Stop State-Mandated Annual Medical Exams and Portfolios for Homeschoolers
New Jersey would overnight have one of the worst homeschool laws in the nation.
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Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:
Your calls are needed to stop a bill that treats every homeschool parent like a child abuser by requiring them to give their school system documentation of a medical exam every year for every homeschooled child.
It would also require parents to submit each child’s name, birth date, and homeschool instructor’s name every year by August 1. The bill says a mandatory portfolio is due June 30 and is “not limited” to the examples listed in the bill text (assessments, books used, worksheets, workbooks, and writing samples). What bureaucrats can require in a child’s portfolio is therefore virtually unlimited.
The bill gives the State Board of Education power to dictate all details of how these requirements would be enforced. Through regulations they adopt, state bureaucrats who are not held accountable through elections would have dramatic new power to control—and even define—homeschooling.
This bill would turn New Jersey’s current sensible legal framework into a morass of regulations and burdensome red tape. With three filings every year for each of the state’s approximately 42,000 homeschooled children, taxpayers would end up paying the cost of filing, processing, checking, responding to, and storing about 120,000 sets of paperwork each year. Taxes will inevitably go up to pay for it.
The media carried reports recently about the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) failing to protect an allegedly homeschooled child in danger—with tragic results. In effect, S3105 punishes parents for the failures of DYFS.
The bill is pending in the legislative bill room, but has not been introduced. Your freedom to homeschool your children may be at stake. We urge the homeschool community to send a unified message to the bill’s sponsor, Loretta Weinberg: do not introduce this bill.
Action Requested
Whether or not you are her constituent, please call, email or write Sen. Weinberg within the next few days. Ask her courteously to not introduce S3105. You can frame your own message using information in this email, including material in the “background” section below.
Or your message can be as simple as: “Please do not introduce S3105. Don’t punish homeschoolers for the failures of DYFS.”
Her contact information is:
Phone: (201) 928-0100 or (609) 847-3700;
Email: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) ;
Regular mail: 545 Cedar Lane, Teaneck, NJ 07666 (her district office).
Background
HSLDA, Education Network of Christian Homeschoolers (ENOCH), and Catholic Homeschoolers of New Jersey (CHNJ) and others are united as a task force in opposing S3105.
View the entire bill as currently drafted >>
DYFS had numerous contacts with the family of the abused girl who was in the news this summer. A fresh report was called in just a few days before she died. DYFS did virtually nothing about the report and closed it. Fix DYFS. That’s where the problem is.
Ironically, S3105 will likely put more children into the custody of DYFS. Making the law more complicated creates many more traps for parents. DYFS will therefore have many more opportunities to take children away from their parents if S3105 is enacted. Forty-three children died while under DYFS supervision during a recent year.
No state singles out homeschoolers for medical exams.
The bill effectively taxes a parent’s constitutional right to choose homeschooling. Medical exams can be expensive. This tax would fall heaviest on large homeschool families whose budgets are already stretched the most.
Tense conflicts with school officials could become an everyday occurrence. New Jersey would overnight have one of the worst homeschool laws in the nation. The New Jersey tax base and overall economy could suffer as homeschool families avoid (or leave) the state.
It is simply not logical to believe that filing annual notices and requiring portfolios will help. Statistics show that children in states with the least homeschool regulation do just as well academically as those in states that require notices, portfolios, tests, etc. (source: Dr. Brian Ray, “Home Schooling Achievement,” 1997)
Sen. Weinberg was recently elected state Senate majority leader. Since this is a statewide position, it is her duty to listen to parents all across the state.
Thank you for standing with us for freedom!
Sincerely yours,
Scott Woodruff
HSLDA Senior Counsel
