Legislative Battles Continue
March 25, 2013 By Tim Lambert
THSC is in the process of rolling out our new website. We will combine the THSC PAC website and my blog there with the new website. I recently realized that some who subscribe to my blog on the PAC website may not have been receiving some of my recent blogs on legislative and legal issues because they were posted on the new website.
Please take a minute to look at the new THSC website here and subscribe to the newsletters that you might be interested in so that you can keep up with the battles that we are fighting on behalf of home schooling and parental rights in Texas.
You will see that home schoolers won a huge (although it might be temporary) victory last week in our battle for parental rights in regard to the grandparent access statute in Texas. SB 1148 would have dramatically increased the number of fit parents and children who are subjected to lawsuits by grandparents and at the same time would have reduced the level of evidence required in these lawsuits. Due to the thousands of calls to the Senate Jurisprudence Committee, the author pulled the bill from consideration just hours before the hearing.
While that is wonderful news, it does not fix the problem with the current law. Fixing the problem is something we are trying to do with the Texas Parental Rights Restoration Act (SB 1194 & HB 2547), a bill that we are working hard to pass this session. Thanks for your prayers and support as we fight for parents and children in Texas!
Home School Discrimination
February 8, 2013 By Tim Lambert
Fifteen years ago home schooling in Texas was clearly legal as a result of the Texas Supreme Court ruling in the Leeper decision. That decision clarified that home schools were private schools and therefore ended the prosecution of home schoolers that began in the 1980s for violation of the compulsory attendance laws.
However, following the Leeper decision, there was still discrimination against home school graduates by colleges and universities. Virtually every institution of higher education in Texas refused to acknowledge a home school graduate as a high school graduate and either required them to obtain a GED and/or meet higher SAT/ACT scores and other admission standards not required of public high school graduates. [Read More...]
The Battle for This Generation
January 22, 2013 By Tim Lambert
The holidays are over. The new year has begun, and the Texas legislature is in session. My wife and I just returned from a trip in which we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary, and I had the opportunity to spend some time reading, which I never seem to have enough time to do anymore.
One of the books I read was The Radicalism of the American Revolution by Gordon Wood. The book was a good read, but I was struck by his comments toward the end of the book that most of the men who were a driving force in the American Revolution were disappointed at the end of their lives with what had transpired after the war. Things did not go exactly the way they thought they should. This reminded me of another book I recently read about Sam Houston and the fact that he too was disappointed at the end of his life with what was happening in his beloved Texas. [Read More...]
Never Waste a Crisis
December 20, 2012 By Tim Lambert
I did an interview yesterday with a Lubbock television station on the issue of home schooling related to the Newtown massacre last week. It was inevitable that this issue would be raised, as it always is in such situations by those who are opponents of home schooling. The reporter asked me about oversight of home schooling, because the young man who committed this atrocity was home schooled at some point by his mother, after she had disagreements with the school.
The reporter also asked if some parents home schooled “from the beginning” to avoid putting their children in school at all out of fear of this kind of violence. I told her that while most people don’t have a general fear of this kind of violence, one of the many reasons that parents choose to home school is to “provide a safer environment for children and youth, because of the physical violence, drugs and alcohol, psychological abuse, and improper and unhealthy sexuality associated with institutional schools.” [Read More...]
The Spirit of Texas
December 14, 2012 By Tim Lambert
As Christmas and the end of the year draw near, my family begins to ask me what I want for Christmas. I struggle with that because I am not really a gift kind of person. I do not think about that a lot. Being forced to contemplate that question, I realized what I really want is freedom for home school families in Texas and protection of the fundamental right of parents to direct the care, control, and upbringing of their children. [Read More...]
