Breitbart.com posted an article today illustrating the impact President Obama’s threats regarding the ‘bathroom’ (should be called ‘locker room’) bill. Even homeschoolers are worried.
The article reports:
Tina Hollenbeck, a homeschooling parent in Wisconsin, tells Breitbart News, “If homeschoolers take vouchers or any other form of government funding ‘help’ – even an ‘educational expenses credit’ on their taxes – they are enslaving themselves to government mandates.”
“And by choosing to entangle themselves, they jeopardize homeschooling freedom for all,” she adds. “That’s because of the very simple economic principle that ‘he who pays gets the say.’”
Hollenbeck – the developer of the Homeschool Resource Roadmap –explains that if homeschooling families accept any taxpayer funding from government entities at any level, the government then has the right to demand “accountability” from them.
“And it doesn’t matter if it’s merely a credit on their own taxes because the minute money makes its way into government coffers, the bureaucrats consider it to belong to the government and act accordingly with their rules and (unconstitutional) laws,” she asserts.
Karen Braun, an activist homeschooling parent who is the lead content writer for the Stop Common Core in Michigan website, observes the costs of accepting federal funding with an administration that “shreds local and state control.”
According to a website entitled Federal Education Policy History:
The U.S. established a Department of Education first in 1867. This original department, however, was not a cabinet level agency, and within a few years was replaced with a bureau and then an office.
On October 17, 1979 President James E. Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act (P.L. 96-88; 93 Stat. 668). It replaced the Office of Education with a department proper, and installed a secretary at its head.
The Department of Education was made a cabinet position as a reward for the teachers’ union’s support of Jimmy Carter during the 1976 presidential election.
According to the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
We have come a long way from that concept, and our nation is failing because of that.
The article at Breitbart.com concludes:
Hollenbeck, however, asserts that parents’ right to provide that safe place to learn at home is compromised in our current political environment.
“Once bureaucrats get a foothold into controlling some homeschoolers, they’ll find ways to extend that to all,” she warns. “Thus, the only way to maintain all homeschoolers’ independence from government overreach into our homes is by everyone refusing any and all offers of government-sponsored financial ‘help.’ When we pay, we get the say – as it should be.”
Breitbart News reached out to Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) to ask how the organization believes the Obama administration’s gender identity “decree” will affect homeschooling in the United States.
“We expect that this will drive up the numbers in homeschooling the same way that Common Core did,” responded Michael Farris, Jr. of HSLDA Media Relations. “Parents want to have the final say in their children’s education, not have the federal government do it for them.”
Once the camel gets his nose inside the tent, there is no telling where he will end up.