A More Perfect Union

Homeschooling, community, and standing up for our own

by Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling, Issue #1, Fall 2007

In California, homeschoolers have essentially two options: they can sign up with a home-education-oriented charter school, or they can register as a private school in their own right. (I say "essentially" because the private tutoring option is expensive and rarely utilized.) The charter option is reassuring in that someone else deals with all the legalities and paperwork (and foots the bill for some educational materials); the private school option is more independent, so no hoops to jump through other than a little paperwork, but you're on your own in every sense of the phrase.

Deborah Uhler, a southern California homeschooler, chose the private school option. Her family gave public school a very long try before they decided to take her son's education into their own hands.

"We took a bright, secure, happy little boy to public school that first day of kindergarten," Uhler told me. "Midway through sixth grade, we withdrew from public school a depressed, physically ill, insecure preteen who had basically given up on himself."

Heartbreakingly familiar territory for many of us. Happily, her son "decompressed" in a remarkably short time. Uhler quit her job, thereby cutting the family's income in half, in order to give their son the space he needed to deschool, remember his love of learning, and become a student again — this time without the torment.

Of course it was scary at first — the kind of scary you laugh about later. The family lived in dread for a while of the truant officer knocking at the door. But Uhler, a go-getter type, realized that the most important thing was to know their rights. She read up, researched, and learned that staying on the right side of the law as a homeschooler in California wasn't so difficult after all.

When her son was sixteen, Uhler was concerned that he wasn't getting enough science lab experience. She decided to send him to Santa Monica College as a concurrently enrolled high school student for two semesters. He did so well there that one of his professors recommended him to SMC's Scholars Program. He had already taken the English and math assessment tests. He graduated from high school, had his official SMC credits and a decent GPA under his belt, and after talking to a school counselor, was ready to become a full-time student as a biology major, looking to transfer to UCLA for his undergraduate degree and then apply to medical school.

"We had our ducks in a row," Deborah Uhler told me. "What could go wrong?"

Plenty. Everything worked out in the end, but only because she knew her rights and didn't back down.

Uhler attempted the usual online admissions process for her son. She assumed that he would be considered a new student rather than a returning one. But because he had a student ID number from his time as a concurrently enrolled high school student, the system was confused by Uhler's introducing him as a "new" student. And when she went to his student records page and tried to enroll him from there, she was told that he had to go through the new student admissions process.

Uhler and her son went to the admissions office to enroll in person. She explained their situation to the young man at the front desk. He looked at the English and math assessment test records, Uhler's son's SMC transcript, their private school transcript, and the high school diploma Deborah Uhler had given her son in honor of his graduation.

Then, since everything was in order, the young man handed her a form to fill out and enrolled her son as a full-time student at SMC.

Well, no, not quite. That would only have happened if reason and sanity ruled our little corner of the universe. Apparently Kafka wrote this young man's script, because his answer in so many words was, "There isn't an embossed gold seal on the transcript. And there is no graduation date. This isn't official."

Deborah Uhler pointed out the official graduation date on both the transcript and the diploma. She then questioned the need for a shiny gold seal as a proof of officialness. The young man told her that he was just trying to keep his supervisor happy, and Uhler said she'd like to speak to that supervisor. Perhaps suspecting that Uhler didn't share his goal of keeping that person's life smooth and unruffled, he asked if she was sure she wanted to wait a long time for his supervisor to tell her the same thing he'd just said. Uhler said that was exactly what she wanted.

"We waited about 30 minutes," Uhler told me. Finally, the supervisor appeared. She looked at all the paperwork and said exactly the same thing the young man had: no official graduation date + no embossed seal = not an authentic transcript.

Uhler was able to correct her about the date. She then questioned her about the all-important gold seal. Surely an inexpensive craft-material purchase wasn't necessary to validate the young man's transcript and diploma, especially considering his history at SMC and letter of recommendation from one of its own professors.

