The New Jersey Senate is set to consider a bill on Thursday that would require families who homeschool their children to register with their local governments and the governments to publish their data.
Senate Bill 1796 (SB 1796), sponsored by New Jersey state Sen. Angela McKnight (D) would require a “parent or guardian to annually notify” their local school district, in written form, of their intention to homeschool their children.
“The letter shall include the name, date of birth, and grade level of the child, and the name of the person who will provide instruction to the child,” the latest version of the bill’s text reads.
Under SB 1796, the school district will be required to “annually compile and make available for public inspection on its website information concerning the number of children who reside in the district who are being home-schooled” and what grades they are in. It does not include any provisions to protect the privacy of the individual children or families in question and does not provide a legal definition for the term “homeschool,” which opponents have observed does not formally exist in New Jersey law.
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which opposes the bill, alerted its members on Tuesday that on Thursday, June 5, a legislative hearing will be held regarding SB 1796. The bill appears on the docket for a New Jersey Senate Education Committee hearing scheduled for that day.
The HSLDA opposed the bill on the grounds that it would create “pointless and burdensome red tape”:
Senate Bill 1796 would require every homeschool family in New Jersey to file a letter with their public school superintendent expressing their intent to homeschool their children. The birth date and grade level of each child would be required as well, and the bill provides no privacy protection.
In a post on X, HSLDA encouraged homeschool families in the state to “call or email” their state senator and to ask them to oppose SB 1796.
Currently, there are “no real requirements” for families who decide to homeschool their children in New Jersey, according to Bridgeway Academy’s website. It is one of the country’s least regulated states for homeschooling, which has allowed for the growth of a thriving environment of homeschool co-ops and other communities.
“Under New Jersey Law, you must give your child an education that is academically ‘equivalent’ to what he or she would receive at school-which is not to say ‘identical,’” the website noted.
The New Jersey Department of Education’s website lists “two circumstances in which a parent/guardian of a child will be required to inform the local board of education of the intent to education his/her child elsewhere than at school.”
Under the first example, if a “parent/guardian attempts to register a student in a local school district and the district refuses to enroll the student” and the parent or guardian does not send the district an intent to appeal, the “parent/guardian is required to provide a statement of verification regarding” whether their child will go to school in another school district, a private school, or be homeschooled.
The second circumstance covers the following scenario:
If a parent/guardian decides to remove an enrolled student from his/her high school educational program, the parent/guardian will be required to complete a transfer form which includes information related to the intent to provide instruction elsewhere than at school for the purposes of collecting accurate data on high school enrollment.
In 2017, as an assemblywoman, McKnight introduced legislation to give parents homeschooling their children the opportunity to “claim a tax credit for their out-of-pocket expenses for homeschooling their children,” NJ.com reported in 2017.
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