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children 'private instruction, ' and schoolers of Wisconsin newsletter, for this they must get permi ssion parents who crossed out the controver sial " ass urances" on the Dept. of Pub from their local superinte nd e nt. "The good news in all of this, lic Instruction's homeschooling form if it can be called that, is that it recei ve d a somewhat thre a tening thus becomes in the state ' s interest sounding letter from dept. official Roger Sunby. Steve Huhta of the WIS (i.e. Boelhouwer's) t o e ncourage the local superintendents to he lp fami CONS IN PARENTS ASSOCIATION talked li es work out satisfactory arra ng e with Sunby, who assured him that if ments. Boelhouwer has put together a parents had included a letter saying packet of information to educa te they could document - their program, superintendents about th e law and to there would be no need for the local share wit h them some exampl es of con administrator to review it in person. tracts ... (Unfortunately, h e won't The WPA would like t o know if any show this packet to anyone else . ) It homeschooling families do get a visit is not foolproof, of course ... but from local school authorities. - DR many superintendent s are being reason able . .. " SOUTH CAROLINA: Angela Cou ture ORGANIZATION NEWS of the new group HOMESCHOOLERS OF SOUTH CAROLINA sent an article from [ DR: ] Thanks to all the local her local paper, and writes, "Since groups who send us their newsletters this article, our family and the - it's an easy way to keep us i n Herzog family have done several radi o formed o f legal news, ac tivities, and TV interviews . We have been able etc. Homeschoolers are arranging to locate several dozen fami li es in dozens of meetings, field trips , and the area that are h ome schoolers ... other events every month , and we can only hope to reprint some high lig ht s Although both of our homesc hoo ling in GWS . To contact the group(s) in plans were approved by the Be rkeley Co . School Board, th ey ha ve si nc e your area, see the list of organ iza tions in the ba ck of this issue. We started trying to enforce conditi ons that we re not in the origi na l agree update th e list throughout the year a nd include it as part of our Home ment . After consulting with an attor Schooling Resource Li s t , $1. ney and a private sc hoo l organiza ALABAMA : Lee Gonet sent the tion, we decided t o become a school with several satellite campuses. The first newsletter of the ALABAMA CITI ZENS FOR HOME EDUCATION with th is school board decided to leave us note : "We already have 150 on our alone after that ... " WASHINGTON: From the Fami mailout list ... Dr. Murr y Norris, President of Va lley Christi an Univer Learninf Exchange News letter, 84: sity, and an avid homeschooler , is "The Bi 1 Drafting Committee and the WASHINGTON HOMESCHOOL ACT I ON COUNCIL coming to speak in Montgomery (free of charge!) on Nov. 20 and we are met on Sept. 8 to vo te on a home school bill to present t o the State thrilled ... " BRITISH COLUMBIA: Janet Cornes Legislature in the 1985 session in writes, "The homeschool i ng situation January . .. A conflict arose between is quite liberal here in Victoria, those who support the Craswell Amend with about 100 families in this area ment, and those who support the bill alone tea c hing their children at the committee has been wo rking on, authored by Kathleen McCurdy and for home ... " CALIFORNIA: Cindi Dennis writes, malized by a legislative codifier. "We r.ave a nice support group in the The basis of the conflict is the Thousand Oaks/Newbury Park area this issue of homeschoolers' accountabili yea r with approximatel y 20 families ty to the state . participating ... We have weekly park " .. . Representative Dick Barrett days, monthl y parent education meet ... explained how impo rt a nt it was ings, monthly field trips, and month that the people rally in sup por t of ly workshops taught by homes chooli ng o n e bill, otherwise th e Legislature parents, including ones on hiking, would not try to make i t law. He also science experiments, and linoleum po inted out that the more detailed block printing ... We're having the bill, the less cha nce o f passage since there would be t oo many op portu 'school' pictures taken, individual photos as well as group pictures. nities for opposition to it ... He emphasized ... it would be a very long Many families in the group are en time before the Leg islature would ser rolled in an Independent Study pro gram through a private Chri stian iously consider a bill such as the Craswe ll Amendment. school in the area ... " COLORADO: According to the Colo " . .. The Council decided not to rado Homeschoolin Network NewsIer= suppor t the Amendment ... Several amendmen ts t o [the McCurdy] bill were