Pro HSLDA Talking Points – Why We Highly Recommend HSLDA

HSLDA is the only legal defense association we can recommend to homeschooling parents desiring to protect their families and freedoms in homeschooling. We recommend them very highly.

Roy Hanson
Founder and Director, Family Protection Ministries

Pro-HSLDA Talking Points
Printable Version

The following “talking points” present the reasons and benefits for private homeschoolers (especially in a “private school state” like California) to be members of HSLDA, as opposed to being members of any other organization that might offer to provide “legal protection” for private homeschoolers.

  1. HSLDA is the only organization that has 25 years of experience, connections, and resources focusing primarily on protecting homeschool freedoms and parental rights.
    1. HSLDA has been directly involved in writing and protecting the laws affecting private home education in all 50 states and at the federal level.
    2. This unique experience gives them an in-depth and thorough understanding of how the laws affecting private homeschooling work differently in each state.
    3. HSLDA has successfully intervened directly with local public schools, social workers, the Department of Education, and state agencies on behalf of homeschoolers.
    4. HSLDA has successfully kept families out of court who were investigated for truancy, for example School Attendance Review Board hearings.
    5. HSLDA puts their resources toward keeping their members out of court. HSLDA has successfully defended families in court in the few cases that have gotten that far.
    6. HSLDA successfully coordinated the victory in the Jonathan L. court case.
  2. HSLDA is the only organization that has developed the specific area of expertise in private home education and associated parental rights during the last quarter of a century of focused hands-on experience.
    1. If you were going to have to have brain surgery, what doctor would you consider to perform your brain surgery – any physician or specifically a doctor whose specialized area of expertise and experience is brain surgery?
    2. Every family deserves the best legal protection available for their homeschooling.
  3. HSLDA has an unparalleled working knowledge of state and federal laws that impact private homeschooling families both directly and indirectly. For example:
    1. compulsory education laws
    2. truancy laws
    3. curfew laws
    4. special education laws
    5. labor laws (e.g. work permits)
    6. driver education and training
    7. Welfare and Institutions Code (e.g. wards of the state, dependent children)
    8. Penal Code (e.g. child abuse and neglect)
  4. HSLDA provides immediate access to full-time specialized HSLDA attorneys, 24 hours a day – 7 days a week for every member.
    1. Access to the attorneys is available to members from the beginning of any legal contact or challenge until it has been satisfactorily resolved even if it goes to the Supreme Court.
    2. Individually and corporately they have by far the greatest experience and expertise in laws related to private home education and associated parental rights in our state and the nation.
    3. This is always available for every member for any legal contact related to homeschooling.
  5. A large membership base provides HSLDA with the resources necessary to have the experienced, quality staff and attorneys who have made HSLDA the leader in defending private homeschooling, which benefits all private homeschoolers:
    1. Each family’s membership combined with other families’ memberships in HSLDA provides the financial resources necessary to successfully defend the freedoms, not only of HSLDA member families but consequently, all homeschoolers.
      1. Every time HSLDA successfully defends one family in California, that success is a defense of every homeschooling family.
      2. Each success by HSLDA is like adding more bricks in the wall of protection around private homeschooling families.
    2. HSLDA advocates for Parents’ freedoms with government agencies at all levels.
    3. Assists state homeschool organizations in every state with state legislative battles.
    4. Helps homeschoolers in other countries that are in desperate need of help.
    5. HSLDA is the leader in defending homeschooling in Congress, with federal and state government agencies, and in federal, state, and local courts.
    6. During a recent 2-year period, approximately 600 members of HSLDA in California were contacted and HSLDA either wrote a letter or otherwise successfully helped the member handle the situation. In California, during this 2-year period:
      1. HSLDA helped 10 homeschoolers who were summoned before a School Attendance Review Board (SARB) on allegations of truancy;
      2. HSLDA handled 166 social worker contacts;
      3. HSLDA resolved several challenges to homeschoolers who are on welfare;
      4. HSLDA addressed discrimination relating to work permits and entrance into Junior Colleges.
      5. If just one of these families failed to get the very best, experienced, and knowledgeable help possible, it could not only be a tragedy for them but could set a very dangerous precedent for every homeschooling family.
    7. HSLDA is at the forefront of the fight against the U.N.’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other challenges to parental rights.
    8. A wrong Court decision or bad legislation could easily undo all of our work over a period of many years to protect homeschooling families.
  6. HSLDA has a quarter of a century of solid working relationships with California’s diverse statewide private homeschool leadership.
  7. HSLDA provides regular invaluable legal counsel to Family Protection Ministries here in California to help develop technical analyses of proposed legislation, and to help determine the best strategic responses to legislative issues that affect California’s private homeschoolers. FPM relies on HSLDA having a large membership in order for HSLDA to continue to have the resources to provide us with the volume and quality of help from which we have all benefited.
  8. God has blessed HSLDA with huge successes in California and across the Nation. No other organization has provided the specialized and successful help provided by HSLDA.
  9. HSLDA is the only legal defense association we can recommend to homeschooling parents desiring to protect their families and freedoms in homeschooling. We recommend them very highly.