and goodness.

They have nightmares and are in counseling. I can do nothing but pray and have faith that this will be used somwhow to shape them for the better.

God Bless everyone- A.

Our 2nd letter to this Commissioner of Education, and the final letter before Fall.  We felt a need to say this, for the record.   It was mailed in May.

Dear Commissioner _____:

            We sent you a letter on January 27, 2006 requesting a religious waiver from the assessment stipulations of the VT Homestudy law. We outlined our deeply held religious beliefs, offered a compromise for providing assessment for our children, and requested details about further information you might need in order to make your determination in our case. We have ethical concerns with the letter from the Dept. of Education’s (staff).

            We received a letter from Ms. _____ dated March 14, 2006, outlining reasons for the denial of our waiver request. In that letter disparaging comments were made against our character and our integrity, which Ms. _____ knew were unfounded.

            When our file was reviewed an obvious conclusion was drawn: we supplied the teachers with a form letter that met the state guidelines for a teacher assessment letter. Review of these letters will demonstrate that the teacher was expected to outline any area where s/he felt more progress was needed. Interestingly, the new homestudy law now suggests teachers use a form provided by the parents.

We were subsequently accused of writing our own letters and asking a teacher to sign them, as if an assessment never took place. This was directed at us after Ms. _____ had already spoken with one of the teachers on the phone and ascertained that comprehensive assessments had certainly taken place. In the phone call the teacher also conveyed to Ms. _____ that we ‘are a family you don’t have to worry about’.

            We came openly and in good faith with a lawful request regarding a religious issue. The above series of events suggests that religious persecution and discrimination may be occurring. While we sincerely hope that this is not the case, holding us to a different standard than other families who have written draft assessment letters for their teachers to use would suggest otherwise.

            We are hopeful that any future business we have will be handled with honesty and integrity by the Department of Education.

                                                                       Respectfully,

We heard from the Dept. of Ed.’s Home Study Dept. They have sent us ‘completes’ for our (applicable) children, which basically means we get one more year to homeschool legally. In Vermont, you only get one year at a time.

The attitude with the accompanying letter was that somehow if they had just gotten their mailings out about the new assessment guidelines before we got our mail to their office, we would have been held to the new law (regardless of the fact that our paperwork was under the previous law). My! I hope this isn’t the same office help going through the boxes of previous years’ work to make sure homeschoolers were “successful”. I especially hope they are not looking over, say, the logic and law student work!

Regardless, we are thankful to God for paving the way for us this year to homeschool under the dictates of our conscience before God, without having to wonder if a truancy officer is coming to our door.

The battle is won, but the war is still on. If we want to live in Vermont, our remedy provided for in the law needs to be exercised. Our next step will be to bring this up again to the Commissioner of Ed. That won’t be for a few months.

For now, we are sending him a letter addressing unprofessional and slanderous behavior by a staff member. A copy of it will be posted here when we send it out.

Have a nice day!

We notified the DOE of our arrival to VT when we first moved here in 1999, and since the laws are so heinous, we sought the remedy provided for in the law, and asked for a waiver of the curriculum approval and year end assessments. After a few years of hard work we agreed in 2003 to a religious waiver from submitting curriculum. I know the rest of the law stinks, too, but that’s not in this story.

In January 2006 we requested a waiver from submitting the year end assessments. This brought our file under scrutiny and they realized they had passed our teacher letters, identical 56 word items, for the last 2 years when they were signed by different assessing teachers.

Someone hit the roof and we received a nasty, disparaging, threatening letter from the Commissioner’s lawyer accusing us of writing the letters. We wrote back saying assessments were rightly done, etc. Later we found out the lawyer sent this letter after she had interviewed a teacher who attested to doing our assessments, so she knowingly slandered us. We have a letter all set about that: this is a religious issue, and we detect discrimination.

Meanwhile, we sent in our homeschool notification to the DOE for the 1006-1007 year in late March 2006. It is the same packet we send every year, including teacher assessments. Our letters were fine the last 4 years, but now suddenly they are no good!  Hmmmm... let's see, they meet the law- whatever could be the matter? The teacher wrote our letters.

Well, that’s where it is now. You can read our response to our incompletes here.

I believe in a free people writing. Unless someone tells me it’s illegal to publish my own letters or mail I receive, who knows what will be on this blog!

Have a nice day.

