Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Call your state representatives to support HB 1580



House Bill 1580 – an act relative to home schooling -- needs your immediate support! Please forward this message, asking everyone you know to help!

Never before in twenty years have home schooling parents had such an opportunity to restore their freedom as they have right now, thanks to a wonderful bill introduced by Rep. Paul Ingbretson.

It is urgent that home schooling parents, their friends and supporters all contact their state representatives immediately to ask for the passage of HB 1580. Ask them to restore the “presumption of innocence” for hardworking and responsible parents who instruct their children.

Give your own personal reasons as to why this bill, which provides an alternative to the current adversarial home education law, would help to make education in better for everyone.

Find your Legislator: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/house/members/housemembers.html


A rally will be held in front of the NH State House as soon as a date for the House vote is scheduled. We encourage everyone to attend this important rally in support of freedom. Unlike previous rallies, which opposed additional regulations, this rally will be in celebration of freedom!


Key points:

· HB 1580 would restore the compulsory attendance law, RSA 193:1 to its original purpose. This compulsory attendance law was never intended to apply to parents who were responsibly instructing their children. It was intended for parents who were not undertaking this important obligation; it was intended for parents, who were derelict in their duty, their fundamental right and responsibility, to instruct their own children.

· HB 1580 restores this unencumbered exemption for children instructed by their parents as written in the original compulsory attendance statute of 1871.

· HB 1580 also restores a parent’s due process rights, which date back to the Magna Carta, and include: equal treatment under the law, the presumption of innocence, no searches or seizures without probable cause, etc. Due process holds the government subservient to the law of the land, protecting individual persons from the state.

· HB 1580 enumerates compulsory education requirements, which include instruction in science, mathematics, language, etc., ensuring that the state interest in education is satisfactorily met, while existing statute, RSA 169-C:3 XIX(b), protects children from abusive or neglectful parents.

· The House Education committee admits that HB 1580 contains valid constitutional language, yet the majority of the committee claims that placing this valid constitutional language into statute is “inappropriate” as it would create “problems” with the current home education statute. No, kidding! The current home educational law is unconstitutional! That is exactly the problem. Yet the majority of the committee rejected HB 1580, which would resolve this constitutional problem.

· On Jan. 25, 2010 Chairwoman Rous sent a letter from the House Education Committee to the Department of Education, endorsed by eight other committee members, seeking increased regulation of home education similar to those regulations found in the recently defeated and controversial HB 368, which was voted IT
L 324-34 on Jan. 13, 2010. These House Education Committee members display little respect for decisions of the House.


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Did you realize that parents are free to educate their children at home:

----without notifying the state in AK, CT, NJ, ID, TX, MO, IL, IN, MI and OK;

---- with notification requirements only in DE, KY, AL, MS, WI, NE, KS, NM, WY, MT, UT, NV, CA and AZ.

That's about half the country that allows parents to instruct their children at home without
any supervision whatsoever. NH currently has one of the most restrictive laws in the country.

Educational freedom is dead in the "Live free or die" state.