ter, a surpr s ng turnout 0 peo pre attended the home schooling sem proposed, with the major change cen inar given by Dr . Raymond Moore th is tered on leaving out the methods by fall. which parents could choose to be HAWAII: From Judith Wilson of accountable to the state. It was LEARNnm-AT HOME (see our "Correspon decided to let th e Superintendent of dence Schools or Books" list) : Public Ins truc ti on devise the means "Hawaii state law provides that a of account abili t y. child can be withdrawn from public "Discarding all the measures of school if 'a competent person is em accountabi lit y that were the heart of the bi ll left the bill relatively con ployed as a tutor,' and an annual cur riculum of study ffrr the child is pre tention-free. But our most supportive sented to the local principal, then legislators have rejected the bill in reviewed and accepted by the Dept. of that fo rm. They have no intention of Education. To be 'competent,' you le aving everything up to the SPI. And must have a 4-year degree from an of course a b il l without legislative accredited college ... Seventeen assor s ponso rship is no bill at all. ted homeschoolers age 5 to 17, plus "The WHAC concluded the meeting two toddlers, meet with us at the re by elec ting a seven-member Board of Directors. They are: Jon Wartes, Kath source center we have formed for a couple of days a week of group tutor leen McCurdy, Richard Wheeler, Mike ing. We have also matched other fami Olson, Carolyn Kunard, Bill Dyer, and lies with other tutors, some of whom Mary Gardner. Feel free to call any use our space on other days ... " of them regarding any questions ... " ILLINOIS: Arlene DeVitto writes, WISCONSIN: According to the Home
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"We are part of a home school group we started over the summer. It started with three of us wanting to get to gether for suppor t and field trips and after only four meetings has grown to 21 families with over 60 ch ildren ... Gus Riebock ~as a newcom er at our last meet ing ... Besides homeschooling her own three children, she is homeschooling a child of a neighbor who works every day, as a teacher' ... The mom is a single moth er who has to work to support them ... " MONTANA: The FLATHEAD VALLEY HOMESCHOOLERS ASSOCIATION will be fea tured in the town library'S display case. They hope to include children's work, books on homeschooling, and pho tos of group activities in the exhib it. The group has also sponso r ed a raffle to support the toy and learn ing game checkout at the library, speakers on education, and outings a nd workshops. NEVADA: The VEGAS VALLEY HOME SCHOO~TED group arranges for par ents to loan and borrow books, maga zines, homeschooling newsletters, cata log s, etc. Members with materials to share list the items on 3x5 cards and £end to a central address. OREGON: Mary Stone writes, "I receivea-a-grand total of 4 responses to my ad in GWS #40 re starting an Oregon homeschooling newsletter ... I did hear about a group of 20 or so homeschooling families in the Rose burg area. Debbie Doughty sent me a list of their names, children's names and ages, addresses, etc. She also set up a sc hedule of get-togethers, about one or two a month. We have gone to two cf these. It seems there are two groups of homeschoolers I hadn't been aware of: (1) Fairly zeal-. ous Christian families who prefer Christian publications, and (2) reclu sive/undercover homeschoolers who pre fer anonymity and abstinence from ~ organization . If I understand DebbLe right, only three of the Roseburg fam ilies, counting us, receive GWS or even knew of it ... " From Pat Putnam of HOMESCHOOLERS OF LANE COUNTY: "On June 17, we held our first graduation, for four 8th graders. It was a great success. Each girl gave a short speech about home schooling, and our State Representa tive spoke . A local TV station asked if they could cover it, so we let them, and they did a beautiful job good PR for our movement. It is grow ing by leaps and bounds in western Oreg on ... " DONATING GWS TO LIBRARIES ... For the past two years, maybe three, we've given a GWS subscription to the Eugene Public Library's child ren's department. The librarians put it on the prominent "Parents' Shelf"; they say it's checked out often. CANDACE SYMAN-DEGLER (OR).
... The other member of my group subscription is the Middletown Free Library .. • Since Middletown Library could not find the money in its bud get to purchase GWS, I donate the ir subscription to them. - LORRAINE CLARK (PA). WE NEED MORE "SPOZED" In GWS #29 we said we would pay $2 for used copies of Jim Herndon's classic book THE WAY IT SPOZED TO BE and sell them for $3. Now we have used up all the copies we acquired that way, and in fact we still have
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