Apparently this woman did not want to go down as the one who spoke against SMC's official need for something shiny. To her credit, she also couldn't see her way clear to supporting that need in the face of reason; so in the time-honored tradition of bureaucrats everywhere, she decided to pass the buck. "I'll take this to the Dean of Admissions," she said.

Deborah Uhler and her son sat down again. This time the wait was a little longer. Finally, Renay Garcia, who is in charge of high school concurrent enrollment, appeared in the reception area. Holding Uhler's paperwork, she said loudly, "Who has the homeschooled child?"

Deborah Uhler got up to talk to her. She explained that she didn't have a homeschooled child, according to California law. She had a son who recently graduated from a registered private school.

Splitting hairs? Possibly. But Uhler's point was that she wasn't asking for special treatment. She'd exercised an entirely valid, legal educational option, and she didn't appreciate being singled out like this.

Uhler and Garcia went through the paperwork together. When they got to the SMC transcript and the Scholars Program letter of recommendation, Renay Garcia said — and Uhler distinguished this as a direct quote, as opposed to some of the paraphrasing she'd given me in her account — "I don't care about any of that. You are not a legitimate, accredited private school. You are a home school. Until your son turns eighteen, or passes the GED [General Educational Development tests], or passes the CHSPE [California High School Proficiency Examination], he will not be enrolled in Santa Monica College."

Garcia then turned on her heel and walked away.

Deborah Uhler took her son home and started e-mailing legal advocates. One responded almost immediately. Uhler told him her story, and gave him her son's SMC student ID number. The next day, the lawyer placed a phone call to Kiersten Elliott, the Associate Dean of Enrollment Services at Santa Monica College.

Deborah Uhler and her son went back to SMC the same day this call was made. They spoke to the person at the front desk. This time, rather than presenting their paperwork and assuming that all would be well, Uhler said that her attorney had called the school and that she, Deborah Uhler, really wasn't in the mood to be stonewalled by Renay Garcia again.

Elliott came out to speak to Uhler and her son after making them wait about half an hour. "Oh, I do think I have a voice-mail from your attorney," she said. "But I haven't spoken with him."

Uhler suggested that she might want to speak with him, because Uhler wasn't leaving until her son was admitted to SMC.

"May I see your documents again?" Elliott asked.

Once again, Uhler handed over her paperwork. "Why don't you just go home?" Kiersten Elliott suggested. "I'll get on the Department of Education web site when I have a minute and confirm that you're a registered and accredited school."

Deborah Uhler didn't actually tell me that her head did all the things a cartoon character's does when shock and outrage strike, but judging from the fact that her e-mail account is thick with all-caps dialogue at this point, I'd say that the Associate Dean was probably witness to a fair amount of smoke jetting from ears, hair flying straight up, cheeks turning brick red, and flames erupting. "I am not leaving," Uhler said emphatically. "You know that I'm not an accredited school. I am a legally registered private school. You might want to speak with your legal counsel, or with mine, but I am not leaving."

Kiersten Elliott went back to her office, and Uhler and her son sat down to wait for about forty minutes. As a working mother, I find the thought of all these minutes and hours wasted in waiting rooms almost as painful as the disrespect with which Uhler (and by extension the homeschooling community) was treated by Santa Monica College.

Finally, Elliott returned. Uhler stood up to greet her and hear the news, but Elliott completely ignored her. She looked Uhler's son straight in the eye, stuck out a hand to shake his, and said, "Congratulations. You are enrolled as a full-time student at Santa Monica College. I wish you luck in the Scholars Program."

The ordeal was over. Finally.

It was upsetting, and tedious, and exhausting. But it was all worth it so far as Uhler was concerned when her son came home after attending his first day as a full-time student at SMC. His words came tumbling out excitedly as he described his classes, his teachers, his new friends.

Uhler herself stressed to me that she believes Santa Monica College to be "a first-class educational institute and a legitimate pathway for people who are not wealthy to get their children accepted to major four-year universities." She especially admires their Scholars Program. Let it not be said, here or anywhere else, that SMC doesn't have a lot to offer. That's exactly why Uhler wanted her son to be able to attend.

