Rep. "Woody" Jenkins, Annual CHEF of Louisiana Leadership Seminar, November 3, 1990, Lafayette:

I want to congratulate you for your decision to educate your children at home.  That is a decision which people usually arrive at after a great deal of thought.  They have considered the more conventional alternatives and determined that for them and their children this is the best.  They find that home education involves a great deal of work and effort; far more than they anticipated.  But, people have also found that it is very rewarding; not only from an educational standpoint, but from the standpoint of values that it instills in the children.

Home education has been legal in Louisiana since 1980.  Early in that year, I was reading a newspaper, and saw that a couple had been arrested for teaching their children at home.  I was really shocked.  It said that they actually had a small school at their home; teaching their children in it.  But, they were being  prosecuted because their school did not meet the definition of "school" under Louisiana law.  At the same time, I found that many of the private schools around the state did not meet that definition:  a place with adequate physical facilities, at least 50 pupils, and teachers who were certified by the state.

We began drafting a statute to redefine what a school was for purposes of Louisiana law.  We came up with the definition that said a school was a place with adequate facilities, pupils, and teachers.  Our draft took out any reference to the number of pupils.  We said the teachers would have to be state certified if the school received government funds.  But, if the school did not receive government funds, the teachers would have such qualifications as determined by the church or organization operating the school.  When Hazel Anderson of New Orleans heard about the first draft of the bill, she called me.  In her sweet and persistent manner, she said that this was not adequate.  She believed that we really needed to have an explicit recognition of home education in the statute.  Well, I agreed to put language in the bill, recognizing that a home education program approved by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would satisfy the law for purposes of attendance at a school.

So, the Louisiana Private Education Deregulation Act was introduced into the legislature.  I was a member of the House Education Committee at that time.  A lot of pastors got involved in supporting the bill.  They were in it to protect Christian schools; there were only a few people interested in home education.  At the time, I thought, "someday there might be ten to twenty people in Louisiana interested in home education," but not very many.  We went to the committee for the first hearing on the bill.  I knew the vote going in, that it was supposed to be fourteen to two against.  Every public education group in the state was there to oppose it.  We presented our testimony; many of the pastors were outside praying for the committee members.  Then, low and behold, when the vote was taken, it was fourteen to two for the bill.  This was amazing!  The bill was sent to the floor.  The word spread, "these evangelical fundamentalists had conspired to send a bill to the floor to allow people to do anything - take their kids out of school or whatever."  In everyone’s minds, the bill was going nowhere.

Yet, when the bill came up for debate on the House floor, no one spoke against it; the bill passed out of the house ninety- nine to one!  I guess some of the House members thought, "We’ll go ahead and pass this thing out and the Senate will kill it."  Well, the Senate passed it; but, only after inserting the certified teachers requirement.  So when the Senate version came back to the House, I asked the House to reject that version and send it to conference committee.  This committee has the power to agree to a version that is acceptable to them; then they sign off on that and send it back to the House and Senate for approval.  Then, it goes to the Governor’s desk to be signed into law.  If you cannot get a majority on the conference committee, the bill is dead.

We had to get this conference committee to agree.  But, of the six members of the committee, the American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO) had a lock on three of them.  They were strongly opposed to anything like this.  The bill appeared to be dead.  It was the last night of the session.  I was in the Senate working on one of the senators trying to switch his position, when all of a sudden, the vice president of the AFL- CIO called me over to the side.  (Remember, the pastors were outside praying.)  He said, "Woody, we’ve decided that we are going to withdraw our opposition to your bill."  Hallelujah!  Within a few minutes, every senator and representative on the committees had signed that report.  It went to the House and Senate and was passed by both bodies, and before midnight it was on Governor Dave Treen’s desk.  He signed the bill, making it law.  Since then, we have had, I suppose, thousands of children educated at home schools.

As I have served my tenure in the legislature, the Private Education Deregulation Act of 1980, which freed private schools and legalized home education, is among the things that I am most proud of.  Of course, the only thing the legislature did was unshackle people.  The accomplishments of the past ten years have come from the people who used that freedom.

I want to caution you, though.  These rights that people have won can be lost.  It can happen in a matter of days.  A bill can be introduced; and, on the fifth day after, it can be headed to the Governor.  Bills can be amended, too.  They can have a bill that deals with the education subject (not with home education) and an amendment can be tacked on it in committee.

If you are not there, it is going to be like a freight train rolling through the capitol.  Our opponents will have their people showing up because when you are promoting a bill, you can tell your people three weeks in advance.  But, when you are in opposition, you may not know in advance when a bill is coming up until just hours before.  Such a challenge may not come up this year.  But, it could happen any time, so we have to be prepared.  One of the dangers of home education is that you can allow yourself to be cut off from what’s happening in the world.  So, please be alert with what is happening in the world.  Be part of a network that can protect your rights.

Yes, you have a responsibility to be a guardian of the rights of others.  There are bills that can be introduced that could not only exclude home education, but also other related rights just as critical.  Take away those rights, and your rights will be next.  Don’t think that it’s only YOU.  That everything zeroes in on YOU, and if everything is OK with YOU, then everything is OK.  Ultimately, those opposed to your values will get to you if you are not involved.  Help defend the rights of future generations.  Shouldn’t they have the same rights?  We are the guardians of their rights.  We have been blessed by having all these liberties passed on to us.  We have the responsibility to pass those liberties on to the next generation as well.