Amid concerns about the impact of school choice legislation on the homeschooling community, a measure to codify established homeschool freedoms received a public hearing in the Texas House.
House Bill 2674 by State Rep. David Cook (R-Mansfield) would prohibit any state regulation of homeschooling.
Cook presented his bill during Tuesday’s House Public Education Committee meeting.
“House Bill 2674 is a straightforward bill that reinforces Texas’ long-standing commitment to educational freedom and parental rights by prohibiting any increase in regulation on homeschool programs,” Cook told the committee.
Cook explained that HB 2674 builds on the landmark 1994 Texas Supreme Court decision in Leeper v. Arlington ISD, which held that homeschooling is a legal and legitimate form of education.
“That case settled a decades-long legal battle and established the foundation for educational freedom in Texas. House Bill 2674 seeks to protect that freedom for future generations by simply codifying it in statute,” he concluded.
Texas Home School Coalition Vice President Jeremy Newman testified in favor of the measure, starting with a “brief history lesson” on homeschooling.
“Back in 1915, when Texas created the compulsory attendance statute, more than 90 percent of the students in Texas were homeschooled. And it was somewhere around 65 years later when somebody at the Texas Education Agency just kind of arbitrarily decided that homeschooling should be illegal,” Newman told the committee.
“And so 65 years-ish after that compulsory attendance statute was created, they started prosecuting homeschool families, and there were criminal prosecutions. Some homeschool parents went to jail. Some parents lost their children,” he said.
Newman said it became “a common practice” for homeschool families to have a place for their children to hide if someone knocked on the door during school hours.
“And there was a decade-long legal battle that ended at the Texas Supreme Court in 1994, where they unanimously ruled that homeschooling had always been legal and that it was improper for the state education agency to try and ban homeschooling,” he testified.
He said the purpose of House Bill 2674 is to prevent future attempts by state agencies to regulate homeschools or ban homeschooling.
“It’s happened before in Texas,” he added.
It wasn’t that long ago, so there’s maybe a little bit of sensitivity to the possibility that it could one day occur again in the future. All that House Bill 2674 does is solidify the status quo that we’ve had for the last 30 years in homeschooling to make sure that the freedoms that we’ve had since 1994 continue into the future.
State Rep. Charles Cunningham (R–Humble) asked how the bill would affect homeschoolers who choose to accept an ESA (Education Savings Account) under the state’s pending school choice measure.
“It wouldn’t affect them,” responded Newman. “The language that is in the bill is essentially synonymous with the autonomy section of the ESA bill that already prohibits any regulation of the homeschool educational program, which is exactly what this bill does.”
HB 2674 was left pending in committee.
With just 40 days remaining in the 140-day regular legislative session, time is running short for House bills to progress through the committee process and ultimately to passage by both chambers before the calendar runs out.
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