If this story were simply about SMC's shameful discriminatory behavior toward homeschoolers employing the PSA option in California, it would warrant little more than a particularly bitter paragraph or two in the "Here We Go Again..." column. But there's something more important going on here. Homeschoolers are being mistreated by one more bureaucracy — and they're feeling cowed and bullied enough to simply let it happen.

I didn't know Deborah Uhler before this incident occurred. I contacted her after she posted about it to a statewide homeschooling loop to which I also belong.

The reason that I was moved to contact her and ask if I could tell her story was that I was as unnerved by the response of the homeschooling community as I was angered by SMC. Uhler posted an abbreviated form of the story she gave me, but she specifically mentioned online that her son's education was referred to as "only a home school," and that she was told he would not be allowed to attend SMC as a high school graduate until he took one of the tests mentioned above since, as a homeschooler, his graduation didn't really count.

I read her story because, though my e-mail box is quite bulgy and I often delete without reading items that don't specifically concern me, I live near SMC. I've even taken a few classes there myself. Some friends of mine work there. I've always assumed that attending would be a good option for my son when he's old enough.

So when I read about how Deborah and her own son were treated, I felt betrayed. Was I paying taxes to support a college that treated homeschoolers like that?

The homeschooling community — at least the segment represented by this particular loop — was brisk and pragmatic. On hearing about Uhler's difficulties, several people suggested that she buy or make a gold seal as described by the staff at SMC. They even gave her some practical suggestions as to how this could be done.

Uhler wrote back, polite but firm. Yes, she knew where she could get a gold seal. That wasn't the point. The point was that SMC was trying to deny her son admission as a full-time student because he was "just" a homeschooler. This was both insulting and illegal.

All of Uhler's paperwork was in order. She was fully informed and aware of her rights, and what she was trying to do was completely within the law. And still she was treated rudely and her son was denied admission until she got a lawyer to call SMC and tell them to get their act together.

I was able to speak to Uhler's lawyer via e-mail, and he confirmed what Deborah had already told me: that Kiersten Elliott never called him back. Uhler speculated to me that it must have been quite the message she received; but when I asked the lawyer, he said that he'd been brief and factual rather than loud and scary. I think that the simple fact of his calling in the first place was as scary as anything needed to be, under the circumstances.

"In my message to the Associate Dean," he explained, "I told her that one of her employees was taking a position that runs contrary to the law regarding the admission process at SMC, and that there are no exceptions merely because the applicant was a ‘homeschooler.'

"In my experience, I've found that a lot of government employees are on a power trip and sometimes it takes a lawyer to tell them they're wrong," he added.

To me, that sums up the good news and the bad news about this story: namely, that there aren't two sides to it. What Santa Monica College was doing was illegal. Uhler was in compliance with the law; they weren't. They bullied and badgered her because they could get away with it. Then, when she made it clear that they couldn't, they did a complete turn-around. No explanation, no apology.

And presumably no guarantee that they won't try to pull this kind of thing again.

Like most homeschoolers, Uhler is not rich. She didn't have a lawyer on retainer that she could call upon for assistance. When she needed legal help, she got on her computer and started looking at the web sites of various California homeschooling organizations. Many of them had links to their legal advice teams posted. She e-mailed all of these that she could find, and an attorney got in touch with her the next day. He had to make exactly one phone call to solve her problem.

Though gratified that the problem was taken care of so easily once she had a representative of the law on her side, Uhler was baffled that she was the one who had to take it on. Many homeschoolers in California utilize the private school option, and many of them send their children to community colleges. Thanks to its location and high transfer rate to major universities, SMC has a very decent share of previously-homeschooled students. Yet when Uhler looked around for help with her particular problem, she couldn't find any site that addressed what she was going through.

What was going on? Why hadn't this been taken care of long before she and her son came on the scene?

She asked her lawyer this, and felt at once validated and baffled by his answer. People get intimidated, he told her. They back off. They wait until their child is a legal adult, or they jump through the hoops — take the proficiency exam or the GED, whatever it takes.

