Utterly Meaningless

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

Filed at 8:01 am under by dcobranchi

An attorney in CT is organizing another legal defense organization. I’ve attached the “press release” below. I don’t have a problem with many of their goals but I think pre-paid membership ($100 per year) is unnecessary for the vast majority of homeschoolers. I’d much rather see a list of attorneys who are knowledgeable and willing to take on homeschooling cases on an as needed basis. I also don’t want another national organization lobbying Congress. One is bad enough. As you might have guessed, I won’t be joining.

Dear Homeschool Leaders,

I would like to introduce myself. I am Attorney Deborah G. Stevenson
and I am Executive Director of a newly formed organization, National Home
Education Legal Defense. I would like to tell you about this organization
and our goals in the hope that you will be interested in working with us.

National Home Education Legal Defense, or NHELD, grew out of a
statewide organization that began in Connecticut as Connecticut’s Citizens
to Uphold the Right to Educate, or CT’s C.U.R.E. CT’s C.U.R.E. was founded
in 1989 and has been instrumental in maintaining the rights of parents to
homeschool without government interference since that time. On more than
one occasion, we helped unite other statewide homeschool groups in
coordinated efforts and successfully defeated proposed state legislation
designed to “regulate” homeschooling. In 2002, CT’s C.U.R.E. became Home
Education Legal Defense of Connecticut offering information, consultation,
mediation and legal assistance to those who joined. Now, Home Education
Legal Defense of Connecticut has become National Home Education Legal
Defense offering these same services to parents nationwide.

With your assistance, NHELD will do this by creating a network of
attorneys in each state licensed to practice law in their home state, who
are thoroughly familiar with their state’s laws that are applicable to
homeschooling, and who have been recommended to us as trusted leaders by the
homeschooling support groups in their state. NHELD believes that the best
way to know the laws in a particular state and how those laws are most
appropriately interpreted to support homeschooling parents in that state is
to live in that state. NHELD also believes that the best way to protect the
rights of homeschooling parents is by effective organization to protect our
Constitution by preserving the Tenth Amendment guarantee that educational
issues are left to the states and to the people, not to the federal
government.

Among NHELD’s goals are the following:
1. Retain or regain the right of parents to educate their children
unfettered by government regulation.
2. Prevent or eliminate any federal regulation of home education due to its
unconstitutionality.
3. Provide a central clearinghouse for information concerning existing or
proposed legislation affecting the right of parents to home educate.
4. Provide accurate legal advice to parents about state law that affects
home education.
5. Provide legal services to individual families, when necessary, in order
to preserve their right to home educate.
6. Provide a central clearinghouse for information about parents who have
encountered problems in their efforts to home educate and effective means
for resolving those problems.
7. Provide a central clearinghouse for parents nationwide to receive advice,
consultation, and strategic means to uphold their right to home educate.
8. Assist parents in obtaining knowledge about their right to home educate
in their state to empower them to protect themselves, when necessary, from
unlawful actions or unnecessary interference.
9. Provide a nationwide organization to effectively defend the right of
parents to home educate by whatever legal means necessary.
10. Provide a nationwide organization that is sufficiently respected and
effective to counter any proposed federal regulation of home education and
to repeal any such existing regulation.

In order to accomplish these goals, NHELD needs your help. If you
support our goals, please help us, if you can, in the following ways:

1. Consult with other homeschooling organizations in your state and suggest
to us the names of any respected, trusted attorneys licensed to practice in
your state who are sufficiently familiar with your state laws regarding home
education and who would be willing to be listed as a participating NHELD
attorney.
2. Provide us with the names and contact information for all homeschooling
organizations in your state so that we may offer them the opportunity to
assist in our efforts.
3. Circulate this information to anyone who is interested.
4. Provide us with any suggestions that you believe may be helpful to us in
accomplishing these goals.

NHELD is open to any family who seeks to preserve the right of parents
to home educate. The cost to join us is $100.00 per year. Applications for
membership are available on our website at www.nheld.com
and checks may be sent to NHELD at P.O. Box 704,
Southbury, CT 06488. Our email address is info@nheld.com. You also may
contact Attorney Deborah Stevenson at (860) 354-3590 for further
information.

We hope to hear from you soon. Together, nothing is impossible.

Attorney Deborah G. Stevenson

5 comments »

5 Responses to “AND THEN THERE WERE TWO”

Comment by Traci December 10th, 2003 at 9:50 am	Yikes, more Vultures looking to make $ from homeschoolers. Opps all “inclusive” vultures. A hundred bucks a yr & then they will get your local homeschool group to help them…Sounds familiar… SAD SAD SAD:(
Comment by Chris December 10th, 2003 at 12:05 pm	National Home Education Legal Defense and Homeschool Legal Defense Assoc – that won’t confuse anybody 🙂 Are they just a non-Christian focused HSLDA? That is the read I get on my first pass through the press release.
Comment by Daryl Cobranchi December 10th, 2003 at 12:55 pm	I think it’s more like an anti-HSLDA org.
Comment by Judy Aron December 13th, 2003 at 11:52 pm	Debroah Stevenson is hardly a vulture. She has been working tirelessly to build a national network to help homeschoolers fight off federal legislation. It is her intention to build this network of state homeschool groups working with licensed attorneys that know their own state laws – and having everyone connect so that they can see how other states have dealt with similar legislative problems. It is her intention to network us all so that we can effectively fight off the federalization of homeschooling that is happening now in this country. Unfortunately it takes money to do these things, and so NHELD is looking for financial support. One of her plans is to use funds from NHELD to build a homeschooler scholarship fund. I can understand your hesitation and skepticism regarding $100 membership, and perhaps we will have to prove ourselves first. I hope that you will support NHELD in other ways. Attorney Stevenson is held in great esteem in CT – her reputation is untarnished, and she has a great passion for the rights of individuals. Please take the time to re-read her list of goals, and email her with your own comments. dgs31@yahoo.com
Comment by Anonymous October 29th, 2004 at 2:33 pm	I am currently a very dissatisfied member of HSLDA; whom recently informed me that they will not represent me and this after taking my $100. dollars and even raising the membership fee by $15. dollars more; they claim to be Christians, but they are more full of the devil then anything, I am so discusted with these phony bolony so called Christian Organizations that are no such thing. D.C