The NH House and Senate have overwhelming voted in support of two home educations bills which are expected to go before the Governor in early June. Legislative support on these bills is sufficient to override any potential veto by the Governor.
House Bill 545 removes the requirement for home educators to notify their district or participating agency annually and replaces this provision with a one-time notification process.
House Bill 1571 removes the requirement to submit annual evaluations for home educated children. Evaluations of home educated children are still required, but they remain with the parents in their home. This provides equity with private schools, which are not required to submit annual evaluations for their students. It also provides a layer of privacy for home educated children, which is particularly important given all the data mining that the federal government is conducting on students without the consent of parents.
HB 1571 also removes the provisions for probation, grievance conferences, and termination of home programs. If there's probable cause to believe that the child is not being educated, parents can simply produce their evaluation results to demonstrate that their child's academic needs are being met.
The home education law will finally respect parental rights in education. Parents are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty of educational neglect. They won't have to prove themselves innocent annually. Given that 71% of all NH school districts are currently in need of improvement and none of those schools are being shut down, it's only equitable that home education programs are not terminated when a home education child might be in need of improvement.
Parents and public school teachers will be able to work together in the best interests of the child without fear of retribution should a child need remedial help. No more threats of probation or termination of home programs.
For more information on these bills, join NH Families for Education's Facebook group.