Home-school ruling has little effect here

A state court ruling that parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children won't affect such instruction in the Yuba-Sutter area, parents and educators here say.

"We haven't heard anything that would say we need to change what we're currently doing," Gay Todd, superintendent of the Marysville Joint Unified School District, said Thursday.

Barbara Evans, principal of the Abraham Lincoln Home School, which is among Marysville Joint Unified District schools, said she was surprised by the state court ruling.

"There's nothing that says a parent can't be a teacher," Evans said of state law.

The Feb. 28 ruling by the 2nd Appellate District in Southern California disputed a Los Angeles County Superior Court decision that parents have the right to home-school their children.

The appellate court ruling has alarmed some in the home-school movement in California. However, Rose Godfrey, 40, who home-schools three of her children in the community of Hallwood, said, "I don't think we have anything to worry about."

"Home-schooling is here to stay," Godfrey said.

The appellate court ruling is "getting more attention than it deserves," she said.

Martha West, a retired U.C. Davis School of Law professor who also served as a trustee of the Davis Joint Unified School District from 1997-2005, said she doesn't expect the state court ruling to impact home-schooling as a whole.

"It's very dependent on the facts," West said of the legal decision, which involved an attorney representing two of eight children in a family asking the juvenile court in Los Angeles County to order that the two home-schooled youths be enrolled in a public or private school.

California has six appellate district courts.

West said it's common to have contradictory rulings among the half-dozen such courts that serve different regions of the state.

West described the first wave of home schooling as involving evangelical Christians but said, "It's now become a much broader movement."

Todd said that demand for home schooling here has declined in recent years as more and more parents have had to work and so are unable to instruct their children.

"There are still a select group of parents who chose to educate their children at home," she added.

The Yuba City Unified School District referred questions about the state court ruling to Chuck Whitecotton, whose duties include serving as principal of Albert Powell High School, a continuation school in Yuba City. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Exact figures on the number of students home-schooled in the Yuba-Sutter area were not available.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com.