 I have decided that I would like to share some of the dealings we've been having lately with our department of education. You can read some history about it here. This first letter is the one from last night, to the home study department. I have left names out:

Dear _________,

Thank you for taking time today to outline your concerns regarding the teacher assessments completed for our children. My understanding of those concerns is that you believe teacher assessment letters should provide more detailed information, so you can judge that progress was made from year to year. Specifically, you would want to see indications of materials in some way, i.e. titles of books read, or specific forms of assessment (standardized tests), for each individual area of study, so that progress can be tracked by your office, and a determination can be made that progress is occurring. My impression is that you believe this is a statutory requirement.

 I indicated that it is our understanding that the assessing certified teacher is the one who determines if adequate progress is made from year to year, and this is then reported in an assessment letter to your office. Vermont certifies teachers and gives them authority to perform these assessments and make a report to your office. In this way, the law provides that no matter who is employed at the Home Study office, a VT certified teacher did the assessments of the children. While we do not agree that these assessments exceed the assessments of the child’s parent educators, [my wife and I] do comprehend the written requirements of the law.

It should be evident that there is nothing that could be provided in a few words by a teacher that would in any way allow you or anyone in your office to make an accurate determination of the progress our children made. That kind of detailed assessment would need to include a personal portfolio, which we are not willing to provide for privacy reasons: that is why we chose the teacher assessment option. We regularly assess our children’s progress, but provide the teacher’s assessment to fulfill the state’s requirement, a requirement against which we have strongly held religious convictions, as you know.

You and I also discussed that for many years our family, as well as many other families in Vermont, have provided letters indicating that a teacher assessed progress in the ‘course of study’ and ascertained that progress had been made. Now that you have taken the position as Homeschool Coordinator, you stated that these letters are no longer sufficient, even though they previously met the requirements for a teacher letter under the VT homestudy law. This appears to be a shifting standard that is arbitrary. We submitted our materials in good faith based on a well established history.

The only question ever raised about our letters occurred recently over concern that we prepared the form letters our teachers used for reporting after they completed their assessment. I mentioned that [my wife] and I feel the context that concern was raised in was ethically questionable, because Ms. _______ insinuated that we did the assessment, while she was well aware from a phone conversation with the teacher that assessments were conducted by the certified teacher! To meet that concern this year, our teacher prepared his own letters, a fact which you verified with me (even though our cover letter specifically addressed this) and which you later verified with the assessing teacher.

When you spoke on the phone today with our assessing teacher, Mr. _________, he assured you that he assessed each child individually; that he knows our children; that he wrote the letters; he was extremely cooperative about discussing his assessment methods with you; he gave you his opinion of our children, that they are, “at and above grade level in all subject areas”; and he told you he saw our program’s future educational planning outlined.

He chose not to disclose personal private information about the educational materials in our household, such as titles of books our children read -- he referred these questions to “the [family] or their lawyer”, stating that he understood this to be a “religious and civil rights issue”. He was then summarily told he would be “subpoenaed to a hearing” and told “you realize your teacher license is involved”. In retrospect, this VT teaching professional feels he has been insulted and threatened for cooperating with you.

The yearly teacher assessments have been extremely burdensome to our conscience before God, so earlier this year we sought reprieve by lawfully requesting an assessment waiver. Since then, we have had our integrity questioned and our religious waiver threatened. In good faith, we included teacher assessments in our 2006-2007 notification, while the assessment waiver issue is still being resolved. 

The record shows we contacted the VT Home Study Department soon after moving to Vermont and have openly engaged in cooperative, transparent dialogue to maintain compliance with the home study law.

You stated there is going to be a form letter that teachers should use. You are asking us to meet this new form, when it hasn’t even been issued and our materials are already submitted. You said you have a right to do that because our notification is not yet ‘complete’. Lack of preparedness on the part of DOE Home Study Program for the on-going reporting year does not invalidate our homestudy program. Additionally, my family should not have to waste further time and money to meet a shifting standard that is not yet promulgated! As I pointed out in our conversation, our teacher assessment letters meet the standards for such a letter in every way listed in the law.

My suggestion to you was that the state should issue this form and let it go through a vetting process within the community during the coming year, to work out the usual kinks, before trying to apply it ex post facto to our notification.

From our conversation I believe we have a difference in philosophy regarding implementation of the homeschool statutes. I am hopeful that this can be readily resolved. You indicated that you will talk to legal counsel to determine where you stand. I am copying this letter to Mr. _________, my attorney with Homeschool Legal Defense Association, so that he can act on our behalf.

Signed [by my husband]

Well, there it is, except for a last paragraph about dates.

Next time I would like to post our 2^nd letter to this Commissioner.

Have a nice day!