God’s Classroom : Home Schooling Leaves Christian Parents in Shadow of the Law

LONG BEACH —  It’s Friday afternoon on a school day and life is abuzz.

At the downtown headquarters of the Long Beach Unified School District, administrators are pushing pencils and chairing meetings. Over at Minnie Gant Elementary School on the east side, children are bent over their workbooks.

But across the street at Whaley Park, an activity of a different sort is taking place. Here the members of Sherrie Sanders’ home schoolers support group--both parents and children--are holding their monthly meeting. While most of the city’s youngsters fidget in classrooms, these 15 children sit on the grass watching their mothers compare notes.

Mostly fundamentalist Christians, the parents have withdrawn their children from public schools, preferring to go it alone. Their reasons range from objections to what they call the system’s “humanistic” and “Godless” approach to teaching, to the sincere belief that they alone are responsible for their children’s educations. Equipped with book-strewn kitchen tables and living room blackboards, they hold their classes at home.

School officials from Long Beach to Sacramento consider most of them outlaws. But in their own minds they are simply parents who have found a better way, American citizens exercising an inalienable, Constitutional right to determine what goes into their children’s heads.

‘We’re Not Weirdos’

“We want people to know that we’re not weirdos,” said Sanders, 29, who estimates that as many as 60 families in Long Beach and perhaps 400 throughout the county have chosen to teach their children at home. “If our children fail, we can’t blame (the school).”

But Delbert Royer, a consultant for the Los Angeles County Office of Education who specializes in attendance and administrative services counters: “The bottom line is that they are violating the law.”

On one thing both agree: Home schooling is a burgeoning national movement that is challenging some of the basic assumptions on which public education is based.

To understand how, one must know the law. According to the California Compulsory Education Act, Californians are required to attend school full time from age 6 to 16.

A handful of exemptions are provided for those not wishing to attend public schools. Students may be educated at home by personal tutors, provided the tutors have the appropriate teaching credentials. Or they may attend a private school, if the school is legally recognized by the state.

To become legally recognized, a school simply must file an affidavit with the county Office of Education and therein lies the rub. Throughout California and the nation, private schools are springing up that are schools in name only--legal addresses which, for fees averaging $12 to $40 a month, will keep a family’s attendance and performance records, thus providing a supposedly legal umbrella under which the parents can continue teaching their children at home.

“All they are doing is encouraging people to violate the law,” Royer said. “There is nothing in the state Education Code that allows this.”

No Attendance Requirements

Bill Norton, head of Torrance’s South Bay Baptist Academy at which a number of Long Beach children are enrolled, sees the matter differently. For $12 per student per month, his organization will keep records, suggest curriculum and offer weekly recreational or craft-related activities. But the academy’s 100 students are not required to attend class. Most of their parents do not have teaching credentials. And though the children are periodically tested for academic achievement, Norton says there is no minimum performance standard to which they are held.

“(Our program) allows people to raise their children in knowing the Lord and knowing their faith. The public schools don’t have any better answers than anyone else,” said Norton, an ordained minister who resigned as pastor of the South Bay Baptist Church in November due, in part, to what he describes as criticisms of his educational endeavors.

Some parents don’t even bother enrolling their kids in umbrella-type organizations.

Donna Voetee, who withdrew her 11-year-old daughter from a Long Beach elementary school last October because of what she called the Satanic effect of the school’s Halloween decorations, says she eventually plans to file an affidavit naming her own home as a private school. Until she does, she says, she plans to continue personally teaching her daughter and a 5-year-old son without legal sanction, using a variety of materials she considers appropriate.

“We’re using God’s word and the newspaper and a set of books called the Christian History of the Constitution,” said Voetee, who became well-known to the district last year after complaining about a film called “The Headless Cupid” which she considered occultist.

The arrangement is fine with Voetee’s daughter, Tricia. “My mom takes a lot more time,” the girl says. “At public school, you just have a certain amount of time to do the work and if you don’t finish it you have to take it home. I feel I can ask my mom questions because I know her better; I write and read a lot more now.”

Prepared to Go to Court

Roy Womack, the district’s director of attendance services, says the Voetee case is “still active” and under investigation. “We push very hard and, if necessary, are prepared to take families to court to enforce attendance,” he said.

The fact is, though, that few home schooling cases ever make it into a courtroom. Last year in Long Beach, according to Womack, six home schoolers were reported to the district (mostly by neighbors) for non-attendance. All the situations were resolved without legal action. In one case the family voluntarily returned the child to school, he said, and in at least three others the district backed off after learning that the children were enrolled in “umbrella-type” programs. Neither Womack nor Arthur Kraft, a senior psychologist on his staff, could recall the dispositions of the other two cases which, according to Kraft, were not recorded.

