Spending Tax Money to Beg for More Money

Why Homeschool has an excellent post pointing out a story right here in California.

Apparently a school was going to send 12 busloads of students off to Sacremento just to protest some budget cuts. For those of you outside CA, half of the state budget goes to schools. Yes, half the budget, which is bigger than the budget of most other countries.

I'm posting about this, instead of just leaving a comment, because this issues is what finally gave me the last push to decide to homeschool. I was on the fence in March, and I was planning on going to Kindergarten orientation and so forth as the local school in order to make up my mind. I joined some local mailing lists to find other parents of five year old who were setting up park dates to meet each other before school started.

And then it happened.

The highly political pleas and demands for help fighting the education budget cut started. And it make me irritated, angry, and upset. I realized that if we embarked on school, we'd be tied up in that world of PTA meetings and constant fights, and beurocracy, and all the things my poor sainted mom had to deal with just to get her kids a decent shake.

And that did it. I don't want to be associated with any of that. So I gave up on even going to the meeting, and I finally told my mom (when she asked about kindergarten registration in passing) that I wasn't sending him in the fall. And that's when I mentioned homeschooling, and she grinned and teased me about the crazy teacher's certification stuff that came up in the recent court case.