{"id":7052,"date":"2006-10-11T06:26:55","date_gmt":"2006-10-11T10:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/?p=7052"},"modified":"2006-10-11T06:28:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-11T10:28:00","slug":"letter-of-the-day-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/?p=7052","title":{"rendered":"LETTER OF THE DAY"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just sent this in to the Fayetteville Observer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

NC made a laughingstock<\/strong><\/p>\n

A branch of the state government, the Division of Non-public Education (DNPE), has completely overstepped its legal authority in its regulation of homeschooling. In so doing, it has garnered national attention alternating between cries of horror and hoots of derision.<\/p>\n

Whether one agrees that homeschooling is a social good or not, the fact of the matter is that it is a legal right, based on laws passed by the General Assembly. Those laws mandate that all homeschools must maintain vaccination, attendance, and testing records and that these records must be maintained at the “school,” so that a state representative from the DNPE may inspect them at reasonable times. My own belief is that these records and inspections serve little or no purpose, but the law is the law. And we follow the law– to the letter. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for DNPE.<\/p>\n

On October 10th, DNPE sent out a notice (reproduced here: http:\/\/nche.com\/alert\/index.html) requesting that homeschoolers in the Triangle area voluntarily come in for a review meeting at a centralized location. The tone of the letter was anything but a request. DNPE has no legal right to demand a meeting away from the “school,” but it gets much worse than that. Along with extra-legal requests to review textbooks, lesson plans, and portfolios, the letter tells, not asks, parents to bring their kids (ages 7 to 17) to this meeting. AT THE POLICE STATION! Yes, the state bureaucrats could not come up with a better location than that. What a terrific way to scare a bunch of kids.<\/p>\n

The news spread like wildfire across the NC homeschooling community and then to national blogs and listservs. DNPE is a national embarrassment, and Rod Helder, the director of DNPE, should step down. Anyone who is so tone-deaf to just how chilling is that letter he signed should not be in a position to regulate and supervise law-abiding families.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Helder should go. Now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just sent this in to the Fayetteville Observer. NC made a laughingstock A branch of the state government, the Division of Non-public Education (DNPE), has completely overstepped its legal authority in its regulation of homeschooling. In so doing, it has garnered national attention alternating between cries of horror and hoots of derision. Whether one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}