Reintroduced bill would punish parents of truant kids

LEWISTON – State Sen. Joe Stegner will reintroduce legislation to prosecute the parents of truant children after his last effort attracted protests from home-school families.

The draft bill is similar to last year’s attempt to make parents accountable and to protect the state from lawsuits from students who might claim they were not adequately educated.

The proposal was aborted last year after parents of home-schooled students, believing Stegner’s legislation amounted to a takeover by the public school system, flooded legislators with e-mails in protest.

Last year’s legislation would have required home educators to sign an affidavit with their school districts certifying they are providing a comparable education to public schools.

Stegner’s new legislation would focus only on allowing the state to file criminal misdemeanor charges against parents of public school students who fail to keep their children in class.

“I can’t fight the irrational logic that the home-schooling industry will bring to the Legislature” for trying to require them to register with public school districts, said Stegner, R-Lewiston. “I will fight that fight another day.”

But home schoolers are keeping a close eye on what Stegner comes up with this year.

In an e-mail sent to members of the Idaho Coalition of Home Educators, Eagle attorney Barry Peters, who represents the group, said last year’s outcry will be even greater if Stegner tries to draft a law that would require them to register with local school districts.

“Any requirement that home-educated students register with public school districts fails to recognize that home education in Idaho legally stands on an equal footing with the public schools,” Peters said.

“Such an affidavit requirement could become the first step in an incremental process leading to the evaluation and ultimate domination of home education by the public school system, giving them leverage to force home schoolers into the public school system.”

Stegner’s legislation was prompted last year by Lewiston principals. He said they were frustrated there is no way to enforce Idaho’s law that children between the ages of 7 and 16 must be in school.

“It started to occur to me that at some point the state of Idaho is going to have some child whose parents kept him out of school under the pretense of being home schooled,” Stegner said. “And at age 21, he’s finally going to sue the state of Idaho for failing to get an education.”

Stegner said home schoolers “interpreted these changes in the law as threatening their absolute right to educate their children any way they wanted to. They, in my opinion, completely misinterpreted the impacts of the law we were suggesting.”