In Part One: I Never Thought About That, we addressed how subtlety public schools can draw homeschooling parents back into its system. The main point was anytime we give place in any way to the government, it opens the possibility for greater involvement and more restrictions in the future. This is important to understand because many new homeschoolers are unaware of the legislative history of homeschooling in Illinois, along with the blood, sweat, and tears that have been spent to gain the freedoms we experience today
According to Center Square, “Illinois spends on average $16,200 per student on K-12 education. Florida, which places much better on Wallethub’s equity ranking at fifth, spends $9,600 per student and gets better results, according to government spending watchdog Wirepoints.” On the bright side, homeschooling parents are saving the Illinois government hundreds of millions of dollars each year by withdrawing their children from public schools. This, of course, does not sit well with teacher’s unions. If they are wanting more and more tax dollars for fewer and fewer students, well, that is an obvious problem. If there are fewer students in the public school, they should need less and less money, not more and more. Whenever money is involved, secular entities will do whatever is necessary to protect their own interests.
This is why the Illinois Christian Home Educators LTF (Legislative Task Force) is wanting to prepare now for any future attacks on our right to homeschool in the future. One of the best ways to do this is to help train homeschooling parents to understand homeschooling laws and why we interact with that law like we do. For instance, do you know that in Illinois Law, there is no such thing as “homeschooling”? Instead, homeschoolers are legislatively classified as private schools or non-public schools. This is intentional. Why? The more people with whom we are aligned, the more legislative power we have. Being private schoolers by law, we are joined with all the religious and nonreligious private schools across the state. There is strength in numbers. Let us look at a real-life example to see why we need to know the law.
A few years ago, an individual went to his representative with the intent to gain more liberties for homeschoolers. To his credit, the representative was glad to help homeschoolers. But when the legislation was written, it used the word homeschooling specifically. Neither the individual nor the representative realized the potential damage it could have caused us. We immediately went to work to get that language changed because it would have created a whole new legal status for homeschoolers that could have ultimately compromised our political clout by dissecting us from other private schools in the state. While the individual’s motivation for helping homeschoolers was admirable, his methodology was potentially catastrophic. Words and definitions matter in a court of law, so there is a reason why we use certain language. We must therefore educate homeschoolers to always guard against using any derivative of the word homeschool in any legislation whatsoever. If you hear this happening, address it immediately! Additionally, it is our hope that any time there is a personal question or legal challenge, people would reach out to us first to make sure we are not “shooting ourselves in the foot” in the long- term. We work directly with Home School Legal Defense Asc. as well as the Ad Hoc Committee for Illinois Home Education Legal and Legislative Matters. These relationships have proven to be beneficial and legislatively powerful.
We must keep our finger on the pulse of all that is changing in the homeschooling world. We must also enable homeschoolers to know how to think and interact on a legislative scale. In doing so, we hope that our grandchildren will enjoy the same freedoms we enjoy her today in the Land of Lincoln.
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