Legal Group Goes to Bat for South Dakota Home Schoolers
by Jim Brown
May 21, 2004
(AgapePress) - An attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association says education officials in South Dakota treat some of the best high schoolers in the state as if they were not worth a second look.Officials for the State Board of Regents claim there is no way under current law for home-schooled students to qualify for South Dakota's Opportunity college scholarships. The scholarships are worth $5,000 per student -- $1,000 each of the first three years and $2,000 in the fourth year -- and can be used for attending any one of the 22 accredited colleges in the state, whether public, private, or tribal.
According to the Aberdeen (SD) American News, state laws creating the scholarship program contain requirements that specifically refer to high school, such as graduation, a minimum 3.0 grade-point average (GPA), no grade lower than a C, and three years of laboratory science courses. Qualified applicants also must score 24 or better on the ACT exam.
But the exclusion of home-schooled students came up last week during a public hearing by the regents on rules to administer the new scholarship program. Scott Woodruff, a staff attorney with the HSLDA, hopes it is a simple misunderstanding because according to him, the legislature clearly wanted home schoolers to take advantage of the scholarships.
"You really have to go back and think about why the legislature passed this law in the first place," Woodruff explains. "What they're wanting to accomplish is to keep the best South Dakota high school students in South Dakota. So the way you do that is by offering them a financial incentive."
The attorney believes the state should not view awarding home schoolers such scholarships a risky gamble, considering they have higher GPAs than traditional students once they get to college.
"If you look just at the group of home-schooled students, their grade-point average is higher than others in college," he says. "Home-schooled students are very promising students -- they are contributors, they are good students, they are serious-minded, they are self-motivated, [and] they are making a mark."
"It would really be a pity to undermine the economy of South Dakota by kind of showing these students the door," he adds.
Woodruff insists that because home schoolers pay taxes like everyone else, they should be allowed to participate in the scholarship program just like traditional students.
