Sacramento, Calif., May 22, 2008 / 08:55 am
Homeschooling parents in California have been worried that the state may prevent them from educating their children following a February Superior Court ruling. The court has agreed to rehear the case, and on Monday, Gov. Schwarzenegger and California’s attorney general filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in favor of homeschooling.
Schwarzenegger and Brown’s brief explains that the state education code allows children in private, full-time day schools to be exempt from compulsory public school education.
A “private home school,” said the brief, can qualify as a private school under the code if it complies with state requirements for private schools. “Notably,” says the brief, “there is no requirement that the teachers in such schools have a California teaching credential, only that they be ‘persons capable of teaching.’”
The California education code, the officials said, “defines a private school as ‘a person, firm, association, partnership, or corporation offering or conducting private school instruction on the elementary or high school level.’”