West Virginia Homeschool Problems
by Margaret
West Virginia Homeschool Frustration - Please Help!
My husband and I had filled out the intent to home school petition well in advance (we both are educationally qualified) but we were not approved until well into the first month of the school year. My daughter has ADD with an anxiety disorder so we wanted her to be able to attend her LD classes but the school board said that they were not compelled by law and what they would offer (which was almost nothing) was done out of courtesy. I called the school board to obtain books to school with and I kept getting put off. I was told that I had to write down the names of the books I would use and submit the list to the board but the school would not make a list available of the books that they were using so I had no idea what to write down. I called the person (Ms. Rhonda Jelich) who is in charge of the home schooling program in our county and I was told that since my child was home schooled, she would have to wait. They had to take care of the children that they were getting paid to school first (mind you my husband paid his property taxes) before they could be bothered with my child (those were her exact words before she hung up on me). Needless to say, in order to keep my child from falling behind, we were bullied by the Jackson County Board of Education in WV to enroll our child in Ripley Elementary. Hi Margaret, I am sorry you have had such a hard time dealing with officials in your county. Something doesn't seem right. I will tell you something... I took some time to look up information on homeschooling in your state (West Virginia) and it is usually pretty easy to find a state's homeschooling laws on their state website. However, it is virtually impossible to find any information on homeschooling or your state's laws on the West Virginia Department of Education website! I found a summary of the West Virginia homeschool laws on HSLDA's (Home School Legal Defense) website. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. :( Perhaps another homeschooling website visitor from West Virginia will provide more help. You might want to try and contact someone from a statewide support group in West Virginia. Here are two contacts: West Virginia Home Educators Association P. O. Box 3707 Charleston, WV. 25337-3707 1-800-736-9843 http://www.wvhea.org Christian Home Educators of West Virginia PO Box 8770 South Charleston, WV 25303-0770 1-877-802-1773 http://www.chewv.org Blessings, Heather If you have any advice or information to share with Margaret, please do so! Thanks, Heather |
