A bit of awkward fallout is rippling through the nation’s school systems, as the national school board organization spearheading a national school safety policy refuses to budge on dropping its lawsuit against state home school associations.
That’s because half of the states have not backed down on the fight against the National School Boards Association, leading this week to some tension.
As a result, Florida’s new attorney general, who once served as the head of the National School Boards Association, and Louisiana’s superintendent of education, who is currently the head of the association, are at odds with former colleagues.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran on a “neither left nor right” platform, has taken a strongly conservative turn and stopped defending the ASA’s position that home schooling be considered public education if applied to all children.
He called for the ASA to “abandon its lawsuit” and called on schools to engage with parents on the “common good.”
The Florida Department of Education filed court papers in 2015, but has said the executive branch has no authority to directly address the issue of student state funding or public-school funding based on homeschooled students.
The State School Boards Association had filed a lawsuit challenging the denial of state aid to Louisiana’s home school families, saying they are counted as public school students under state education law.
And the executive director of the Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education indicated last week that his state’s legal challenges of states that oppose the association’s stance are still on the table.
That puts Louisiana superintendent James Meza at odds with current board president Susan Gette, who once served as the executive director of the school board association.
In a statement emailed Thursday, Gette said she was disappointed DeSantis backed away from the association’s national school safety policy, which has been under fire since it was released in January.
Gette called for the ASA to stop its “misguided lawsuits against home schools and schools as a whole” and to “find a new way forward that respects and advances education for all children.”
She suggested the association ask its members for permission to drop the lawsuit and said the association must focus on evidence-based school safety policy.
Gette also warned the National School Board Association against committing the same kind of invasion of privacy into the lives of home school families, saying “using private home schools to advance a national policy should be explicitly, and explicitly, discouraged.”
She added: “No one disputes the need for school safety; but having made that good faith effort, the National School Board Association should do its part to focus on supporting school district leaders, who have special expertise, and a wide variety of solutions.”
The association said it stood by its lawsuit, citing the ESA statute and saying that states have their own interpretation of how the ESA policy “works.”
DeSantis’ critics are contending that the national school safety policy isn’t working for some students, noting that the executive director of the school board association recently announced a new program in which some school districts were dropping student discipline policies.
At that same news conference, the executive director said that under the new program students who go through the new “vouch for pupil” process could effectively have their class assignments sent back to the home school district.
He noted that the Washington area had lost a couple of home school organizations because of the ASA’s legal challenges. He acknowledged the “dilemma” schools are faced with in the national policy, but said the organization needed to help preserve school district autonomy.