How to Keep Your Parental Rights While Allowing Your Child to Attend Public School

If you grew up attending public schools, you likely believe that you are obligated to register your children in order to get them into public schools. After all, when you first go in and ask about your child going to a particular school you are typically given a packet of paperwork and told that they need you to fill it out and return it.

Of course, what they are saying is true. In order for them to get extra funds from the federal government, they need you to fill out the forms and sign them. However, them being required to try and get you to register is completely different than you being obligated to register with them.

What they are not telling you is that you are not obligated to fill out the forms and, in every state I have looked at, your child has a right to attend the public schools. This means that you do not have to fill out the forms, but the school still has to let your child go there to learn.

Before you start thinking that what I am saying is obviously wrong, let me note that my child attends public school and does so without having been registered.

Why would I choose not to register my child?

That is the question my wife asked me when I first mentioned that while I would agree to let our child attend school, I would only do so if I could get our child in without signing a registration form.

The reason I refuse to register my child with the school is that the registration is a contract. It is the contract that schools use to claim the right to give your children detention, to have your child arrested for truancy, and to bring you before a court and fine or jail you should they have too many problems with your child.

Of course, another part of the reason that I refuse to register my child with the schools is because I firmly believe that the schools take far too long to teach far too little. If I want to have my child skip school and go to the zoo, help out at a swap meet, or anything else, I see no reason why any school has a right to tell me differently.

If you want to see for yourself that registering your children amounts to contracting with the school district, crack open a good law encyclopedia such as American Jurisprudence or Corpus Juris and look up contract.

The registration that the school wants you to sign has all of the elements of a contract: consideration over time, an offer, and acceptance.

How did I avoid registering my child?

Before the school year started, I went in to the school, noted that I was interested in having my daughter attend the school, and asked what I needed in order to do so.

As per usual, I was handed a manila folder with various paperwork inside and told that I needed to fill it all out and return it.

When I sat down to review the paperwork, I simply looked at each thing that was asked and decided whether or not it was something sensible. If I deemed it sensible, I made a note of it. Once I was finished, I wrote a letter providing only the information that I felt they needed to know. Basically, I gave them my child's name, my name, two ways to contact me via phone, the address of the house in which I currently stay, any special relevant medical conditions afflicting my child, a notice that the school was explicitly disallowed from prescribing medications to my child, and information on who they could contact in case of an emergency if I happened to be unreachable.

I took that letter (unsigned) back to the school along with the forms that they wanted me to fill out, handed the paperwork over, and returned home.

Of course, not long afterward I received a call from the principal of the school asking if I could make time for a talk the next day. I accepted and showed up the following day to find the principal and someone from the school district waiting for me.

They started out claiming that I had to fill out the forms they provided. I responded by noting that as soon as I was provided with the public law denoting that either all free people must sign registration contracts with the schools or I specifically must sign a registration contract with the school I would gladly do so.

Eventually, they narrowed down the list of what I "must" provide to include only the social security number, birth certificate, and immunization records of my child along with my drivers license and signature.

Again, I agreed to provide such as soon as I was provided with a copy of the public law, applicable to me, requiring that all free people have a drivers license, social security number, birth certificate, or immunization data. Clearly, if no one is obligated to have a these things then no one can be obligated to provide them.

The principal finally agreed to get the district superintendent to contact me and setup time for a second meeting once it became clear that I was not about to give in.

At the second meeting, which included the principal, the district superintendent, and I, it was admitted that there truly was no requirement for anything except the immunization data and that I would have to sue if I wanted to try to get my child in without providing immunization data.

At that point, having gotten them to admit that there was no requirement for the things I really objected to, I made sure there was a box around the immunization section, checked the "personal" and "religious" check boxes denoting that I do not believe in immunization, and then put my mark inside the box with that section and handed it back. The box is important because a boxed section in law means that it stands by itself, unrelated to other sections. The rest of their forms were not filled out.

While it was stressed that the school would not get funding for my child without a completed registration form, I let them know that I really did not care. After all, I pay my taxes. If they allow the federal government to take the taxes I pay and then require the schools to jump in order to get some of them back...that is their problem. Of course, I strongly suspect that in order to get funding for having my child in the school, they just need to fill out a form noting that they did their best to get me to fill out the registration, but could not do so.

What would I have done if they refused to allow my child to go to school?

Well, first I would have brought my child to school on the first day and forced them to either turn us away or allow my child to attend. If I failed to try to get my child into school, it would make winning any charge brought against them hard to win. After all, in order to bring suit for refusing to allow my child to attend school, I would have to allege that I brought my child to the school in the first place and that my child was turned away.

From there, it would have been time to file a claim against the school, the district, the principal, and the district superintendent for trespassing against my right to have my child attend school.

While I am no lawyer or judge, I have taught myself enough law to defend myself and my wards. And that, of course, is no thanks to the public schools that I attended.