Homeschooling Fight In Massachusetts

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 3 months ago

Zerohedge:

A school system in Massachusetts is proving to be malicious, incompetent, or maybe both.

Of course, we suspected that already. But the latest example comes from a lawsuit from a woman who pulled her 8-year-old son from Worcester Public Schools to homeschool him last January.

Josilyn Goodall is suing the Worcester School Committee, Superintendent Maureen Binienda, and the state Department of Children and Families after police entered her home, handcuffed her, and arrested her over what amounted to a paperwork dispute.

According to the lawsuit, Goodall is seeking unspecified compensatory damages for the violation of her Constitutional rights and for the “mental pain and suffering” inflicted upon her and her son.

The lawsuit details Goodall’s multiple attempts to contact the Superintendent after filing paperwork in January saying she was going to homeschool her son. She said she never got a response to any of her phone calls or emails.

In Massachusetts, parents who wish to homeschool their children must submit an education plan to the superintendent of the local school system for approval. However, according to Care and Protection of Charles (1987), the court case upon which homeschool legal precedent was established, the burden of proof is on the school to show that the homeschool program is insufficient.

The lawsuit further alleges that the Worcester School Committee’s homeschool policy is unlawful, in that it requires students to continue attending public school until the education plan is approved. Charles allows for homeschooling to begin as soon as the plan has been submitted.

To most rational people, Charles makes sense. If parents are to have any right to educate their children at home, they must be able to begin homeschooling before receiving approval from the schools. Otherwise, a school could conveniently hold hostage the education plan and never approve it, essentially forcing the child to stay in the public school.

But instead of following the state law or even their own policy, Worcester school administrators ignored Goodall’s education plan and her attempts to contact them, continued marking her son absent, and never reached out to Goodall to discuss their concerns.

It would be hard to tell if the school was being passive-aggressive or just plain incompetent, unable to send or receive emails and phone calls. Except that they had no problem contacting the Department of Children and Families to report Goodall for “educational neglect.”

DCF officials apparently took the school’s word for it, never asking for attendance records for Goodall’s son before showing up at her door on March 30. In addition, a DCF investigator believed the superintendent’s secretary, who told her there was a new law that required homeschooled students to continue attending school until their education plan was approved.

Yes, a state department took legal advice from a superintendent’s secretary.

Then, police escalated the situation, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The lawsuit states that officers pounded on Goodall’s door and threatened to forcibly open it. When Goodall was intimidated into letting them in, an officer laid hands on Goodall, handcuffed her, ordered her into a chair and yelled in her face — while her son watched and cried.

Additional officers arrived and started searching the home, while the DCF investigator questioned the son. Goodall was arrested and brought to the police station and was booked, though no charges were filed. She paid bail and finally made it back home after a 7-hour ordeal.

The legal battle continued with DCF filing a complaint of educational neglect that was eventually dropped by the court. Goodall submitted another education plan to the Superintendent on April 10.

You would think school officials would jump right on it this time around, but they dragged their feet yet again. Goodall left another voicemail and sent an email before finally hearing from the secretary on April 25. Her plan was not officially approved until May 9, after Goodall’s legal counsel wrote a letter essentially asking the Superintendent’s Office to piss or get off the pot.

Goodall’s ordeal is just the most extreme of many examples of harassment and intimidation the Worcester School District is doling out to homeschoolers.

According to the Worcester Telegram, many homeschooling families were waiting on District approval of their education plans months after submitting them. To add to the stress, many were receiving letters that said they could face truancy charges if their children were not in school and they had not received approval.

The hypocrisy of the District is astounding. Rather than sending approval letters—or even rejection letters— in a timely fashion, they sent letters threatening parents, as though it was the parents’ fault that their plan might not be approved “in time.”

While it is bad news that school administrators seem intent on harassing homeschoolers and escalating disputes, there is a silver lining to this whole issue.

We’re not going to take it.

Homeschoolers routinely show up in large numbers to protect their right to homeschool their children. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association hosted an informational forum on Aug. 15 in Worcester to discuss the concerns of local homeschooling families and to clarify the state’s laws.

As a Massachusetts homeschooler myself, I attended the meeting. There were upwards of 100 people in attendance from Worcester and surrounding towns. The group shared advice, made plans to turn out en masse to School Committee meetings, and made sure they were educated on what is and is not legally required in state homeschool law.

This one comes via WiscoDave.

No, to rational people, the Charles law doesn’t have to make sense.  In fact, I can discern where you stand by asking you two questions: [1] Who owns children, and [2] To whom have they been given for governance and training?

My answers are simple: [1] God, and [2] Parents.  If you believe that parents own children, you believe in slavery and you deny God’s ownership of all of His creatures.  You own your dog, not your children.  If you believe that anyone but the parents have been given responsibility for governance and oversight, teaching, training, love, discipline, correction and rebuke, you are a communist.

The reason the government of Massachusetts declares they have a right to decide what is appropriate education for children is because they are communists.  God does not recognize their authority in any of this, and His wrath will come down upon them, more than likely in time and space, and certainly and without fail, in eternity.

