Court Orders Home-Schooled Girl into Public School

Court Orders Home-Schooled Girl into Public School





From Focus on the Family,
8/27/09
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has asked a New Hampshire court to reconsider its decision to order a 10-year-old home-schooled girl into public school.

"Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children," said ADF-allied attorney John Anthony Simmons. "In this case, the court is illegitimately altering a method of education that the court itself admits is working."

The parents of the girl are divorced, and the mother has been home-schooling her. In the process of renegotiating the terms of a parenting plan for the girl, the guardian ad litem concluded that the girl "appeared to reflect her mother's rigidity on questions of faith" and that the girl's interests "would be best served by exposure to a public school setting."

Judge Lucinda V. Sadler approved the recommendation and issued the order July 14.

"The New Hampshire Supreme Court itself has specifically declared, 'Home education is an enduring American tradition and right,' " said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson. "There is clearly and without question no legitimate legal basis for the court's decision, and we trust it will reconsider its conclusions."

Mike Donnelly, staff attorney at the Home School Legal Defense Association, agreed this is "not the place for the courts to be inserting themselves."