That was exactly the kind of response Uhler got when she turned to fellow homeschoolers for assistance. The ones who weren't advising her on purchasing or manufacturing gold seals were giving her the ins and outs on having her son take the tests in question.

And that's the real point that needs making here.

As homeschoolers, we're used to being independent. The whole reason we homeschool in the first place is that we like to go our own way. We're not looking for a fight. We want to be left in peace to do as we please.

We're also used to being a minority, one that isn't appreciated or understood by the mainstream population. We just want to teach our kids and live our lives.

In other words, we shy away from conflict and do our best to accommodate the world.

And that's exactly why SMC has been able to treat homeschoolers the way they have. And they can't be the only ones doing it, either.

Because instead of asking what on earth a shiny gold embossed seal has to do with anything, we obligingly go out and get one. When told that we are "just" homechoolers — not legitimate, not accredited, not acceptable — we don't flare up indignantly. We don't even blink at the insult. We have our kids take exams to prove that they aren't "just" homeschoolers, but test-passers like anyone else; or we let them wait and apply (or reapply) to college when they're eighteen, so they won't have to admit that they've ever been homeschoolers at all.

We jump through hoops instead of breaking them.

The strangest, saddest part of this particular case and this particular legal situation is that it didn't even require anyone to go to bat and change an unjust law. Deborah Uhler is a strong, warm, spirited woman, but she didn't set any legal precedent. She simply insisted that some bureaucrats follow the laws that already existed.

Uhler was very close to being finished with her son's homeschooling journey when SMC decided to give her a fight. After all the work she'd poured into this endeavor, she was given yet another task to accomplish. And because she had already worked so hard, and thought that the finish line was so near, this one looked even harder than everything she'd already done.

That idea rang a bell for me, and I went and thumbed through a book that was a favorite of mine when I was a child. There it was, in C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy. The main character has just worn himself out on a long, difficult journey; and instead of being thanked for his work or allowed to rest from his exertions, he's informed that he must run with all his remaining strength if everything he's already accomplished is to come to any good at all. I love the unidealized humanness of Shasta's response to this: "He writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one."

Unfair? Absolutely.

True? Utterly.

This isn't just about one college, or one homeschooling family. It is about them, of course, and I hope that Deborah Uhler's work and this article about her will go some way toward changing some very specific behavior on the part of some very specific people. But it's also about a community.

We're a group of very individualistic individuals — and that's a wonderful thing. But it shouldn't stop us from remembering that we are a group. We're seen as one; we're treated like one. We have to act like one sometimes.

Yes, Uhler's son is in the college he loves now. A homeschooler insisted on her full legal rights, and was granted them.

For Deborah Uhler, that's not enough. She wants homeschoolers — not just the one she's directly responsible for, but the whole community — to have the benefit of her experience.

I asked Uhler's lawyer if he had anything he wanted to say to homeschoolers in general about this kind of situation. He recommended that everyone act exactly as Uhler did when she became a homeschooler: read up, be informed about the laws and exactly how they apply to us.

And when, as in Uhler's case, that isn't enough?

"Homeschoolers should never submissively accept something that does not feel right," he said. "I don't mean that they should cause contention or make a scene with a school official. I do mean that every homeschooler should know that there are lawyers who homeschool their kids and who are familiar with what the government can and cannot do. Many questions can be answered by volunteer groups, and when a situation calls for more aggressive action, there are other attorneys who can, and want to, help."

It's time to stop making gold seals and start making changes.

It's time to ask, when hoops are held expectantly before us: Am I jumping through this because I have to, or because I'm tired? Is this necessary, or just easier?

And what's it going to be like for the one in line behind me if I reinforce the idea that jumping or walking quietly away are the only options?

When you're a homeschooler, sometimes it's all you can do to get through the day. You do just what you have to, and you're amazed you managed to even get that much done.

Every once in a while, though, it's time to be loud and insistent and say that you and your community are a force to be reckoned with.

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