Three years ago, Womack said, the school district--which receives about $13 per day from the state for each student in attendance--seriously considered pursuing a case against a family enrolled at the South Bay Baptist Academy on the theory that participation in that organization did not constitute an exemption from compulsory education. The plan was abandoned, he said, after a representative of the state Department of Education indicated that the department did not share the local educators’ position on the matter.

“We felt that if we didn’t have the backing of the state it wasn’t worth going forward,” Womack said, adding that the district has no independent means of determining non-attendance among children who have never been enrolled or drop out between school years.

But Roger Wolfertz, assistant chief legal counsel for the state education department, contends that his department does indeed share the district’s opinion that most home schooling is illegal. Although the law does not state specific academic requirements for private schools, he said, it is his opinion that in order to satisfy the law’s intent, home schoolers claiming to be private schools must “act like” them, this is, open their doors to the public by advertising their services and providing qualified, credentialed teachers. And organizations like the South Bay Baptist Academy, he said, should at least provide credentialed teachers for home schooling.

Law Calls for Jail Term

Violation of the state compulsory education law, Wolfertz said, is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $100 a day for first offenders. In some cases, he said, failure to comply could even lead to a jail term for contempt of court. It is, however, the responsibility of local school districts rather than the state to pursue such cases, and the state has no record of how many have actually been filed.

For those pulled into court, help is available from a national organization called the Home Schooling Defense Assn., which provides legal aid to any of its 3,000 members (1,000 in California) for a yearly membership fee of $100.

“If you are able to show that these (children) are getting an education, then they are not true truants,” said Michael Smith, a Santa Monica attorney who is the group’s West Coast representative. “(Home education) is a basic, fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution.”

To county education consultant Royer, however, the situation is akin to the 55-m.p.h. speed limit. “If enough people disobey the law,” he said, “it makes it hard to enforce. It’s getting so far out of line that it can hardly be monitored anymore.”

Like virtually every other school official interviewed for this story, Royer said he favors legislation to clarify what he admits has become a rather gray area of law.

“If you look at the whole spectrum,” he said, “I don’t think you can assure a quality education for everyone through home schooling. Children have a right to quality education. If the state is going to turn its back on this and permit it, then I think we are shortchanging some of our children’s futures.”

Mitch Voydat, manager of the state education department’s school district management services bureau, says the department plans to form a committee later this year to look into the issue and recommend a legislative solution.

“There has to be clarity with respect to the entire situation,” said Voydat, mentioning a survey conducted recently in Placer County, north of Sacramento, which indicated that of the 60 private schools listed in that area, 50 had an enrollment of just one student. “It’s a very sensitive issue.”

An administrator at a traditional private Christian school in Long Beach said she does not feel threatened by the burgeoning home schooling movement. “My experience is that a lot of people are in (home schooling) for a year, then they decide that they need (us) again,” said Rebecca Coulson, assistant principal at McKinney School, whose 150 elementary school students attend classes full time on the premises.

“They do have the right to home school,” Coulson said, “but what I see are some parents who are very dedicated . . . and others who are not consistent. If you aren’t consistent, you don’t have any learning; they must assure their children an education and they must do it in a program that has scope and sequence.”

Members of Sanders’ support group--which has been meeting in the park for three years--say they are doing what is best for their children, without interference from teachers and administrators.

“I believe that God gave these children to me to raise,” said Carolyn Annan, 34, the mother of three. “He didn’t give them to me to turn over to somebody else to be a major influence for the greater part of their (lives).”

1-On-1 Instruction

Though they average only two to three hours of instruction per day compared to the public school’s five to six, home schoolers say they can generally cover more material because of the one-on-one relationship they develop with their children.

“If you want to study earthworms on the sidewalk, you study earthworms on the sidewalk and that’s your science lesson,” said Ellen Johnson, 35, of Lakewood, who has been home-schooling her two sons, age 5 and 8, for more than two years. “You have the freedom to explore what they are really interested in. Academics is in balance and not over-stressed.”

Though the parents generally say they cover the same basic subjects--including math, science and English--that the public schools do, their curriculum materials vary widely, usually consisting of books published by special Christian publishing houses. And most say they stress religious subjects.

“Our major focus is the Bible,” said one parent, who would not give her name for fear of interference by the school district.

Most of them scoff at suggestions that their children will somehow miss out on the normal socialization process needed for maturity.

“There is absolutely no way you can isolate your children,” said Johnson. “Children don’t need to be taught to be children.”

Her goal? To help “raise a Godly generation” of great American citizens, she said. And in the meantime, to give her children a good education.

“I know my children,” the mother said. “(Through home schooling) I have the freedom to meet their needs. As parents we are ultimately responsible.”