California SB277 Education Refugees Victimized By Cruel Hoax…
Opinion By Karri Lewis – AWAKE California
I began fielding questions about the legality of homeschooling in California early last week.
At first, I did not think much of it because it was just one high profile Canary Party vaccine activist from another state that had heard a rumor about homeschooling becoming illegal in California.
It was in regards to an assembly bill that was rumored to be recently resurrected here in California. I promptly looked up that assembly bill and found that it ended up being a bill from last year’s legislative session that was about funding for charter schools.
It had NOTHING to do with making homeschooling illegal (phew)!
Rumors…
You can then imagine my surprise, when I began seeing and hearing more talk on Sunday about homeschooling being illegal in California in various anti-SB277 Facebook groups.
This time it was about a HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association) article that referred to a situation from 2008. The recent article described an illegal communication by a California high school, regarding homeschool law, and how it was subsequently handled.
You can find the HSLDA article here:
San Benito high school sent a letter saying, “Under California Law, a home school is not a private school, nor is it a lawful alternative to public school … .”
This was all WRONG and INACCURATE information. HSLDA corrected the situation, once members brought it to their attention.
If you read through the WHOLE article, you can quickly ascertain that:
A.) This was an issue from 2008 and escalated because the school district had no understanding of homeschool law in the state of California. (This is very common, btw. The government/state schools have no understanding of homeschool law.)
B.) If you read until the end of the article, you can see that HSLDA, once involved, quickly remedied the situation and informed the school district of the ACTUAL homeschool law in California.
So how did THIS all MORPH into the NASTY RUMOR that Homeschooling is Illegal in California?
TWO WORDS – CANARY PARTY
On Sunday, in a GROSS and NEGLIGENT misstep, the Minnesota-based Canary Party announced that homeschooling is indeed illegal in California. See below:
Say What?
Canary Party, you have some serious explaining to do. How could you not verify this information with HSLDA?
As a side note; there is no such organization called, “Homeschool Legal Defense Fund.” HSLDA stands for Home School Legal Defense Association, just FYI.
There are also a few other statewide California homeschooling groups that fight for homeschool rights that the Canary Party and Ginger Taylor, could have checked with for confirmation of the most current California homeschool law.
HSC (Homeschool Association of California), CHN (California Homeschool Network), CHIA (Christian Home Educators Association of California), are all statewide homeschool associations that have been set-up to guarantee homeschool rights in the state of California.
These organizations all have legal teams that specialize in homeschooling law in California. All of these homeschool groups have extensive knowledge and experience.
Canary Party, why did you not reach out to the myriad of homeschooling associations in California to verify such EXPLOSIVE information?!!!
The consequences of this misinformation has led to a flood of calls from worried Californians to these statewide homeschooling organizations to confirm homeschooling is legal…UGH! Talk about headaches!
Digging Deeper…
The Canary Party has boots on the ground in California and led the SB277 legislative battle last year in Sacramento.
Homeschooling was a prominent “selling point” that helped usher SB277 into law last year. The Canary Party is well aware that homeschooling is LEGAL in California and was offered as an “out” for families that did not want to vaccinate.
Now the Question Remains, WHY would the national Canary Party do THIS?
We are all trying to work together here…
…to be continued.
This is very informative Tim! Thank you for clearing this up and providing parents with the facts! Every parent who homeschools should read this!
Very strange. Doesn’t make sense.
What is an agenda of CP anyway! Are they all trolls or, like you pointed, brain dead FKOL?! Thank you for your info! Alway enjoy you stile of writing! Keep going!
Thanks for taking the time to put our minds at ease…whew!
Just a little side note about AB1084 that is currently passing through the California state legislature…this legislation has to do with the funding of charter schools, in regards to not being able to be ran as for profit entities and/or affiliate with such entities.
“This bill, commencing with the 2017–18 school year and each school year thereafter, would do both of the following: (1) prohibit a virtual or online charter school, as defined, from being owned or operated by, or operated as, a for-profit entity; and (2) prohibit a nonprofit online charter school, nonprofit charter virtual academy, and a nonprofit entity that operates an online or virtual charter school from contracting with a for-profit entity for the provision of instructional services.”
AB1084 has NOTHING to do with the legality of homeschooling in California.
Karri Lewis – Awake California, wrote this….
We all know that school districts say things that aren’t true to harass and frighten parents. For example, there are districts that are telling parents that the grade-span that requires vaccines is from 7th to 8th (when it is actually 6th to 7th), and when confronted they tell parents that SB 277 allows them to decide whatever they want in terms of defining a grade-span.
None of this is true, but parents are being told this from certain school districts. I am not sure the Canary people posted the above to Facebook because they were being nefarious, but they didn’t have the whole story… they didn’t have the piece that there are feral administrators at some schools that just make up BS to get parents to vaccinate their kids.
Probably worth posting here too; a brief history of the charter schools involvement in homeschooling/ independent study programs: the charter school/ independent study program has been a fairly new option for homeschooling in the state of California and had only been an option for about 6-8 years now. Many of the homeschooling associations will not fight to keep the charter schools involved because many homeschoolers do not like the government oversight that these programs require…just wanted to give you a little bit of info. and history. The state of California and the schools are broke. I’m surprised that they were able to offer this option in the first place.
The thing is since in CA homeschooling is a form of Private schooling. They are affected by SB277. They were affected by AB2190, they are surely affected by SB277. It seems wrong to act like they wouldn’t be affected.
http://www.pheofca.org/immunizations.html