For Ohio Homeschoolers...Action, Please
Addendum to March Fact Sheet on ODE Opinion on Notification by Homeschoolers
April, 2000

If you choose to express your opinion to the Ohio Deartment of Education (ODE), as outlined in a March Fact Sheet on this issue, you may want to consider the following. In Ohio, there are various types of educational choices available to a parent to comply with the compulsory attendance laws. One option is homeschooling. The right to decide for ourselves the education of our children--a right that is not granted by the state but is fundamental to us as parents---is reiterated for homeschoolers when it is clearly stated in OAC 3301-34:

“The purpose of the rules in this chapter is to prescribe conditions governing the issuance of excuses from school attendance under section 3321-04 of the Revised Code, to provide for the consistent application thereof throughout the state by superintendents, and to safeguard the primary right of parents to provide the education of their child(ren).”

The procedures outlined in the regulations provide a means to file with the superintendent a notification of the parent’s choice of one educational option in homeschooling. The superintendent then files a document with the parents issuing the excuse from compulsory attendance.

It is a common occurrence for a child to transfer from a public school to another educational option, such as a private school, a parochial school, or a community (charter) school. (For purposes of this addendum, we will refer to these choices as “school alternatives.”) When such transfer occurs, the public school superintendent is notified via a records request, designed and prepared by the new school, signed by the parent, and forwarded on to the public school superintendent. It is then the responsibility of the public school superintendent to send the child’s records to the school alternative.

Effectively, via the records request, the public school superintendent is being notified that the parent is exercising their right to provide for their child’s education in a school setting of their choice in compliance with the compulsory attendance law. Such is the case for homeschoolers when they file their notification.

In these types of school transfers, there is no requirement for the child to remain enrolled in the public school until such time as the records request is processed, the records are assembled, and the records are forwarded to the new school setting. Once the child is enrolled in the school alternative, s/he can begin attending the school alternative on the very next school day, conditional only upon fulfilling the admission policies of that school, and is not obligated to remain in the public school until the superintendent “approves” of the school transfer.

Since a homeschooling child is an enrollee of a homeschool, the same transfer paperwork procedures should apply. Although it is a reasonable expectation for a time period to elapse when transfer paperwork is being processed and mailed, it is most certainly not a reasonable expectation that children enrolling in homeschooling should be treated in any manner different from another child who transfers to a different school alternative.

If a child is enrolled in a school alternative, and transfers to a different school alternative, a similar records request is prepared and sent to the first-enrolled school. It is important to note that in school transfer situations, the receiving school does not notify the public school superintendent of such transfer as the records request is processed between two transferring schools.1

Our state and national constitutions guarantee equal protection under the law and require that individuals are accorded fair treatment in the exercise of fundamental rights or elimination of distinctions based on impermisable criteria. The recently-issued opinion from ODE concerns keeping a homeschooled child enrolled in a public school or in a school alternative until the public school superintendent processes paperwork issuing an excuse from compulsory attendance. That interpretation would violate the constitutional guarantee for equal protection. It is the position of the Ohio Homeschooling Awareness Committee that the opinion be withdrawn.
This information was prepared by the Ohio Homeschooling Awareness Committee (formerly the Northwest Ohio Homeschooling Legislative Awareness Committee), an open and inclusive committee of interested homeschoolers who come together to raise awareness of issues facing homeschoolers in Ohio. For more information on this fact sheet, contact Laura Rodriguez at (419) 891-1538 or Delores Carter at (419) 578-4044.
We have incurred costs in preparing this information. Donations to help defray the costs of gathering, compiling, and
disseminating this special addendum would be gratefully accepted. Make a check payable to the Ohio Homeschooling Awareness Committee and send it to 4627 Haddington, Toledo, OH 43623.
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1 There are Ohio Revised Codes and Ohio Administrative Codes that cover the reporting functions and responsibilities for school alternatives to the ODE and local public school superintendents concerning numbers of enrolled students, names of enrolled students, etc. Some happen on a yearly basis, others on a monthly basis and are inclusive of more than one student or, in fact, all students enrolled. All of these reporting functions occur separate from the enrollment of an individual student into a school alternative and the withdrawal of that student from the public school system. Transferring students are handled on an individual basis via the records request as outlined above.