call to action for Californians about private home government inspections

[mountainmoma]

This a reprint with permission to share. Even if you do not homeschool, you should care, and if you have opinions on this and live in California, please get hold of your representatives. As one of the talking points listed here mentions, since there has to be equal application of laws, what starts as violating homeschool houses would then have the same needs applied to all houses.

ATTENTION FRIENDS AND FAMILY, THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION !! For those who homeschool due to SB277 and for ALL who can help us fight this attack against homeschoolers,

Here is a CALL TO ACTION from Parents United 4 Kids:

AB2756 was introduced on Friday. As it stands, it aims to require a minimum of one annual fire inspection for any families who have a filed a Private School Affidavit in order to homeschool in California. We believe the plan is to amend this bill to include more overreach.

It is URGENT that you call your state legislators TODAY (You have two - a senator and an assemblyperson). Horsetrading is happening as we speak and coauthors are being shopped. Rodriguez has already been added. We need to stop this bill BEFORE it gets momentum. Call your TWO legislators today (you can find them here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/ )

URGE your TWO legislators NOT to coauthor AB2756. URGE them to vote NO when it comes before them! We need a massive amount of attention given to this bill ASAP. Once it gets momentum, it will be harder to stop.

AB2756 is discriminatory and will unfairly impact renters, minorities and economically disadvantaged families. Our 4th amendment rights protect us from unlawful search (and seizure). An aberration like the Turpin story is not justification for wiping out our Constitutional Rights. Furthermore, this legislation will do nothing to stop criminals like the Turpins from harming children. This is nothing more than a cleverly disguised attempt to get a foot in the door.

Please call. Please share this post (or something similar) in every homeschool group you can find. Ask friends and family to call. It doesn't matter if you homeschool or not.

Please let us know how your calls are going in the comments below. Have an awesome day! ❤

******Sample Script******

"Hi. My name is __________ and I am a constituent of Senator (Or Assemblymember) __________________. I am calling today to URGE him NOT to coauthor AB2756. I do not support this bill. It is a violation of my 4th amendment rights. It is a discriminatory bill that will unfairly impact poor minorities, renters, and people who legally choose to educate their children at home. This bill will do nothing to stop criminals like the Turpins from hurting their children. Furthermore, how will we fund this bill, in an already financially stressed state? Please tell Senator (or Assemblymember) _______________ NOT to coauthor and to vote NO on AB2756 when it comes before him/her."

*******Talking Points*******

-AB2756 will unfairly impact poor minorities. What if updates to the home are required by the fire marshal and it is not affordable for the family? Will the state fund necessary improvements? Or will the family be forced to make a decision between educating their children in a way that fits their needs or spending money they don't have to be in compliance?

-AB2756 will unfairly impact renters. If updates are required and the property owner refuses to pay for them, will the family need to leave their home or put their kids in public/private school? Will property owners begin including homeschool restrictions in rental agreements so as to avoid any financial hardship brought on by improvements mandated by the fire marshal?

-AB2756 does nothing to prevent child abuse as was seen in the Turpin case. As the bill stands, children need not be present during the fire marshal inspection. Anyone whose intent is to harm their children and fly under the radar will just clean up their home and ensure that the kids aren't present during the inspection. If the bill is amended to require that children be present during the inspection, then isn't that outside the scope of a fire inspection? Sounds more like a CPS inspection.

-AB2756 requires that the personal information of homeschooling families be kept on a list and shared with local fire authorities. How do we know that this information will be safeguarded? Why should our information be shared with anyone outside the California Department of Education?

-AB2756 is a violation of our 4th and 14th amendment rights. As law abiding citizens, we are not required to open our home up for inspection, even if it is cleverly disguised as a fire inspection. We are also guaranteed the right of equal protection. Why aren't public school families required to have home inspections? Are homeschool families somehow disproportionately affected by fires in their homes?

AB2756 will be costly for the state of California. Does the fire marshal have the resources to fund tens of thousands of home inspections? (If they have extra resources, couldn't the devastating fires in 2017 have been prevented? Or at least the damage lessened?) If updates to homes and apartments are required, who will fund the updates? The property owner? Why should homeschool families be financially impacted in order to maintain fire safety standards to which ALL Californian families are not held? Will the state fund any improvements required by the fire marshal?
Find Address
findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov

[Applejack]

Don't know alot about CA laws but I do have a granddaughter that lives there.. I would think they would have to have reason and a warrent to invade your privacy in your own homes. What are they looking for.

