Lots of this whole case may well be the rantings of a young lady with borderline personality disorder, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of suspicious things around it.
I know from experience that homeschooling support groups can (intentionally or not) make a mountain out of a molehill.
One time I received a pointed letter from a school, telling me that my kids needed to show up (in about a week and a half) for annual assessment testing. This was outrageous and clearly in violation of the state’s homeschooling requirements.
Nothing surprises me, but this did seem odd, because experience told me that the administration was lazy - too lazy to wage ideological battles.
As I reread the letter, noting certain details (e.g. a request not to make medical/dental appointments that week), I realized that in the true spirit of incompetence, the schools sent this letter to all parents, even though the information was relevant only to public school parents and students.
I called the school to clarify, and indeed that was the case. The administrator did want to know if my children were going to participate, or if we had gone with another option. Makes sense, as he would need to have enough tests.
I dealt with the situation locally, and intelligently. No need to freak out and call HSLDA. However...
A few weeks later, in a regular HSLDA email update, there it was. Included in articles documenting the latest attempts to usurp homeschooling rights, was the story of my state sending out these letters. Nowhere in the article was the letter put into proper context. It was reported that (paraphrasing) “several of our members contacted us to report that their local schools sent letters blah blah blah requiring their children participate in the state’s assessment testing”. Of course we can sleep easy though, HSDLA got right to work and beat back the beast. Yeah, whatever.
Trouble is, knee-jerk parents, or parents who put themselves on the radar by ignoring basic requirements, draw negative attention to the homeschooling movement. Not hard to see how activist judges will then see a green light to “solve” these problems.
And another thing...
Whatever I had to submit to the local school at the end of the school year (e.g. test scores), I had the school copy in my presence for *my* records. I also required them to stamp my copies with their “received” stamp, dated and initialed. After all, if they lost stuff, it would be my word against the machine.
One year, in late summer, I received a call from the school, asking for the paperwork that *I was supposed to turn in* (see what I mean?) a few months earlier. Well I just happened to be sitting next to my files, and pulled out my copy with the received stamp, informing the school representative of the date I submitted the documentation. Ooops, guess he’d better look harder for his copy. A few weeks later another person called for the same reason, so I had to repeat myself. They stopped calling after that. If I didn’t have those copies, I would have been the guilty party by default. That could have become a nightmare.