One of my greater joys, this past year,
was a tense situation that turned out better than anyone had
anticipated. It took place in Prince William County, Virginia
which is a little less than an hour away from HSLDA's main
office. I've been to more than 40 "religious exemption hearings"
at the PWC school administration buildings, and know a lot of the staff
there by name. I count the school administration's attorney as a
real friend, and often call him up for his take on unusual issues
involving Virginia education law.
HSLDA's extensive
involvement with this one county should not be all that surprising: we
have more than 300 dues-paying member families there. (To the
best of our knowledge, more than half the homeschoolers who are
registered with PWC are HSLDA members.)
Last summer I was
startled to get an email from my fellow HSLDA attorney, Scott Woodruff,
about a problem with a new homeschool policy in PWC. There had
been a school board vote on June 8, which was written up
in the local paper. There had been some positive changes, but Amy
Wilson, a local homeschooler, was quoted as saying, "They still have a
regulation that differs from the state code, so I'm concerned there
will be parents who are confused about what they have to do."
Attorney Woodruff looked over the proposed policy and sent out an "elert"
to HSLDA members in the county. His elert was quick to praise the
local activists who had worked so hard to make positive changes, and
committed HSLDA to work with them to achieve their goals, but noted a
couple of minor items that needed to be fixed before the policy was
finalized.
The initial response to Mr. Woodruff's elert was
painful, but not all that unusual. People who had worked very
hard to get the policy changed felt hurt by HSLDA' intervention.
Shay Seaborne emailed Mr. Woodruff directly with her concerns, and sent
me a copy.
What happened next was too important to forget:
homeschoolers took the time to listen to each other. Amy and Shay
were willing to consider HSLDA's concerns, and used their good
relationship with PWC school board member Don Richardson to help
address those concerns. HSLDA was able to work with school
officials (including several different school attorneys with whom we
have long-standing working relationships) to get revised language
cleared in time for the whole school board to vote on it.
When the board met to consider the new and improved policy,
homeschoolers showed both their unity and diversity, and the results
were better than anyone could have anticipated.
I view
the Prince William County situation as a hopeful sign for the
future. If homeschoolers are willing to listen to each other and
work together, there is no end to what we can accomplish!
For anyone really working to make working together better, I recommend NHEN's Legislative Wisdom and Ways of Transformation resources, written by and for all sorts of homeschoolers:
http://www.nhen.org/leginfo/default.asp?id=264
and
http://www.nhen.org/leginfo/default.asp?id=263
From the latter, written by Nicky Hardenbergh:
. . .But what happens when our own idea of appropriate political action is at odds with those of other homeschoolers? We all come under the same regulations. How, then, can we deal best with conflicts of strategies or approaches? For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of homeschool politics is the broad range of political convictions represented by homeschoolers. Politics makes strange bedfellows indeed. Yet working together with people whom you would never have met outside of homeschooling is a rich, expanding experience. Perhaps "expanding" is the key word here. We need to be ready to depart from the narrow confines of duality thinking, the thinking that declares, "you’re either for or against me. . ."
The article then desccribes three very practical approaches to improve how we work together (I catch Scott using all three, often!)
I share the hope that what happened in this one Virginia community might be a harbinger of good things to come throughout our many homeschooling communities and cultures.
Posted by JJ Ross, Ed.D. at 1:31 PM, Oct. 18, 2005
I'm glad things turned out for the best. The impression I've gotten with regard to HSLDA's involvement at the state and local level is fear that HSLDA will come in like gang-busters and take over regardless of the work done by others. It sounds, to someone who has only watched from the sidelines, as a bit of a David and Goliath situation. Small state and local groups work on homeschool issues and a national organization shows up at the 9th hour "interfering." Now, I realize there are two sides to every story and that HSLDA would like a heads-up in some of these matters so they could come in at the 8th hour, but the gist I've gotten is that the lack of respect is on both sides.
All I know is that people hate it when lawyers disrespect their opinions or their work and when they are condescending and presume to be experts who speak for everyone. I'm not saying this to pick on you or that you or your organization have ever acted this way -- I wouldn't know, I've never encountered anyone from the HSLDA. I'm a lawyer by trade myself (retired) and I'm sensitive to the views that people have toward attorneys generally. I know not all homeschoolers agree on all issues, but it would be nice to see more respect, understanding, and consideration all the way around.
