We awoke today to a coordinated effort to push Raylee’s Law through the WV Senate and House before Wednesday’s crossover deadline. The method uses various bills and angles. We are calling for prayer, which is the strong reaction needed.
We will report as things unfold. Below is the information we provided for SB 972. It is applicable for most versions of the various bills trying to gain traction on the Senate and House floors today. More extensive details and arguments can be found in this article, which is still just as applicable as it was when written 6 years ago. Yes, this battle is over 6 years old! Let us not grow weary…
Existing laws already address the issue and provide a fair avenue for addressing it:
- Our current law enables the county superintendent to seek an order from the county circuit court denying home instruction of a child.
- Our current law encourages any person to make a report to authorities if that person “has reasonable cause to suspect that a child has been abused or neglected…”
This bill reverses the burden of proof:
- Current law puts the burden of proof on the state to provide evidence that the child should not be educated at home by their parent. This law flips that and says an accused parent is prohibited from homeschooling until the complaint is resolved unless they convince a circuit judge that they should be allowed.
The proposed law seems to restrict constitutional guarantees.
- The proposed law would place a restriction on homeschooling without probable cause or due process. This restriction is based only on an accusation – no investigation, no substantiation, no hearing.
- Any bad actor who wanted to stop a parent from homeschooling could do so simply by making an anonymous abuse complaint.
- A complaint as simple as a neighbor seeing a child ride a bike without a helmet could keep the parent from starting to homeschool their child. That is true even if the allegation is a complete fabrication.
There is no requirement for a timely investigation and no cap for how long home instruction is prohibited.
- DHHR is overworked and understaffed. They run a backlog of cases, with some complaints taking 6 months to investigate.
- There is no time limit to the restriction on homeschooling – the ban continues for as long as the investigation is pending.
- This bill would restrict a parent’s fundamental right to educate their child at home because of a complaint that is unlikely to be substantiated.
DHHR acknowledges that less than 10 percent of the more than 100,000 reports made to that agency since the middle of 2023 were ultimately deemed to be substantiated.
Wording in the bill seems to prohibit a current homeschool parent – not just those withdrawing from public school – from continuing to homeschool their child:
- The law states that “When a child is the subject of a pending investigation of abuse or neglect pursuant to this article, and the alleged perpetrator is a custodial parent, guardian, or other person responsible for the child’s care… the alleged perpetrator may not assume or resume responsibility as the primary provider of home instruction for the child.” [ From the proposed (b) and (b)(2).] This is unclear, at best, and could potentially cause extreme and unnecessary upheaval in the lives of good families wrongfully accused.
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