 Hello, my name is Matt Kelly. On today's program, we'll be speaking about the future of education. For a number of weeks now, I've been wanting to speak with a homeschool advocate here in the state of Vermont, because I believe that this is the future of education. And this has been brought home this past week with yet another tragic school shooting, over 20 dead, most of them young children in the fourth grade. I'm pleased to be joined today by Reda Dunlap. She is with the Vermont Home Education Network, VHEN.org. It is a nonprofit advocacy organization that's dedicated to promoting and enhancing home education in Vermont. Reda, thank you for joining me here today. Oh, you're very welcome. You know, even on a local scale, school violence is in the news just today on Champlain Valley Union's campus. Police are on site due to a potential threat. And police have just recently seized weapons following a Montpelier school threat. The threat is real. The emotional dysregulation of our students, school shootings, school bullying, COVID-19, which has shut down many schools and forced children to learn at home, families who weren't prepared for this, as well as the crumbling infrastructure, the deferred maintenance of many of our schools, nationwide, particularly those inner city schools that are crumbling and are unsafe for students to be educated in. And the disagreeable curriculum that many may find objectionable with the recent rise of CRT and teaching sexuality and education, sexuality, education in schools. So, Reda, there's a lot here for us to try to wrap ourselves around. And before we get into that, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit to our audience and take a minute to share a little bit about your background and how you came to homeschooling? Well, I'm one of those people that intentionally chose homeschooling some 40-odd years ago. My oldest is, my oldest, he's 39. So I had decided to homeschool before they were born, before they were conceived. I was going to homeschool because it just was a natural progression for me to organically raise vegetables, you organically raise children. And while all of a sudden, when they hit the age of what they need to learn to read, do I suddenly need an expert to help me do that? And I don't. So I chose it on purpose and homeschooling, educating them, just became part of life. It was a lifestyle for us, not just school, but a lifestyle. And today, I'm seeing parents choose homeschooling as a second choice. For the most part, maybe I'm a dying breed where we chose to do it on purpose, it was just all part of everything. But the reasons people homeschool by and large are different now. Some of the things that you mentioned are reasons for some, there are different reasons. I know that, not on the level of serious, this is some of the things you met, but a lot of parents will homeschool because of a special needs issue that their child is not, it's not being met by the IEP, which they spend a couple thousand dollars to create the IEP and then they don't have the staff or the effort or the resources to actually apply that IEP to the child. I am stunned that over the years, because I work with parents. Somehow public schooling parents find me and wanna ask about homeschooling. I mean, my phone number is out there, my email is out there, but not too many, but they do find me and I'm like, well, I've never been in a public school. I did make a part of me to learn how the public school works so that when parents need to work within it, I say, you start with the teacher, the principal, the superintendent, then the school board. You don't just start with the school board because they're not the day-to-day operations. Anyway, so that's kind of why I chose the homeschool. I have four children, the youngest is 32, the other one is 39, and I have a grandbaby now that's going, mom's gonna homeschool her, mom and dad. And when my youngest turned seven, they changed the law and I didn't know they did it. It wasn't the homeschooling law, it was the compulsory attendance age went from six, from seven to six, which meant I had to enroll my youngest a year earlier, and I was irritated because I was informed of this in July. And I had already sent in my enrollments for the other three, I would add Danielle will follow the year. And I said, never again, are you going to fool me? Surprised me, I'm just, so I have been watching that legislature and that statute, it's entitled 16, the education statute, 166B home study, it's called, because it's disruption when you change something and parents don't know. So now over the years, we've been able to stop bad things from happening because we're paying attention now. And so it's important to know, particularly for parents who may be watching here, is that if you are considering homeschooling your student, there is actually a whole support network to help you along the way. So you're not going into this blindly. And in fact, the state sort of has a curriculum that they mandate certain parameters to this. So it's not a fly-by-night anti anything organization. It's really here to help serve parents who may want to make this education decision as opposed to the public school education. And so can you talk a little bit about the state framework and how VHEN has helped to create it and strengthen it? Well, you're talking about the framework of homeschoolers. Yes, but again, there's a statewide program that VHEN and the people who decide to homeschool literally have to follow. So this is in essence, it is a statewide understanding but you also feel that the state is perhaps falling short. So talk again about what the state requires and what VHEN is helping to create and grow and strengthen. Okay, so the home study statute, well, the compulsory attendance statute says that every