Kentucky Homeschooling Bill Alert

HB574, an act relating to homeschool, was submitted to the House on February 27 by Representative Chris Harris, and is currently awaiting discussion in the House Education Committee. We have not seen a bill that so aggressively attacks our freedom to home educate in more than eight years. If this bill became law, it would drastically transform the face of private home education in Kentucky. It is CHEK’s stance that bills, such as these, are unnecessary and ultimately harmful to homeschoolers as they further increase the state's control of the education and upbringing of our children. CHEK is actively communicating our concerns to the House Education Committee. We encourage you to contact your legislators to let them know your concerns for HB 574.

If this proposed bill became law, it would:

1. Create a legal definition of homeschool in Kentucky.
2. Require parents to submit and affidavit to the Kentucky Department of Education, on an annual basis, verifying each child completed 1,062 hours of academic instruction.
3. Require parents to submit, on an annual basis, a portfolio of sample work completed by each child.
4. Empower the Department of Education to evaluate every portfolio to determine if students have achieved adequate academic growth throughout the year. The standard to demonstrate academic progress is subjective and would be completely up to the Department.
5. Require the Department of Education to create a plan for all students that have not met the academic growth standard, therefore, parents would be required to follow the remediation plan of the Department of Education, if they wish to continue teaching each child at home.
6. Require the establishment of an administrative procedure to terminate the student enrollment in a private homeschool, if a child has not obtained adequate academic growth in 24 months.
7. Require parents to be supervised by a certified teacher until adequate academic growth is established.
8. Give full authority to the Department of Education to promulgate these regulations.

We know you value your freedom to home educate your children in this Commonwealth.  Take a few minutes to communicate this to your Representative. 

You can call the legislative message line: 1-800-372-7181, and ask that your message be given to your Representative as well as Representative Chris Harris.  The TTY message line is 1-800-896-0305. If you have questions, please, direct them to CHEK at info@chek.org.

Keeping busy.

I'm still trying to adapt to being a work-out-side the home person.  I only work a few hours a week, this week, 16, but there are also 4 hours involved in traveling, so I'm gone 20 hours.  Lately I've also been feeling pretty bad, with a headache and dizziness off and on for the past 3 weeks.  I've been to the doctor, who didn't find anything wrong.  :-/  So I've been coming home and wanting to lie down, not do the dishes, laundry, sweeping and dusting that I need to do.  As part of our newest routine, the kids have someone come over on Tuesday afternoons to wait for it to be time for board games and so I've been cleaning up a little bit on Tuesdays.  Otherwise, I don't know if anything would have gotten done.  I'm working 4 days this week and doing board games on Tuesday and Monday night dinner on Monday, so if you're going to come over, call first, so I can wash the dishes and sweep up the dog hair.  :-) 

Why Kids Can't Sit Still in School

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/07/08/why-so-many-kids-cant-sit-still-in-school-today/?utm_term=.2fab2b96d053

Great Homeschooling Article.

On Track? Don't get me started.

You should go and read this.  It's a good one.

Okay, it has nothing to do with this game, but I was looking for a picture of a train and hey, it's kind of symbolic of the way we homeschooled - plenty of fun and games.  :-)

The Freedom to Quit.

I think that one of the things wrong with our public school system is the fact that it is compulsory.  We were talking on the homeschool board I'm a part of, that 3 days is considered truant and 6 days absence is considered habitually truant.  It seems excessive to me when we are talking about 6 and 7 year old kids.  Am I the only one? 

Here's a good article from Peter Gray. 

The Freedom To Quit.

Funny coincidence.

We ran into a kid from our old homeschool group at the grocery store.  He checked out our groceries and while he was doing that, we talked about what he's doing now that he's graduated.  He's going to the same community college as my son.  I asked him if he'd ever seen my son over there and he said no, he hadn't but to tell him hello.  I came home and gave the hello message to my son on Sunday afternoon.  On Monday, guess who he ran into at school?   They were in the part of the library where you can't talk at all, so they just waved at each other (in a cool way, not as I'm describing it, LoL.).  What are the odds?  They've been in school there together since August and never seen each other once. 

Life is weird that way. There's this woman that I graduated with that I run into about once a year in the grocery or Wal-mart or the doctor's office.  I almost never see any of the other 320 people I graduated with, but her, all the time.  I don't know what the statistics behind this kind of thing are, but I would find them interesting. 

:-)

Icy Roads.

There are icy roads again today.  I called into work and told them I'd come in this afternoon.  My husband is going to work from home today.  For our son who is in community college, he's going to just not go to his first class.  They are on a 1 hour delay, but the temperature is not going to be warm enough for the second class period.   So we're here waiting for the ice to melt. 

This and that and the other thing. Getting into new routines.

There are always changes and what is right now won't be for long.  Right now, I'm working at the hospital 12-16 hours a week, my husband is still at the job he's been at for a while, oldest son is married and living about 20 minutes away with his lovely wife.  We see them usually once a week for Monday night dinner and sometimes we get to see them more than that, which we love.  Daughter has been working at the Montessori school, but she found out last week that this week will be her last.  They are laying her and the other afternoon worker off due to money problems at the school.  Not fun.  She's going to have to figure out what she wants to do now.  Youngest son is getting into his second semester at college, still doing well and still enjoying it.  At my work, I need to decide whether to take coding classes and become a medical coder.  I'm thinking on that.  Meanwhile, life goes on.  The kids are keeping busy with their board game and Dungeons and Dragons groups.  I need to find something to do to volunteer or I'll have to do more housework.  :-P  I'm sharing some pictures that looked interesting from my phone, for no reason, just because.  

This first one is my grocery list for yesterday.  The last entry is written by my daughter, but she says that every single one of the first 5 lines, written by me, are in different fonts.  She takes that as more evidence for how weird I am.  :-).  What do you think? 

It's snowing, can you see it? 

Sunrise the other day.

A most beautiful chicken pot pie I made for Monday night dinner.

Upside down Cosmo.