[mountainmoma]

Apple Jack -- That bill is saying that since we have fire inspections of public schools, we need to have fire inspections of homes used as home schools. Ignoring the fact that the only reason we have fire inspections of public schools, or any building open to the public, is that it is open to the public, ie., to people who have no control over it and need to rely on a third party for assurances of safety. While our home is under our control and we know that  we have not blocked the exit or own a fire extinguisher ( or not, point being, we are responsible and it is under our control)

A second California bill has been started that goes further, it is open ended actually, what it wants is to completely re-think homeschooling in CA, ie., do we insist they follow same course of studies as public schools ? Should parents have training ? Should we include mandatory inspections of homes and mandatory medical exams of children ? etc....  says include but not be limited to those three areas....It proposes, as a first step a 2 year committee to discuss and propose "solutions" to those and other undefined areas. Of course, we have no problem, so the whole thing is crazy and vindictive. The unregulated homeschool kids have better outcomes, proportionately, over many metrics, than the public schooled students. Seems to me that the State should work on getting its own house in order.

I have seen what inspections can do. I actually know a parent involved with a charter school as a homeschooler, the assigned teacher went to her house to go over the students work (not required, many meet at the library, or choose to not have such oversight at all), anyway, this particular home-teacher told the parent that she could not have a cross on the wall of the dining room, as she was having the child do school work there and that that was a violation of church and state ! ( it is not, of course ) Cant say a prayer of thanks over lunch as that is during school hours.... Your child must read only these state approved books, etc...... they stopped allowing work from a math textbook series I used with my daughter as the author, on the dedication page, said

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam

So then I just did not say that we were using a math text at all..... I just teach her math.... but all that garbage only came about for those of us homeschooling under the direction of a public school. The actual independent homeschoolers in CA declare themselves to be very small private schools, and do not have to play such games, until 2 years from now....

It is a very bad way to go to tell families what to do. Especially since there is not some huge problem going on that you can point to to try and say children are being harmed. By any statistical metric, there are not worse outcomes from the un-monitored, non-state textbook users. There are not worse social outcomes, not more abuse, etc.....

[surfivor]

 That sounds like what I would expect. Spirko was saying government schools where going to fade away. That sounded too optimistic, what mountainmama is saying is kind of what I would expect, but then I am just a conspiracy theorist who follows crazy ideas I am told !

[mountainmoma]

Good news -- AB2756 has been modified, so we have been told, the state web page does not have an update of text yet.

SO, the part calling for mandatory fire inspections of homeschools has been deleted.

However, the bill is still there, they say what it contains is questions added to the annual paper work for private schools ( all homeschoolers in CA are either associated with a public or private school or have declared themselves a very small private school (independent homeschoolers)). It is still being fought by homeschoolers who feel that the proposed questions serve no purpose to what the state needs but is being put there for data gathering, they feel that the state will be able to divide and conquor the various subgroups better next time they try to make new laws using this data.

This is not realy  win yet, as it was easy to drop the inspection part of this bill, due to the new bill proposed that goes much further in scope of potential inspections, etc.... making this fire inspection bill redundant.

[Applejack]

Thanks for the info on that mountainmoma.  Almost sounds like they don't want us raising kids that will one day kick their buts out of office. So if they don't get the proper education they won't have the know how to remove the nut cases out of office. I hate the public school system. I have seen so many children graduate that can't count nor read. If we didn't have cash registers to tell the clerk how much money to give back to the customer they wouldn't know what to do. They really cannot count back change. We need more home schooling and for the states to stay out of it. I know of one girl that was home schooled that works at the market my husband cooks collards for and she is the only one that counts back money. None of the others know how.. She is teaching them to do it. That is so sad.

[mountainmoma]

This bill was dropped, yesterday

https://www.facebook.com/assemblymankiley/videos/1875323649186372/?fref=mentions

[LvsChant]

yippee! Great news...

I think homeschoolers had to work so hard to get the right to educate their children in the first place, that they are quick to mobilize for a threat like this.