child shall be enrolled in public and independent or a home study program. And there's some other special cases where a child might be educated outside of the public school building, but say the child can't go to school, they have leukemia. So the school is working with the parents to get the child in education home. That is something, but that's within the public school system. And the law says that we are to follow the minimum course of study in the statute, which is 906. The schools follow it too, but they have a bunch of rules, regulations and documents piled on top of that little tiny minimum course of study, which is only eight bullet, it's six bullet points, two of them have two parts. And they're the subjects you would think math, reading, writing, arithmetic, history, science, fine arts, physical education, maybe something else, I missed, literature I think is. And parents write their own course of study. The parents decide what they're going to study and when they're going to study it. And the home study statute is supposed to be simply a notification by the parent telling the state, my child will be in home schooling this year, will be in home study. They will not be enrolled in the public school system. And I'm giving you some paperwork, here's what we're going to cover. If I've been doing it for years, I might need to give an assessment, just so I can document that the child is progressing. Cause we don't have to say, your child is in third grade, they need to be in third grade level. That's not how the statute works. It's to the age and ability of each child. And parents, I tell them, you're not seeking permission. You're not asking for approval. This is your choice because the statute is set up that once you submit that paperwork, that date they receive it. They have 45 days to stop you from home schooling or you're automatically enrolled. Now the state can within three days, turn a letter right around and say you're enrolled immediately. That's their choice, but they have 45 days to stop it. So if you submit form A, that clock starts ticking and to stop you, they have to call a hearing to stop the enrollment from happening. And I don't think they like that, but it's rarely used and when it's used, I mean, this whole paperwork process that homeschooling parents submit to the state doesn't catch bad characters, it's just busy work. And so VHEN, what is the role in trying to strengthen this community and grow it and make sure that those students who go through this process are fully educated to a standard that they're able to go out into society and be independent? Well, first off, how the child is educated and how prepared they are to go into society is totally up to the parent. Sure. There's no organization in Vermont that can, the state can't even do that. So what VHEN does and primarily does is it watches the statute to make sure it's not changed. It tries to work with the department of agency now of education, trying to get them to stay within the parameters of the statute because the statute is laid out in such a way that it is to control what the agency of education does with this process of enrolling at home study. It's not meant to be there to control the parent and you need three more things, we need four more words in history, we need a book list, things like that. So I wanna be kind because the agency of education has so many laws and policies and rules to follow that they can't keep up with them. The reporting on financials and grades and everything is overwhelming, they're always a year or two behind at least. And so they don't need any more work. They work hard, yet there's four or five staff members. There's only about 200 of them total in the agency but there's four or five of them at work on home study on this paperwork that doesn't improve education. It doesn't catch bad actors. It does none of those things. The thing the state needs to know and this is where Bihun is coming in is I've been talking with the secretary of education. What do they need to know and what do they need submitted? And basically this agency of education but not so much them but the school system, the local truancy officers, the local superintendents, the local principals, they need to know that this child is enrolled in home study, is being homeschooled. This is the parents name, the child's name, the child's age. This is the address where they live, they're in our district and we know where they are is what the state needs to know because you don't want them to crawl into a rock and disappear. I mean there are people who think that they shouldn't even know that much and that's fine. Bihun doesn't argue either way on that one. Again, it's a parental choice thing to really decide how you wanna do this but Bihun is primarily the advocacy arm of homeschooling in Vermont because- At the state level basically. At the state level because if they bring up the statute I assume show up and people let me know and I try to keep an eye on and I could miss something, I'm not perfect but that's what Bihun does. Now we do operate with, there's a lot of Facebook pages. There's a couple of them that are quite large have two or three, 2,000 members on at least one of the Facebook pages that I work with primarily. And that's how homeschoolers network is through those Facebook pages, through emails. Not so much through Bihun because I've just never really developed those pieces. Somebody had had boots on the ground in Montpelier or we would have lost lots of things all with already. So that's a neural network is what I call it. There's nodes I plug into when things come up. We're speaking with Reda Dunlop from vhan.org the Vermont home education network. Reda, what resources then are available to the parents who want to make the homeschool choice? What teaching aids