Homeschool Scare

In the spirit of how difficult homeschooling really is, we've hit a few bumps in our quest to be legitimate. I'm hopeful that they will be resolved in a timely and acceptable manner, but I'm never at ease until the paperwork is all in and the state is happy with us.

The problem first stemmed from the fact that our regular evaluator will be out of town in the next month, and cannot help us. Yikes! She was very nice about it, and for full disclosure, she has been ready and available for months, the limiting factor has been on our end.

Either way, we now needed to find a licensed teacher to do the evaluations. I contacted GS who taught last year, but he said his license expired. I'm not sure if this matters, but figured it probably was not a good thing, so I kept looking.

I then contacted DE, whom I didn't realize was an evaluator. I know he was a teacher at one time, but our regular evaluator passed long his name and he happened to be available.

Then the big scare came. He said he believed that we were too late, we'd missed the deadline and that our school year was not going to count. What?!?!

He mentioned a well-known deadline of Labor Day, and thought that you had to have evaluations and curricula in by then. I recall last year having submitted the stuff in October, but couldn't say for sure. I checked the previous paperwork and sure enough, it was dated in October, but now I was worried.

I tried contacting the homeschool rep for the state, but she was away from the office. I then called her right hand person, and she told me that there was not in fact a deadline, and there was no need to panic.

The way it works is like this. The state cannot process enrollment submissions until they have the previous year's proof of study, or evaluation. People usually send them in at the same time. There was, however, no set deadline to send them in.

The confusion lies in the fact that if you submit your enrollment for two consecutive years before Labor Day, then you qualify for an exemption, which means you no longer have to submit a curricula or course of study to begin the year.

Knowing that we would never be able to pull this off, and finding that submitting a curriculum actually helps me to schedule the year and structure the evaluation, this does not really apply to us.

The problem is, many people confuse this deadline as the actual deadline to submit the paperwork, when in fact it is more of a helpful suggestion. I sort of knew this because this happened to us last year, and I investigated it exhaustively, but just the slightest shred of doubt was enough to give me anxiety. Bummer.

One final note, the people who get their curricula in on time (before Labor Day) are usually, but not always, the sort of together and organized people who would create a curriculum anyway, so I'm not sure what the benefit is to getting the exemption when for all intents and purposes, they're going to make one no matter what. It may have more to do with the perception of doing things the right way, but who's to say?

Either way, the outlook is fine, the situation is not grim, and we have a plan... sort of.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Christa Richert for the pic.