“–Homeschoolers save taxpayers a great deal of money. If all the current homeschoolers enrolled in public schools, the cost of public education would increase.”

In my state of Ohio, the cybercharter enrollment grew by leaps and bounds the first couple of years. When looking at the cost of public education that had sharply risen in a senate finance committee meeting, the senators blamed those growing costs on homeschoolers. OHEC and others have had to continually listen, watch and contact the media and the legislature to let them know many home educators remain independent and are not the ones causing the increase.

–Homeschoolers do not want money from the government in the form of tax credits, tax deductions, or outright grants. We do not want other special favors. We realize that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and we do not want the increased state regulation that would accompany such favors.

When some of the same cyberschools and the cyberschool learned that their funding was being cut a few years back, they began calling the legislature asking them not to cut their “homeschool funding.” In response, I attended a Senate finance hearing with OHEC Co-coordinator, Peggy Daly Masternak. The crowd was so large that they asked for folks to pick one person to represent each group that was attending. Peggy spoke for OHEC. Before they opened the floor, the Chairman stated that due to the crowd, testimony would be limited to five minutes. They asked Peggy to speak first as we were the only group that involved independent homeschoolers. Peggy is an excellent speaker and shared her response easily in the five minute allotted time. After that, the committee continued to ask her question after question and kept her up there for a good twenty minutes. They thanked her profusely for reminding them that there was a big difference between home education in our state and those who used the cyber charters at home.

I hope others will take the time to read the article as well.

You didn’t read all the way to the bottom of my page did you? Allow me to quote my disclaimer…

This is a personal blog. Anything expressed here is at best my opinion and my opinion only. I’m not above making stuff up to start a conversation, so you are probably better off just not taking anything I write here too seriously. Comments are owned by whoever posted them.