are there to help a parent try to make this decision in terms of on subjects perhaps that they're not well-versed on. I mean, I couldn't even do algebra today. So if I made that decision and wanted to educate homeschool my child what resources are there available for me to help teach and educate my child? I mean, you can find a tutor, you can find good materials, you can search on Google on how to homeschool and join one of these Facebook pages. Ask or just email the admin and start asking questions or email me, my email address. And you just start asking questions because we live in a society now where almost everyone knows someone who homeschooled or they know someone who knows someone and they can go and find them. And believe me, homeschooling parents will be happy to talk to you. So I think the biggest resource about how to get started going homeschooling is to talk to a homeschooler. The local libraries, the homeschoolers all tend to plug into the libraries, go to the library and then ask is there a homeschool group here? Try two or three different libraries if you don't find one doesn't know. So that's one way you can plug into people who homeschool and start asking questions. Google is out there, you can also Google. As far as the resources to help you educate your child, like I said, it's organic. If you taught them to use a fork and tie their shoe, you can educate them. When you get into the high school years and you're not real sure about math, there are video math programs, math tutors you can find and hire, there are online courses for homeschoolers. Khan Academy is out there and it's free. There are some other online programs that you can purchase it and it'll do all five courses or whatever you're doing. But as far as certifying people to do this, no, it's again, you're a parent and you teach your children 24 seven, you just don't realize it. Again, I think that's an important thing to mention here is that, does education stop when school is out? Of course not, your children are continually learning throughout summer and the like. And what's rather interesting is I talked to members of the public about homeschooling. One thing that continually comes up is, well, what about the socialization of children? And I just shake my head. Particularly in today's soccer mom mentality, children are scheduled relentlessly for interactions and socialization opportunities with other children throughout their communities, absence, public school. Yeah, I mean, socialization is no big deal in homeschooling because parents are very good at finding support groups. They find, meet play groups or they find groups they do field trips with or things like that. But as far as the socialization question, and I'll give you the one that comment that comes up is going, I'd send them to school to socialize them how, what are they going to do? Are they going to learn bullying? Are they going to be bullied? So what kind of socialization skills or activities are in the schools or are in, so socialization happens wherever it happens and it doesn't have to be all eight year olds. It can be generations moving together, old, young. And that's what I found with my kids. They could communicate with someone who was 80 as well as my oldest son there. When he was an adult, he could get on the floor and play Legos with a little kid and I'm watching that going, wow, my generation, I went to public schools, well, we didn't do that. We stuck within our cohort. And so socialization, you have to ask the question, what kind of socialization are you talking about? And is a, and I don't even want to use the public schools, is an institutionalized setting always the best for a socialization activity to occur in? Sometimes it's not. And so kids need to learn to deal with all kinds of situations and homeschooling, I mean, socialization is just not a problem, but it's always thrown out there. Here in the state of Vermont, we spend almost $20,000 per student, per year in the public education system. Do homeschoolers get that type of financial support? And if not, why not? And should they? Well, no, they don't get that support at all. And as I tell homeschooling parents, who would like a voucher, well, vouchers are different. Who would like a chunk of money to maybe buy materials and stuff? I said, you know, with money comes strings. So I am not in favor of the state giving money directly to homeschooling parents. That said, I'm not opposed to them getting a voucher, or a tax credit would be a better idea. Because- It's just sort of be the thing right now where you can get up to a $20,000 tax credit that then you could use to hire a tutor in certain subjects. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. Or that's what the national- Yeah, that is what a tax credit, that means it's off of your taxes. So the sum of your family income would be large enough to do something like that. And, you know, I mean, if the state were to say we're gonna $500 for materials, would I lobby against it? I would go in and say my piece, and then I would inform homeschoolers this is going on, and they would go in and say their piece. And my goal would be as an advocate in that situation, if the legislators and the families were all for that, I'd be going, just don't tie it to 166B. Because I don't want it to become, if you don't do what we say in 166B, you took the money, it's the string now. So I want that statute to remain pure, clean, clear, free of any kind of monetary influence. So, and as for how much, I mean, yeah, I'd four kids in school, we could have gone to Europe for history every year. No, that's something the legislature and taxpayers want funded, yeah, that's a big question. And that right there is sort of the issue. For me, as I look at the future of education and what we see now again with