This morning, we intercepted an email from a school superintendent in Northwest Arkansas. The superintendents are rallying to support Rep. Cook’s bad home school bill (HB 2144), and would like nothing more than to see parents lose their right to home school.
Yesterday I was told that the House of Representatives has been inundated with phone calls from home schoolers. This is very good news, but there are still home schoolers out there who have not called any representatives or left any messages at the Arkansas Capitol Building. I cannot stress enough how important it is that we continue calling. The public school superintendents, administrators, and teachers plan to take this fight up a notch. If we do not continue to engage our representatives, they may be swayed.
You can continue calling your representatives at the Capitol in Little Rock until around 4:00 PM on Friday. After that, you can reach them at home over the weekend using the phone numbers we provided here.
For your benefit, below is a copy of the email we received. Please keep it in mind as you contact your representatives.
—————————–Original Email—————————–
Each session we hear that something needs to be done on the Home Schooling front. We all know and understand that there are legitimate home school folks, but the vast majority of the ones that we see leaving during the middle of the semester are not making that decision because they feel unsafe or are not getting a good education, they are leaving to avoid attendance issues, behavioral problems, etc. We still have too large a percentage not completing the required testing.
If we are to see any changes on this matter, it will take a mass effort on the part of educators in our public schools, central office administrators, building administrators and teachers are going to have to carry your concerns to your Senators and Representatives. This morning we were told by numerous members of the legislature that if we wanted to see any changes such as those proposed in Rep. Cook’s HB 2144, then we needed to get very active..
The home school folks bombarded the whole General Assembly yesterday with emails asking them to vote no on this bill. They must hear from us in our schools in order to have the support to make this happen. this does not need to be a form message, but one full of actual experiences you have encountered at your local schools.
Make appointments this weekend to meet face to face with those representatives to share those experiences and concerns so they can be armed with the knowledge that need to stay the course in making these much needed changes. We hear all the time that we need to police our ranks among the public schools, I believe it is time that the home school folks police their ranks and this bill begins to have greater expectations for those choosing this option of education of our future citizens.
I would persuade you to attend the Legislative Update Saturday morning at 7:00 at Hammonds Center.
Donna Hutchison – hutchisond@arkleg. state.ar. us – Home phone – 479-876-6011
Cecile Bledsoe – bledsoec@arkleg. state.ar. us – cecilebledsoe@ yahoo.com – Home 479-876-6011 Website – cecilelistens. com