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Email UpdatesThe State of California believes it owns your children and the teachers union loves it. This week, The California Second District Court of Appeals effectively outlawed homeschooling. Will this wake people up or will it embolden other state governments? or the Federal Government? So far, they are the only state in the union to pull this, so watch out, California is a bellwether State.
Pay close attention to the words of government attorney - Leslie Heimov - who claimed to be representing the children. Her chief concern isn’t education, it is that the children are observed by people (government employees) who can insure their safety. Clearly, the government doesn’t trust parents to insure their children’s safety. Only licensed professionals can insure children are safe? When did we decide it was the government’s job to insure safety? Isn’t our government supposed to insure individual liberty?
Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state.
“California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home,” he said in a statement.
But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs’ two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law.
“They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor,” she said. “If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers.”
Heimov said her organization’s chief concern was not the quality of the children’s education, but their “being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety.”