Anchorage Daily News

ANCHORAGE -- Some home-schooling parents may go their own way if the state Education Department moves ahead with a plan to strengthen its control of publicly funded correspondence and home-school programs, according to home-school proponents.

The state Department of Education and Early Development intends to increase the amount home-schooling parents may spend on fine arts, music and physical education.

That increase, however, will be capped, which does not sit well with parents who educate their children via in-district home-school programs, which do not have a cap.

The proposed changes would also require individual school districts to exert greater control over the curriculum available to parents who educate their children at home.

"The more the state begins to yank our chain, we're going to pull out," said Elizabeth Gilroy of Wasilla, who home schools her three children through her school district's correspondence study program.

Alaska parents have a right to educate their children without using programs funded by the state or federal government, she said.

The state, however, wants to bring uniformity to a disparate field, according to education officials. State finance director Eddy Jeans said the changes, which are detailed in 14 pages of amendments to Article 4 of the state Administrative Code, are intended to make "everybody play by the same rules."

CAP ON ARTS, MUSIC

Article 4 has regulated statewide correspondence study and home-schooling programs since 2004. Since then, school districts have created and managed their own programs within their own boundaries. There are 10,400 students in Alaska currently enrolled in correspondence and home-school programs paid for with public funds. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District boasts the state's highest enrollment in a district program.

District programs provide similar services as statewide programs, but "they weren't held to the same standards," Jeans said

The proposed changes to Article 4, which come before the state School Board for consideration May 28, "are about accountability and equity," Education Commissioner Barbara Thompson told school administrators from across the state May 2 in Anchorage.

Students in correspondence or home-school programs receive an allotment of between $200 and $2,000, depending on the district in which they reside. They may spend up to $807 of that allotment on arts, music and physical education. That sum represents 15 percent of the base student allocation, the formula on which the state bases its school funding.

The amendment would allow districts to increase that cap to 25 percent, or $1,370. Even so, the fact that the state imposes any cap at all rankles home-school proponents.

Sharon Hatch of Juneau, who educates her children via the statewide program Raven Correspondence, said children in public schools have no such spending cap in spending for fine arts, music and physical education. She said the state is "biased" against home-schooling families.

"I see it as a punishment by restricting us," said Hatch. "But if we're going to have these regulations imposed on us, then they might as well make it fair and impose them on everybody."

A WEDGE ISSUE

The fact the state wants to extend its reach has driven a wedge between home-schooling parents, who are generally leery of government control and the state, Gilroy said.

That troubles Rick Luthi, principal of the Mat-Su correspondence study program, and Lee Young, principal of Connections home school program in the Kenai Peninsula School District.

"Anything that may lead to restrictions, we don't know that it's in the best interest of our children," Luthi said. The Mat-Su School District regulates its home-school program, he said.

The Mat-Su District School Board on Wednesday passed a resolution opposing the amendments.

If the amendments pass, "it'll change how we do business," Young said.

But Tim Cline, the program director for the statewide Interior Distance Education of Alaska, said he's pleased with the proposed changes, which families have been lobbying for since Article 4 was approved in 2004.

"We're saying we should embrace these and thank (the Education Department) for taking another look," Cline said.

Gilroy disagrees.

"The state doesn't know your child; you do as the parent. For those of us who stay in district, putting money back into the district -- leave us alone," she said. "This is not the solution."

Find Melodie Wright at adn.com/contact/mwright or 352-6721.

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TO READ THE full text of Article 4, 4 AAC33, go to

www.eed.state.ak.us/regs/comment/4AAC_33.pdf.

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