Why Legally Define Homeschooling?

By Dr. Melanie Piltingsrud

As originally published in NRHEG Star Eagle & Waseca Pioneer

On Thursday, April 24, the Minnesota Senate passed Amendment 29 to Omnibus Education Bill SF 1740 that has homeschooling families up in arms, as these laws would make Minnesota's homeschool laws among the most onerous in the nation.

The new amendment, which was introduced late, giving the public no opportunity to testify, would limit who is allowed to educate in a homeschool setting, where they are allowed to educate, and drastically alter the logistics currently utilized by most of Minnesota's 31,216 homeschool students and their families.

Much confusion regarding the amendment has phones at the Minnesota Association of Christian Home Educators (MÂCHÉ) and the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) ringing off the hooks. “I've basically been answering questions about it all day,” said HSLDA attorney Amy Buchmeyer.

Much of the confusion comes from the definition in Article 1, Sec. 1, Subd. 4a and 4b of a homeschool as education directed by the parent(s) or legal guardian(s) with the primary address being a residence in Minnesota. People unfamiliar with homeschooling practices might see nothing wrong with this definition, but the amendment exhibits an outdated idea that homeschoolers are socially isolated individuals with little or no opportunity to interact with other adults or play with other children.

“I don't think the intention of the authors when they wrote this was necessarily to make it as restrictive as it is,” said Buchmeyer, who sites a hypothetical instance where, currently, parents may teach not only their own children, but the children's cousins and even the neighbor kid. This law, however, is stating that a homeschool is among students who are related to each other by their parents or who have the same legal guardian(s). “Which immediately kind of limits the universe of what a homeschool is,” said Buchmeyer.

SF 1740 – A 29 further states that, with a parent's or guardian's written permission, someone else can direct, but the amendment still presumes the limited number of students for whom the parents or guardians are legally responsible.

“That's ridiculous, ancient, archaic, horribly out-of-touch law making,” said Dr. Seann Dikkers, Chief Product Officer for Portals Academy, who selects curriculum for the Minnesota based company that creates daily lesson plans for homeschool families. Dikkers pointed out that people often instruct grandchildren, nieces or nephews. “So even within the family network, they're not recognizing that you may have families beyond a traditional parent and child home.”

Furthermore, since homeschooling was legalized in all 50 states by 1993, homeschool families across the nation have discovered how valuable it is for students to learn in co-ops in which parents take turns teaching classes according to individual expertise. “Minnesota has a very robust co-op community and it has a large network of families homschooling together,” said Buchmeyer.

“It's a face-style education, and it's really good, and it's working,” said Dikkers. “And that's the odd part; they're passing laws like this with no regard for what's actually working in the state.”

Since homeschoolers regularly score higher in academic achievement than the national average, Dikkers asks why limit an educational model that is thriving and produces such great outcomes? Per Dikkers, “They don't have any basis on which to say it needs to be limited.”

One fear already voiced in the Minnesota homeschooling community is that a student won't be able to take private music lessons and claim it on their transcript. Buchmeyer said she was “just guesstimating,” because the language of the amendment is vague, but the argument she would make in that situation is that the parent or guardian in that case is still, per the language of the amendment, 'directing' the education of the child. “The parent could 'direct' a piano teacher to educate their child,” Buchmeyer theorized.

Another problematic part of the amendment is the stipulation that the primary location of homeschooling must be “a residence in Minnesota.” Homeschooling takes place in many different places. Sometimes co-ops or 'micro-schools,' defined by a larger group of homeschool students, make use of a church or other convenient location. The amendment does not say that homeschooling needs to occur exclusively in a home residence, and the percentage of learning hours that would define a location as the “primary address” is not stipulated, but Buchmeyer said, “Best assumption here is at least 51%. There's no case law on this, so best guess is more than half.”

Yet a third problem for homeschoolers is the amendment's prohibition of any family from homeschooling “if any other adult residing in the home or home school setting has been convicted of or admitted to a crime,” whether felony, gross misdemeanor, or misdemeanor level crime, and whether the crime involved a conviction, admission to, or Alford plea in relation to the crime. This portion of SF 1740 – A 29 is redundant, because we already have a system in place whereby courts determine when a crime is such that the perpetrator should have limited or no access to children. The concern for HSLDA is, per Buchmeyer, that this amendment states in effect: “A child is fine to live with their parents, be at home; we [the legislators] have no concern unless that parent wants to take charge of their child's education, and at that point we [the legislators] draw the line,” an idea which Buchmeyer calls discriminatory. She explained, “In every other context, [the legislators] are fine with the parents being around their children. The court has decided that they're safe to be around their children.” But homeschooling is a no-go.

“This assumes that, if you have a criminal conviction in the past, basically you are nonredeemable,” said Buchmeyer, “In the name of protecting kids, we just demonize a large swath of society.”