Public schools are centers of communist indoctrination and socialization.  And just to make clear that I know my facts, my wife and I were once part of a small group church fellowship based on home schooling.  One former home schooler now flies F-35s, another graduated from the Naval Academy, the Navy nuclear school, and commanded aboard a submarine.

Still others from that group went into the military, and my daughter is a Nurse Practitioner with a Master’s degree, ER experience and cardiology experience, and today is a “first-assist” for surgery.

There are hundreds of thousands of such examples in America and in fact all over the world.  Don’t tell me that children need the state to educate them.  I know that to be a lie.

The educational system and cops in Massachusetts aren’t liars -they’re just communists.  They know they aren’t needed, they just want the control.  The desire to control others is the first sign, incorrigible pathology and premier sin of the wicked.

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Comments

  1. On December 28, 2018 at 8:18 am, ragman said:

    Of course they are communists. Unfortunately, they are free to move to the South and infect our beautiful states with their cultural Marxism and their total disregard of our Constitution.

  2. On December 28, 2018 at 10:06 am, Fred said:

    “The desire to control others is the first sign, incorrigible pathology and premier sin of the wicked.” Precisely, Sir.

    The State, while it has no duty to protect your children and it shouldn’t, has no responsibility to educate your children either. God didn’t say it would be easy, only rewarding. Get your children out of the State systems now. I could prattle on about the brainwashing that’s going on inside these dens of satan but you already know about that. We tend to dismiss real peril that is not physical, the anthropological and ancestral memory being the cause of this phenomenon; the danger from the State to our children and grandchildren is a grave and deadly thing to God’s triune created being, these places are crushing their soul, mind, and now retarding full development of men’s bodies through inactivity. The communist indoctrination going on in the state institutions should be treated with all the alarm of a gun to your children’s and grandchildren’s heads. The threat is just as real only seemingly less immediate. The children of Western Civilization are being sacrificed to satan’s god of expediency and not just through abortion, but through failing to make self sacrifice instead in the raising and educating of these precious souls. The State at every junction is turning on the greater population. Gather your tribe and prepare. Homeschooling is also a matter of self defense.

  3. On December 28, 2018 at 10:07 am, Longbow said:

    “The desire to control others is the first sign, incorrigible pathology and premier sin of the wicked.”

    Indeed, Sir!

  4. On December 28, 2018 at 11:31 am, revjen45 said:

    These are the same assholes the Democrats think should have unlimited ability to file ERPOs for seizure of firearms from parents who prove “difficult.”
    If you don’t like the way they have treated you &/or your kid and you make a stink, expect the pigs to stuff your door @ 2am and kill anybody who doesn’t move quick enough (or too quick).
    That will teach respect for our “betters.”

  5. On December 28, 2018 at 1:31 pm, ExatNJ said:

    1. The Massachusetts Controllers took The People’s guns first, so they could not fight back. Same as in NJ, CA, etc.

    “Goodall left another voicemail”

    2. Phone calls and “voicemail” do NOT count unless your POTUS launching WWIII. Not to impugn Goodall; but, unless they gave Worcester proper Legal Service (USPS Certified Express Mail, Return Receipt ‘Green Card’) Requested – AT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY – then their communications to Worcester NEVER happened, in the eyes of the law.

    3. Did Worcester ever give Goodall proper Legal Service?

    Proper Legal Service is not only one way to help secure Rights against The State; it also sends a message to The State that the correspondent knows their Rights and is playing for keeps. Learn how to fight the b@stards, or suffer under them. It’s too bad the parents are “behind enemy lines”.

    PS. This ain’t Legal Advice. You have to pay for that.

  6. On December 28, 2018 at 6:32 pm, ambiguousfrog said:

    But we have to feed the union pensions.

  7. On December 29, 2018 at 7:05 pm, Gryphon said:

    School Systems, Universities, and in particular their Administrative Functions, were the Second thing that the (((bolsheviks))) managed to Take Control of in the United States, in Furtherance of their Plan to Control Everything and Every Person. Read the communist manifesto, it’s right there. Their ‘Opening Act’ was to make Laws that Required Children to be “Educated” by the State. “Seemed like a Good Idea at the Time” and so the sheople bought into it. Eventually, “Public Schools” became the Private Domain of the (((bolsheviks))) and have turned into combination Prisons/Indoctrination Centers, promoting an Anti-American, Anti-Religion, Anit-White/European ‘agenda’. The latest thing is the Psychological Sexual Molestation of Children, through promoting the “Transgender” lies and perversion to Children even in the lowest Ages.

    You don’t have to be a Christian (or “Religious” at all) to See that this is a Depraved, Destructive Program designed to Destroy what is left of “American Culture” that developed over the last 100 Years or so.

    Remember, when the Purge begins, “Educators” at all levels will need to be Eliminated.

  8. On December 30, 2018 at 10:01 am, JoeFour said:

    For those who might be interested, here’s two books you can easily find with a Google search that tell the whole ugly history of public education in the USA:

    The Underground History of American Education by John Gatto

    Is Public Education Really Necessary by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

  9. On December 30, 2018 at 6:04 pm, Doug said:

    Malicious; Incompetent and VILE

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