School board member Debbie Brown sought to have the measure removed from the list, at an Oct. 24 meeting, but her motion failed due to a lack of a second.
Brown said requiring registration would lead to increased funding to the school district by way of mandatory enrollment.
“Once you get state funding, there are strings attached,” she said.
“I feel it’s adequate the way it is,” Brown said.
Fellow board member Dr. Nels Anderson, who has championed the call for student registration for years, does not believe it is an issue of state funding.
“Former board member Margaret Gilman said it best,” Anderson said.
“‘Parents have a right to decide how kids are schooled, but they have no right to not provide education to their kids,’” Anderson said.
He explained that children enrolled in public schools are registered; children home schooled through programs including Connections and IDEA are registered; and children enrolled in private schools, such as Cook Inlet Academy on the Kenai Peninsula, are registered.
“We know there are kids who are not getting any education at all,” he said.
Those are the children he said he hopes to protect through mandatory registration.
“People often call me saying they know of a home where the mom is stoned all the time, she has two daughters, 8 and 6 (years old) and they’re not being schooled. ‘Can you do anything?’”Anderson said.
“The answer is no.”
Anderson was quick to add that he believes most parents who are home schooling their children are doing a wonderful job.
Another concern of his is when children are home schooled for a time, then the parents bring them back to the public school system and the children are several years behind their peers in terms of education level.
He said because there is no state requirement for registration, there is no way to know how many children are affected.
Schools Superintendent Donna Peterson said it is not the desire of the school district to do away with home schooling.
“Parents should be allowed to have that choice,” Peterson said.
“We do know demographically there are several hundred children on the Kenai Peninsula not in any school,” she said.
Anderson agrees that parents should be able to choose how their children are taught, and said, “I want to work with any people involved in home schooling to set up a reasonable compromise.
“Allow us to assure kids are getting an education without being too intrusive into their lives,” Anderson said.
He said the issue is not solely a Kenai Peninsula matter. It is statewide.
“If we could come up locally with a solution satisfactory to the parents, I suspect it would be acceptable statewide,” Anderson said.
He said he would like people interested in working on the issue to contact him.
Phil Hermanek is a reporter for the Peninsula Clarion.
We encourage you to add your comments. To prevent spam, comments with links are manually approved during the normal business day. Please be respectful of others with your comments, bear in mind anyone in the community may be reading your comments.
