Posted 08/29/08

The 94th session of the Michigan legislature is one that will be remembered as being the biggest threat to family and educational freedoms, particularly home school freedoms, ever. But as this legislative session begins to wind down, the good news is that by the grace of God and solid support from a key leader, so far, those freedoms remain intact.

As a reminder, here are the pertinent pieces of legislation that the Democrat controlled House of Representatives and Democrats in the Senate have introduced that would threaten families and usurp parental rights, especially home school families.

HB4042 and SB11 – Increases the compulsory attendance age from 16 to 18 years of age.

HB4662 and SB162 – Lowers the compulsory attendance age from six to five years old.

HB5912 – Requires that home school parents report annually the names and ages of their home schooled children to the local public school district in which they live.

When these bills were introduced INCH and HSLDA issued joint “elerts” requesting home school families contact the bill sponsors and voice your opposition to the bills and then again when House Education Committee members took up the bills. Despite thousands of calls and emails from concerned parents across the state, the Democrat majority passed both HB4042 and HB4662 out of committee and sent them to the House floor for a vote. That vote has not yet happened.

Meanwhile, the Republican majority in the Senate, and particularly the Republican majority in the Senate Education Committee under the chairmanship of Senator Wayne Kuipers, has kept the senate version of these bills buried in committee where we have a firm commitment they will not see the light of day.

There is little doubt that if the senate had become a Democrat majority in the last election these bills would now be law. Our Democrat governor has called for both the increase to age 18 and the lowering to age 5 of the compulsory attendance law in her most recent State-of-the-state addresses. Additionally, she has called for mandatory full day kindergarten and public school pre-school programs to be implemented statewide.

Once again we should remind ourselves that it matters which party is in control and that when we vote for a candidate we are voting to put that party in control of the House or Senate. Whichever party is in the majority sets the agenda, chairs the committees, and passes the bills they want out of those committees. For 12 years, from 1994 through 2006, the Republicans held the majority in both the House and Senate in Lansing. During that time, though several bills were introduced by Democrats to place new restrictions on home school families, never once did any of those bills make it out of the Education Committee because the Republicans were in the majority.

During this most recent session of the legislature our home school freedom and parental rights have been severely threatened by the Democrat majority in the House. It is only by the grace of God and the fact that the Republicans still hold the majority in the Senate that those freedoms and rights are still intact today!

We need to remember to let our values be our guide this election season and vote for the party that best represents those values. Because putting the right party in the majority makes all the difference.