Highlights from our interview with Anita Scott, Director of Public Policy at the Texas Homeschool Coalition.
Q: Lone Star Standard
What does the Texas Homeschool Coalition do?
A: Anita Scott
Since 1986, Texas Homeschool Coalition has been advocating, protecting, and defending the right of Texas homeschool families to homeschool freely in Texas. As you may know, Texas is one of the freest states to homeschool. There are no federal regulations to homeschool. And, in 194, the Texas Supreme Court voted unanimously 9 to 0 to put that freedom into law.
Homeschool is considered a type of private school. So, that’s what we’ve been doing over the last three decades is protecting what was put into law in 1994.
We have over 600,000 homeschool families in Texas. So it is now a mainstream form of education. It used to be an alternative. It used to be taboo and hush hush. It was even illegal. What we do is advocate for our members by providing a robust amount of curriculum resources. We have a team of expert homeschool coaching parents who work with our homeschool families.
Q: Lone Star Standard
How did homeschooling become legal in Texas?
A: Anita Scott
In 1986, there was an attorney out of Fort Worth, Texas named Shelby Sharp who decided that the prosecution against homeschool families had gone too far. So, he reached out to the homeschool families and they rallied and sued every school district in Texas.
At that time Texas had over 1,100 school districts. Now we have over 1,200 school districts in Texas. The families sued every school district in order to say that they should have the right to homeschool their children. And at that time, we had an Attorney General who said families and parents shouldn’t homeschool their children. That they were not fit to raise their children. The Attorney General at the time was AG Maddox.
The homeschool families sued every school district in Texas, and then they rallied at the Capitol, and there was a hearing set to take place at the Texas Education building. They expected it to be over a thousand families and didn’t think they had the capacity to hold these families. So they moved the hearing to the Lyndon B. Johnson building in Austin and over 6,000 families showed up.
Q: Lone Star Standard
Can homeschool kids participate in school district sports and activities?
A: Anita Scott
When we talk about sports, fortunately, in 2021, the Texas Homeschool Coalition passed House Bill 547 which allows homeschoolers to participate in UIL activities. And so now they get to participate. That bill passed in 2021 and they are now competing in athletics, music, and academic programs.
In 2023, we then passed HB 3708 which allows public schools to receive $1,500 per homeschool student per activity that the school allows homeschoolers to participate in UIL activities. So, if you have a son in junior high and he wants to compete in chess, he wants to play in the band, and he is a football quarterback, that’s three activities right there. The school district would automatically receive $4,500. And that was the Texas Homeschool Coalition’s way of helping to offset the cost of UIL activities.
We recognize public school districts might have a myth that says if the homeschooler is deciding to homeschool, why would we allow them to participate in our competitions. Well, we wanted to remove that myth and the narrative that this is not fair. We decided, let’s pass a bill and have legislation that was agreed on by both sides, the House and the Senate and let’s incentivize them to participate. And then we can take down the walls that would prevent homeschool kids from participating in sports.
Anita Scott is a former teacher and assistant principal. She is currently the Director of Public Policy at the Texas Homeschool Coalition.
This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-18-anita-scott.