school shootings, we've got another major pandemic coming within five years. If you listen to Bill Gates and believe what he says, crumbling infrastructure deferred maintenance, $20,000 a year per pupil. If you have, for example, two kids in the age of the public school system, that's near $40,000 enough to have one parent stay home and be the primary educator. If this money were given directly to the parent rather than as a grant, and then they could decide to go and hire a tutor. And so this then goes back into teacher salaries and whatnot, we'll use Burlington High School as an example, there's 965 students in there currently and not even 200 educators in that structure. And again, if you had that money directly and we got rid of the public school system, those 200 educators could be the tutors that then you hire to educate your children. And I say this given the fact that a recent survey came out of teachers here in Vermont and nationwide and the majority of teachers said they do not feel safe in their own classrooms, due in part to the increasing emotional dysregulation of our nation's youth. Yeah, it's frightening what's going on with the children now. I mean, I'll step out of my wheelhouse and I'll go to an issue you haven't mentioned. But the one I think of when we talk about these conversations of what's happening to the kids, what's making them angry enough to do the things they're doing when they become adults or almost adults. And this country is one of the highest consumers of child trafficking stuff, okay. And nobody talks about it. Now, when children are abused they don't, the way they think affects how they grow up. And so now you have damaged people and more damaged people and more and more damaged people. And then you just go down, just take that down a bit and you go down the line bullying and the schools can do the same thing to a child. So we've got a lot of things going on with the youth of the country that we don't address. And that puts pressure on homeschooling. So one of my other functions at VHUN is to try and take a look at these pressures. I mean, in COVID, okay, one year homeschooler, the number homeschooling numbers doubled. It went from- I was gonna ask that. It went from 2,300 to about 4,500 that very first year. And it's still up there. A lot of these parents didn't go back to the schools. I mean, I was listening to the radio when Governor Scott said, we're going to close the schools. This is on a Friday, not closed on Wednesday. And I'm going, oh, you should not do that because I have been told in multiple committee meeting hearings and one-on-one meetings with staff from the agency for decades, for decades that the public school is sometimes the safest place for some of these children. And then this is why we need the paperwork from you, Reda, that we just wanna make sure that your kids stay safe too. And I'm like going, you have a crack in the public school system, you could lose a semi-through and that didn't go over well. So we're talking about just what is going on and some of these kids during COVID who didn't go to school were now locked in the room, possibly with someone who shouldn't have been locked in a room with them. And I just shake my head, don't tell me I have to give you paperwork because it's obvious you don't need it. What's important to note here too is that, if kids were at risk through home living instead of going to school, I kind of that with the same question that well, schools are failing children as well. Children are graduating and they certainly don't know that ABCs and basic arithmetic and reading and writing. So it's a juxtaposition. And my belief here is that if we are serious about combating and deconstructing the elements of structural racism, the public school system is one of the root causes of it. And all you have to look at again is interceding schools that are failing due to crumbling infrastructure or poor teachers, et cetera, et cetera. So rather than putting it on a system that is inherently structurally racist, put that on as back onto the parent so that we have a responsible parenting. And I understand that schools today are much more than just an education. It's about healthcare through the school nurse. It's about food through the school lunch program, et cetera, et cetera. But again, if this money were given directly to the parent, it has the opportunity in my belief to end structural racism, to lift the country's youth out of childhood poverty and to give us highly educated children. And I say that based on my own experience, going through the Burlington school system in the early 70s, my parents were aghast at what we were not learning. So I had to learn my multiplication tables around the dinner table. I had to learn the 50 states and their capitals around the dinner table. And interestingly enough, my twin brother in third grade got a demerit for being asked what the capital of Kentucky was. And he said, Frankfurt. And the teacher was like, no, it's Lexington. And he had to go to a dictionary or to an encyclopedia and pointed out to his third grade teacher. My twin was smarter than his third grade teacher. And I'd learned the Scandinavian countries and their capitals. And even my contemporaries today probably couldn't answer that. And so my twin brother, he educated his children at home. They're some of the most well-behaved, very intelligent children. A friend of mine in Madison, Wisconsin, which seems to have a much stronger home education, homeschooling advocacy organization. No disrespect to you, but it's a larger population. So it's much stronger. His children, his 12 year old created a walking app for his city. His oldest is getting his doctorate. So, the belief that maybe homeschooling isn't enough, I think is a fallacy and we have the proof to show for