The government values education; in fact, they value it so much that they’re willing to go to great lengths to exercise control over curricula in every school district in every state so as to ensure that children receive the education that they deserve.
That’s what Kiarre Harris (shown) discovered when her two children were snatched away from her because the government deemed her teaching to be inadequate.
A single mother currently residing in Buffalo, New York, Harris had enrolled her children in public school. However, displeased with the teaching methods being used in the public schools attended by her children, she opted to remove her children from those schools and to register them as homeschooled, thereby freeing her to teach her own children principles she believed to be important and to have been absent from the public schools’ curriculum.
“I felt that the district was failing my children,” she stated, “and that’s when I made the decision to homeschool.”
As mandated by the laws of the state of New York, parents choosing to homeschool their children must cut their way through rolls and rolls of regulatory red tape. According to the New York State Education Department (NYSED), one must first inform their school of their intent to homeschool two weeks prior to the student’s departure. Once that has been completed, the parent’s homeschooling methods must be reviewed and approved by the school board, and then submitted for additional approval by the homeschooling commissioner in that county. If and only if these requirements are met are parents in New York free to teach their children as they deem fit.
Harris claims she carefully adhered to the guidelines set by NYSED by studying the somewhat complicated legal processes so that she wouldn’t make a misstep. She insists that she believed herself compliant with the demands of the law after she received acknowledgement from one of the homeschooling directors of the issuing of a license by the state to begin homeschooling her children. “I spoke directly to the homeschool coordinator and she told me from this point on my children were officially un-enrolled from school,” Harris told local media.