Not only that, but this law employs, if not the idea of collectivist guilt, then at least the idea of collectivist punishment, where not only the former criminal continues to pay for their crime, but potentially their spouse or parents and the children as well.

Buchmeyer hastens to add that minimizing horrendous crimes is not the objective, but courts should and do determine the outcomes of criminality on an individual basis. “It's not wrong to have the conversation – and our goal is to protect kids and give them the best education possible – but it needs to happen in the criminal justice statutes, not in the homeschool statutes,” said Buchmeyer.

Buchmeyer's hypothetical is an 18-year-old, who, in sowing his wild oats, committed arson, and now he can't come home until his younger sibling finishes homeschooling. “There's so much breadth to how much this implicates, where it's not just the parents, not just the person homeschooling, but truly anyone [living in the house],” said Buchmeyer, even those who, under an Alford plea, accept a conviction while maintaining their innocence.

Which brings up the uncomfortable truth that, due to the criminal justice system's rampant use of plea deals, people often plead guilty in order to avoid a lengthy prison sentence or worse, which means they now carry that 'guilty' label around for the rest of their lives, whether they ever committed a crime or not. According to Alexandra Natapoff, Harvard Law Professor and author of Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, 95% of all criminal cases in the U.S. are resolved not with a trial, but with a plea deal, and a significant number of those people are innocent.

Suspending discussion of the unfortunate victims of the judicial system, isn't such a law still worthwhile if it protects children?

According to Buchmeyer, Utah passed a similar law prohibiting the criminally convicted from homeschooling a couple of years ago, and then eliminated it again in the last legislative session. It did nothing to protect children, but it did create a paperwork nightmare.

The argument typically made is that homeschoolers don't have as many adults around to keep an eye on them to make sure everything is fine. Per Buchmeyer, “I don't think that really holds up.” Homeschoolers tend to be involved in a lot of extra-curricular activities. They're involved in their communities. They're surrounded by an abundant number of adults who mentor and encourage them. “It's not just this vision of, okay we're sitting at a table doing math all day,” said Buchmeyer. “Homeschooling is all about getting out into the community, and real world, hands-on experience for that child's individual needs. It's not isolation.” Buchmeyer calls the assumption of homeschoolng isolation a “false narrative” that is being argued right now at the Minnesota legislature.

What makes the logic of this amendment even harder to understand is the fact that a child living with a former criminal could still legally stay home 24 hours a day taking online classes, as long as those classes are official public school online classes. Nor does this law apply to anyone else involved in education, such as school board members or teachers. For homeschool families, the double standard is hard to swallow. “If they care about felons working with children, they should have made similar provisions added to teachers, substitute teachers, school boards and administrators,” said Dikkers.

Another part of the amendment involves the very public school truancy laws that make some parents decide that homeschooling would be a better option. Article 1, Sec. 2, Subd. 12 states that parents must apply to the school district, which may require a note from a physician or a mental health provider, in order to obtain permission to take their kids out of school for any given period. But the truancy laws are a one-size-fits-all solution that often just doesn't. “[E]specially for families with a child with any kind of chronic health issue, it is very difficult for families to navigate the public school truancy withdrawal,” said Buchmeyer. Post Covid, many states have instituted stricter truancy laws, partly because, after having experienced Covid, parents are more health conscious; they want to keep their children at home if there's an illness going around. “Because of that, there's this huge backlog in the courts of truancy situations,” said Buchmeyer.

This tension over the boundary between parental rights and the rights of public schools to decide what's best for the child is a major factor in parents choosing to homeschool.

Another bone of contention that butts up against this same impasse is another bill under consideration: HF 3239, which would strip parents of their right to conscientious exemption from the MMR vaccine mandate for their children, a reversal of traditional parental authority, which, for those who feel strongly about it, may precipitate not just an exodus from public schools, but an exodus from the state.

Buchmeyer summarized: “Especially post-Covid, many public schools have seen a loss in student numbers, and a lot of it is because parents are discovering that they can provide an education for their child […] that is specific and tailored to that child's needs, interests, and goals in a way that public education cannot by its very nature, because it is a mass production of education. And when you start trying to put [homeschooling] in a box like this, and say it has to look this way, you limit how much it can be tailored. You basically cut out what makes it so impactful.”

HSLDA always advises parents to follow the laws, but, as Buchmeyer put it, “Compliance should not be so onerous on parents that they need to consider breaking the laws to provide that education to their child.”

If SF 1740 passes with Amendment 29 in the House, the new laws will come into effect July 1, 2025.

Senator Erin Maye Quade, who introduced Senate File 1740 – A 29, was not available for comment.

If you feel strongly about these or other laws currently under debate at the Minnesota legislature, please contact your legislators.

Update: Senate File 1740 has been tabled in the Minnesota House, and will be taken up at a later date.