Keeping our Eyes on this Kindergarten Bill

The Indiana General Assembly has begun and there are a few bills we are watching which could impact home educating families. Many bills are still awaiting committee assignments and initial filing from Legislative Services. In fact, there will be around 1,000 bills filed this session. We have seen a couple of hundred so far.

One to watch is Senate Bill 126 which is a mandatory kindergarten bill. This raises questions about compliance requirements and its impact upon home schooling families. HSLDA is reviewing this bill for us.

Currently, as a voluntary program, 96% of Hoosier children already attend kindergarten. We are not against kindergarten. However, we prefer to allow parents to decide if their child is ready for kindergarten. By the way, many of our own parents and grandparents never attended kindergarten if they went to school in the 1950's or earlier. The emphasis on this (1/2 day and full day) is a relatively new focus. Kindergarten a good thing, (generally, or perhaps,) but it is not the silver bullet out there that will "fix" public education. Nevertheless, we do not think that kindergarten should be mandated for home school families or serve to add new reporting requirements for us.