California=Bizarro World

Over yonder, at JimmyAkin.org, Tim Jones has a post up on California's week-old homeschooling crisis. One hour after we discovered this post, we found a phone message from my sister urging us to go to this web site to sign a petition to de-publish the ruling. Done and done.

Assuming you don't know anything about this story, the Jimmy Akin post is a good place to start, because several commenters have left links, relevant Church documents, and clarifications.

Story in a nutshell:

"In a stunning decision affecting thousands of families in California, the California Court of Appeal has issued an opinion finding no legal right to home school. "Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program," wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey whose opinion was joined by the other two members of the appellate panel. The opinion was issued February 28, 2008, in a case titled In re Rachel L., which reversed a Superior Court Judge, Stephen Marpet, who found that "parents have a constitutional right to school their children in their own home."

"The parents of Rachel L. enrolled her in Sunland Christian School, a private home schooling program. In his opinion, Croskey, 75, described what he called the "ruse of enrolling [children] in a private school and then letting them stay home and be taught by a non-credentialed parent."

California Homeschool Network has a synopsis of the situation as well as several informative links.

Here is the comment I left on Jimmy's web site:

"Spent an hour reading up on this last night.

Since posting the above, I came across some more info that clarifies the family's situation. They are NOT child-abusing wackos, they just spanked their kids, is all (which is a prosecutable offense in California, apparently). They have eight kids, and father Philip declares he will not have them in public schools being taught gay propaganda and what-not.

Also Sunland Christian School is an accredited homeschool-type curriculum, which is considered a charter school under the laws of California, but operates much the same as any pre-packaged homeschool curriculum. So Mom is OK with teaching the kids.

Moreover, the genius judges who decided this case did not invite any testimony from the school or any home schooling advocates. By referring to this homeschooling situation as a "ruse," the 75-year old senior judge on the panel is accusing homeschooling parents of fraud-- betraying either his complete ignorance of how homeschooling is supposed to work, or the fact that he knows about it and is dead-set against it.

I wish it didn't look this bad, but the more I read, the worse it looked.

Relevant links may be found by Googling "California homeschool news".

I am no lawyer, but I sure hope this gets thrown out by the CA State Supreme Court, and I think it will--but it will take a long time and keep a lot of parents in trepidation.

My advice for Californians who want to have any say in what happens to their kids at this point is...walk. Vote with your feet. Maybe when California is left with only immigrants and welfare recipients will they finally get a clue."

Diligent archive divers may have already discovered that I think this situation is a Blaine shame.

Other than that, the only thing I have to add (in financial parlance) is SELL CALIFORNIA. Sell your property, sell your bonds, get the heck out of there and don't look back:

*property has nowhere to go but down
*unemployment has nowhere to go but up
*cost of living's going up
*taxes are going up
*gas is going up
*wacky rulings like this
*spanking is prosecutable
*teaching gay stuff to your kids is mandatory
*whatever disaster's next in this bizarre state

I predict Church persecution is next, but who the heck am I? Oh yeah, I'm a person who's leaving the coast for the midwest.