This is an interesting way to characterize events, Scott. I can't help but wonder whether this is really your view of what happened, or whether it is the view you wish others to adopt. I suspect it is the latter. Since my name is mentioned repeatedly in your account, I feel that I should respond with my view of what happened in PWC. HSLDA did not come into this situation with the intention of working with our local coalition of activist homeschoolers as far as I can tell. HSLDA lawyers didn't speak with any of us until after we called Scott Woodruff to ask exactly what was going on, after having been told by a school board member of Woodruff's efforts to get one of the school system's attorneys to quash the board's revised regulation. Mr. Woodruff didn't seek to work with us -- he was proceeding on his own, lawyer-to-lawyer, until I called him to say that we local homeschoolers had a stake in the issue that we didn't intend to abandon. And in the end, the proposed regulatory language that Woodruff crafted (with, to be fair, some feedback from our group, after we actively sought out communication with him) was never even considered by the board, and was not voted on. Instead, board member Don Richardson proceeded with his own idea, fully supported by our coalition, to simply remove the problematic phrase from the regulation and not add any other language.
If HSLDA is seriously intent on making an effort to work cooperatively with local homeschoolers on homeschooling issues, rather than ignoring the local groups and plowing ahead with agendas that serve (in some cases) only HSLDA members at the expense of non-member homeschoolers, then I applaud this intention. But if the recent events in PWC are considered to be a first step, I fear you're off on the wrong foot.
By the way, I fully support and agree with this statement: "If homeschoolers are willing to listen to each other and work together, there is no end to what we can accomplish!" My suggestion is that if HSLDA is truly interested in this approach, then in a situation such as the one in PWC this year, it would be advisable to approach the homeschoolers working on an issue to exchange ideas and concerns *before* launching the lawyers. And if HSLDA is sincerely interested in working with and listening to other homeschoolers, then I offer my appreciation and look forward to the productive results.
Amy, as one of the full-time HSLDA attorneys, I can guarantee you that I am eager to talk to other homeschoolers in any district or state where I have been asked to represent our members. It just works so much better when we all work together.
In the Prince William County case, Scott Woodruff heard about the proposed homeschool policy from the press, not from any local homeschooler. None of the 300 HSLDA member families in PWC had heard about this effort to change the policy, to the best of my knowledge. When Scott did hear about it, he immediately went right to the school board's attorney to find out what was going on: which made sense at the time, since it sure looked to US like the school board was acting on its own initiative.
I'm committed to doing everything I know how to make it easier for homeschoolers to work together, and a big part of that is to communicate nothing but respect for the hard work and autonomy of families that don't choose to join HSLDA.
Thanks for your response to what I had to say, Scott. While I can understand Mr. Woodruff's tendency to initiate a lawyer-to-lawyer communication first, I think he also pretty easily could have contacted Shay Seaborne, who is a well-known homeschooler in our area (and president of The Organization of Virginia Homeschoolers, a state-wide organization that I know folks at HSLDA are well aware of) to ask for her perspective, as she is also named and quoted in the newspaper article you cited. Though the article does not state specifically that there was a coalition of homeschoolers working together on the issue, it does state that there was a relatively significant number of attending homeschooling parents at the meeting. If no HSLDA members were even aware of the issue having been brought up, it's a pretty simple deduction from the details included in the article that there was another group of homeschoolers who were at least aware of the issue and concerned enough to attend the meeting, even if it wasn't clear that such a group was specifically organized to advocate the change. The fact that Mr. Woodruff did not send Shay an email or call her up makes it hard to convincingly argue the case that this whole episode was a wonderful example of HSLDA reaching out to work with local homeschoolers who are not dues-paying members.
Regardless, if it truly is HSLDA's intent to do better in this regard in the future, I can only applaud that idea and look forward to seeing it put into action. I think such a policy would bode well for all concerned. Thank you for publicly expressing HSLDA's intentions in this regard.
With all due respect, Shay has multiple negative pieces abiding on the net criticizing HSLDA for other unrelated matters. I can't say that she appears willing to have an open dialogue with them.
I can understand why her name may not have even been mentioned by a reporter calling HSLDA to get reaction to a pending decision by a local school board, assuming this is what Scott means by "contacted by the press".
