A handful of legislators on the House Education Committee, and a few employees at the Department of Education, want your homeschooled children to be required to study 'government' (along with a bunch of other stuff) every year.

While I am prepared to work to defend our right to choose when to study government, why not study right now??

Don't worry that you have missed a few of the classes that have already been held -- the ones where Rep. Rous and Rep. Day, Rep. Burke and Rep. Harvey, Ms. Tenney and Atty. Browning have announced their ideas for more regulation, and where dozens of homeschoolers have very studiously kept track of regulators' concerns, learning the mechanisms by which they seek to turn their concerns about "outliers" into controls over you.

You can jump right into the course this week.  On Thursday, the twenty legislators who make up the House Education Committee meet at 10 am at the Legislative Office Building (LOB) in Concord to consider the homeschooling bill that they retained for study last March.  The Ed Comm will hear from the five HB368 subcommittees which Rep Rous appointed to study how you homeschool.   I guarantee that you will be enlightened by your observations of how the Ed Comm legislates.  There is nothing like being there -- no account, no recording, no remote viewing can convey all the rich realities of the real-life situation. 

Does this Thursday's class conflict with geometry or biology?   You are in luck -- there are more offerings scheduled.  On January 6, HB368,  in whatever form it takes, will be before the entire 400 member House of Representatives.  You can watch that happen from the gallery of historic Representative's Hall (and get double credit for history and government).  That could be the end of HB368..... or if it passes there, it will go on to the 24 members of the NH Senate, and we will have another several months to study the Senate's intentions for us, and potentially the Governor's ideas about our regulation as well, if the bill passes the Senate. 

Meanwhile over on the Pleasant Street campus, in the Department of Education building, we can learn more about the executive branch of government as the Governor's appointees on the State Board of Education consider new rules for homeschoolers.  More on that soon.

So much learning and so little time..... but don't say I didn't tell you about all these marvelous opportunities to study your freedoms being dissected and rearranged in the halls of government over the next few days, weeks, and months.  Those of us who have been in class right along don't want to keep all this education to ourselves!  We'd be happy to have a few more classmates. 

Of course, we would also like to tend our vegetable gardens and get the laundry done, but the legislature does not require that (yet).

-- Mary Faiella