By Carolyn Martin (CHEC Director of Government Relations)
School Districts Overstepping
School districts across the state continue to ask for information not required by the homeschool law. It’s important not to give it to them because they won’t stop at just asking for innocent information.
In 2022, the APEX part-time public school program in the St. Vrain School District came on my radar because the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) was getting ready to defund the program. The government advocate for the school was able to get the funding restored through the School Finance bill (HB22-1390) in the waning days of the session.
Since then, on the St. Vrain School District’s website, homeschoolers residing within their district are told to file their notice of intent (NOI) to the Superintendent and then they direct all homeschoolers to send them to their part-time homeschool program, APEX. In addition, despite the law being very clear the NOI can be filed in any district in the state, their website states, “it is advisable to notify the residing school district as well to avoid truancy action” implying there could be problems if the NOI is not filed with them.