Homeschooling in Pa

Today I make my yearly trip to the school district to declare my intention to homeschool.  Every year in PA we have to file an affadavit with the school district declaring that we will abide by all the requirements for a homeschooling education.

Getting on Soapbox

One of the things that I have always wondered about was the part in the affadavit that we have to delcare that no one that lives in the house has be convicted of among other things homicide, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, rape.  Now I do understand the States concern about the welfare of the children and I do know that for some people having your children home all day would help conceal some of these crimes.  But my question has always been why don't parents that do send their children to public school have to sign something similar?  Most cases that I have heard of are usually about children and families that are in the school system.  Of course there are the rare cases such as the case a few years ago where a boy who wa homeschooled killed the parents of his girlfriend and and he and the girl took off (my daughter would have graduated with this boy).  But these are few and far between.   I guess they figure that the teachers will pick up on things but with so many children and behavior problems etc.  it is hard for them to catch some of these things. 

Anyway off my soapbox


 I will also have to turn in the objectives of what I hope to cover this year in school.  I usually get these from World Book Typical Course of study.  I use these as a very loose guideline because almost always we go off on tangents and don't get everything covered.  I will admit this seems to happen less in the upper grades but we like to keep our options open. 

I usually turn all of this in in June when our evaluations are due (another thing that we have to turn into the school district.  We have to be evaluated by a certified teacher every year.  But different school district do this differently, our old school district we had to turn in our portfolio (another requirement we have to have a portflio of school work done through out the year to prove that education was taking place) plus our evaluation.  Our current district only requires the evaluation.  They have taken the position that it is the certified teacher's responsibility to determine if an appropriate education is taking place. 

I have been told that PA is one of the most retrictive as far as homeschooling is concerned.  I have found that as long as you take care of these requirements in June and August and don't give anyone concern about the treatment of your children it is not that bad.