From the outside looking in:
It appears that potentially 300 registered HSLDA homeschool families in PWC were not aware of FOLC's proposed changes. It seems that FOLC is well aware of their existence, yet chose not to include them in their efforts and responded negatively when their representation arrived to take part in the discussion - even sending out a "scare-alert" they are so critical of, claiming HSLDA wanted PWC to "revert" to the old law, when removing the item from that month's agenda was all that was asked for.
I understand they disagree on certain issues, but it doesn't seem "all-inclusive" to me to eliminate HSLDA members' views from the process.
Don't be quick to pick on Shay, here. She invested a lot of time and personal energy in her effort to improve the PWC policy, and HSLDA's involvement took HER by unpleasant surprise. She responded by writing a personal email to Scott Woodruff, with a copy to me, and was willing to talk to us by phone as we tried to work out ways to get the best possible policy past the committee. Without her constructive and positive efforts, this could have been a disaster for everyone.
Before all this, my only interactions with Shay had been negative. The PWC policy gave me a whole new perspective on her. The moral of this story is NOT that Shay Seaborne is the problem.
On the other hand, I don't think the moral of the story is that "big bad national organization interferes and messes everything up," either. My take home message from the PWC situation was, and still is, "If homeschoolers work together, they win."
Eric, the newspaper reporter may or may not have mentioned Shay when she interviewed HSLDA for her piece, but Shay's name was in the printed article, clear as day. And HSLDA did not "arrive to take part in the discussion" at all -- they had one of their lawyers work with the school board's lawyer behind the scenes, and the item was taken off the consent agenda for the meeting without notifying the board members, contrary to board policy. Removing the item from the agenda, had the effort succeeded, would have resulted in the old, problematic "approval before removal" regulation remaining in place until someone (hint: I don't think it would have been HSLDA) re-energized the board to take up the issue again, as they were sick and tired of dealing with it. HSLDA said the policy was not a problem for their members, which is why they had never made any efforts to change it.
If HSLDA members want to be involved in what's going on at the school board, they ought to *get* involved and watch the publicly-published agendas and meeting times. Or even just watch the meetings on local cable from the comfort of their homes. But if they rely on their paid HSLDA memberships for representation and information on these issues, rather than getting involved themselves, they ought not be surprised if they aren't aware of all that goes on about issues that HSLDA decides aren't in need of action or remediation.
Scott Woodruff got a CALL from a reporter, which alerted him to the fact that PWC was trying to change the policy. I don't know whether he ever saw the article. (I know that he was out of the office at least one of the days when all this was happening, because I was running around trying to figure out what was going on so I could respond to Shay's concerns.)
I'm very much in favor of HSLDA improving in every respect, and this issue of building bridges with other homeschoolers is at the top of my list. But I have to say that it can be REALLY hard to communicate under the best of circumstances, and we rarely work under the best of circumstances.
Here's how the PWC situation looked to us. A reporter calls to say, "What do you think of the new PWC homeschool policy?" We've been to the Virginia Supreme Court with this particular school district, which has a long history of making unlawful and unenforceable demands on our members. Half the attorneys here have been down to PWC hearings, and some of us have been there dozens of times. Anything PWC comes up with is suspect from the get-go. Scott Woodruff calls the PWC attorney to demand a copy of the proposed policy, and reads through it. (I don't know if he was in the office or in Richmond that day.) What he sees is an improvement in one area, and two small but real problems in other areas--and the new policy has been put on the consent agenda, which means it will sail through (problems and all) unless he can put the brakes on. He DOES put the brakes on. (I don't know what HE said, but I would have told the attorney that there are 300 HSLDA member families who would turn out to the school board meeting to object to the new policy.) To the best of my knowledge, all this took place before he even realized that there were any homeschoolers who were involved in this process.
Once Scott realized that Amy and Shay were involved, he made every effort to listen to their concerns and respond appropriately. This was made more difficult because he was definitely down in Richmond the day Shay's initial email got to me. Scott was trying to juggle whatever he was doing in Richmond around coming up to speed on Shay and Amy's efforts while he negotiated with the PWC lawyers on Monday to work out a mutually acceptable deal that could be voted on 48 hours later. It was an amazing challenge, and I don't think I would have been able to do it--but Scott did. When the school board met that Wednesday night, the final product was better than anyone had anticipated.
Our records show that there are more than 300 HSLDA member families in Prince William County. With around 2 children per family, that adds up to around 600 children. That's more than half of 1,000.
