Arrested for Education

January 7, 2010 permalink

A homeschooling family in New York state has been arrested. They did not have the right approvals on official forms. A news story and cleverly headlined commentary by William N Grigg are enclosed.

When parents tell others of their homeschooling, the most common response is some question relating to the required approval from authorities. Several generations of public education have fostered the attitude that schools, not parents, are primarily responsible for the education of children. It's not just holier-than-thou bureaucrats.

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Richard Cressy

Margie Cressy

Parents arrested for failing to register home-schooled kids

January 04, 2010 3:33 PM, Marci Natale / Michelle Kim

FONDA -- A Montgomery County couple has been arrested on child endangerment charges for failing to register their children with the school district as they were home-schooled, the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said Monday.

Richard Cressy, 47, and Margie Cressy, 41, both of the town of Glen, never registered their four children or their home-schooling curriculum with the local school district, said the Sheriff's Office.

The Superintendent of the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District, Richard Hoffman, confirmed the four children, ranging in age from 8 to 14, had not been registered with the school district for the last seven years.

"From what I can gather, it sounds like there was education going on, so I don't know if they really slipped through the cracks," Hoffman said, "[but] they didn't fulfill their legal responsibility to file with the school district to be home-schooled."

Under state law, parents who choose to home school their children must register their curriculum with the local school district superintendent. The Cressys never submitted one in the seven years they lived in the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, which began investigating the parents after receiving an anonymous tip.

The Cressys were issued appearance tickets to appear in the Town of Glen Court on Jan. 26. The case has been turned over to the Montgomery County District Attorney and the Child Protective Unit.

Hoffman said the Cressys have since submitted a home-schooling curriculum, which he has approved.

Source: WRGB

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January 5, 2010

All Your Kids Are Belong to Us

Posted by William Grigg on January 5, 2010 11:53 PM

Richard and Margie Cressy, homeschooling parents of four children who live in Glenn, New York, were assaulted and kidnapped by local tax-feeders for the supposed crime of educating their children at home without receiving the required benediction from the local high priest of the educrat cult.

That’s how this story should be reported. The court stenographers for Leviathan’s regional appendage described those events as follows:

“A Montgomery County couple has been arrested on child endangerment charges for failing to register their children with the school district as they were home-schooled, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said Monday.”

Under the pernicious doctrine of parens patriae, the default assumption is that children belong to the State. Under that scheme parents (whether biological or adopted) are granted the highly conditional privilege of feeding, housing, and otherwise caring for children unless and until the State claims them as its own.

In the story broadcast by WRGB, Albany’s ABC affiliate, the parents are treated as entirely incidental to the matter of educating their own offspring. The epicene newsreader exudes incredulous disapproval as he observes that the Cresys “failed to register” their children with the school district seven years ago.

“How was this allowed to happen? Who should be held accountable?” demands the anchorperson, handing the baton to a correspondent who asks the local education commissar if these children “fell through the cracks.” The “news” clip is entitled “Homeschooled or Forgotten?” — conveying the message that children who are raised, educated, and cared for by parents without the State’s blessing are neglected by definition.

In classic totalitarian police state fashion, the Cressys were arrested on the basis of an anonymous tip.

“So who should be held accountable?” the correspondent-cum-prosecutor asks an unidentified police officer near the end of the clip.

“Well, the parents,” replies the officer, a tax-feeder of ample carriage. “It’s not the school’s fault; the schools are doing the right thing trying to get the parents to file the proper paperwork, which they have now.”

The “law” requires that certain forms be filled out and disfigured with specific official signatures. No actual crime was committed here, of course, but like the Vogons who populate Douglas Adams’s neo-Swiftian sci-fi novels — an interstellar race of intellectually torpid, morbidly obese bureaucrats — the county mis-education establishment and its enforcers were willing to kill (if “necessary”) two parents and steal their children because the “necessary” paperwork hadn’t been filled out.

Source: Lew Rockwell