Homeschoolers across the country are buzzing with concern for the homeschooling case in California. In addition, Washington DC has been messing around with homeschool regulation, and the poor, sweet, dear homeschoolers in Nebraska are having to do a repeat of their huge battles of 15 or so years ago. I thought y'all might like to read this email from my good friend Tim Lambert, president of Texas Home School Coalition (and former RNC delegate from Texas) regarding the eternal vigilence required to keep our freedoms to raise our children God's/our way secure.

I think it's a good word for all of us to be ever watchful regarding ALL of our sovereign freedoms.

Donna
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THSC Response to California Home School Case

http://www.thsc.
org/news_ and_resources/ THSCResponsetoCA HomeSchoolCase. asp

"As you might expect, this situation has stirred up a good deal of
controversy. California appears to be on the verge of taking a huge step
backward concerning parental freedoms to homeschool. The case seems likely
to be headed to the California Supreme Court [the appeals court decided in favor of the State], and if that court upholds the
lower court ruling, the only alternative for California home school families
is to go to the legislature and try to get it to amend the law to allow
parents without certification to homeschool [at the present moment, homeschoolers in California ARE legally able to homeschool and are being encouraged to carry on].

While this has been going on, after a decade of freedom, Washington, D.C.,
city officials have drawn up a list of regulations for home schoolers as the
result of the tragic death of children who were supposedly homeschooled. In
a hearing on March 5, dozens of home school families testified against the
proposed rules, and officials agreed to scrap the proposal and start over,
this time including home school leaders in the process of adopting
regulations.

Added to these problems, our friends in Nebraska are fighting against the
worst legislative attack against home schooling since the 1980s. The hearing
on the bill set a record for the number of attendees with over thirteen
hundred people in attendance; at the time of this writing, the outcome is
uncertain.

Obviously there are many people in many places who believe that the state,
rather than the parents, has the right to make decisions for our children.

I share these stories with you because the natural tendency that we all have
is to become focused on our own families and the day-to-day issues that
concern us in the rearing of our children in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord; we tell ourselves we do not have time to follow this "political
stuff." However, all of these stories are evidence that the price of freedom
is eternal vigilance. We must stay informed and attuned to what is going on
around us in our government and the public policy process. To fail to do so
might one day bring us to the place where our friends in California,
Washington, D.C., and Nebraska are today.

Lest I leave you discouraged, let me remind you that home school parents in
Texas led the way in the 1980s, and we have the landmark Texas Supreme Court
ruling (Leeper v. Arlington ISD), won by Shelby Sharpe, THSC general
counsel, in which the highest court in Texas ruled that home schools are
private schools, and because of that, they are exempt from compulsory
attendance laws. We have a governor who has strongly supported home school
freedom for parents and has appointed a commissioner of education who also
holds that position. THSC Association is well respected in the halls of the
Texas legislature, and THSC PAC will continue, by God's grace, to be active
in legislative races, supporting those who defend home schooling. "