it. Right. I mean, as I've always said, and even in my own homeschool group while we were educating our children and the mothers would sit down and eventually have an hour to talk without too many children around and usually playing somewhere. We would get a chuckle out of a homeschooling magazine. I think one time was a mom on the cover. She was stirring a pot of spaghetti with a book in her hand reading. And we're going, do people like that really exist? Because I don't have time to stir the pot and read. So homeschooling families are of all sizes and shapes and any kind of combination of whatever labels you wanna slap on them because you're gonna have homeschooling families who struggle, their children struggle, educationally, they may miss some pieces. They may not get what they need. They may go back into the public schools. I mean, homeschooling isn't perfect. It does not, it doesn't educate children all to the level of PhDs and stuff. I mean, my own children, I mean, my son's now in a software business and I work part-time for them. Yeah, they were little hoodlums, you know, it's like being wonder and they're ever gonna like, you know, mount to mention. And one of them, I swear, I never saw him read a book but I know he has because his history, his knowledge is amazing. So yeah, homeschooling isn't perfect. So I don't like people to glorify it and put it upon a pedestal because then that makes advocacy for it hard because there are sometimes families who should not homeschool, who are homeschooling. That does occur. But by and large, that's not the case because these families, it's their second choice but they're pulling them and they're homeschooling them. Therefore they will come up with what they need to get it done, they will find someone. And, you know, the public schools are not perfect but in my advocacy, I try not to bash them too much because I never was in them. And now I've tried to understand them served on boards and committees and stuff about public education. And, you know, yeah, it's not perfect. And I know there's a lot of things going on in the schools now that could be frightening to many families. But, you know, it's part of the advocacy thing. I'm not gonna go in and advocate to have closed or anything like that. So I don't want people to think that I'm, you know, I mean, a lot of those issues that you mentioned in the schools, I mean, I don't advocate on them one way or the other when I end up in Montpelier Statehouse. I'm very focused on one thing. Right. It seems that a parent's commitment and involvement in their child's education really is the ingredient to success. And I, again, I use that where my parents were then very active in making sure I learned rather than parents today who just say, oh, we're gonna leave it up to somebody else, some public institution and we just pray. But like you say, I mean, the education doesn't stop after 3.40 PM or 2.40 PM during the school year or during summer. Well, and I can give you some real-world information on that particular point there. Last summer, I was appointed by the governor to the after-school study task force. And they were looking at my facts where I think that there was a model in Finland of them starting after-school programs. And so, you know, being the person I am, I'm gonna write to the primary source and I read what they did. I read, because in their study, they determined that the one thing that helped in an after-school program, the difference between kids succeeding and not succeeding. Okay. The component in that success was the parent. Wow. So they decided that they might, okay, we're gonna give the parents a stipend so you can go do some field trips with your children or other things like that or get parents involved in community sports or having, you know, so they were trying to pull in the parents in the after-school program as like the number one thing to help these children be even more successful and then to help those who were struggling. And of course, when it gets to apply to a Vermont, I kept saying, well, where's the parent component? But, you know, I suspect Vermont, just like we have, I don't know, Universal Pre-K, we're gonna have universal after-school programs eventually run in the schools, through the schools. And my local town has a program which I encouraged and I did volunteer once or twice to be at because you can't have kids after school running around with no oversight on school property. Either the parents need to pick them up or they need to be in some kind of program in a setting where it has adult eyes on them. So, yeah, I just found that stunning that that Finland saw that the parent was the key and they shoveled some money over to the parent to try and solve what problems. And I think they were looking at middle and high school kids, not elementary kids. And that's again why I keep them out of trouble. They were trying to keep them out of trouble because that unsupervised time in school and dinner is very dangerous time for kids because they can get into a lot of trouble and that's what Finland was trying to stop because parents might be still working or whatever the case may be. So that's a real world conversation that was had in Vermont last summer because I brought it up. Hey, what about this parent piece? And that's the piece I think our modern educational system is we keep pushing that part away. And at the risk of bringing up parental rights, who manages the child's upbringing and education? And the rights which they were born with. Okay, and a newborn cannot exercise anything. They're busy breathing, needing and growing. So who is the one who's supposed to take care of that? Who's the one who's supposed to guide them through learning what their rights are and how to exercise them in a proper way in a societal, affirming way? And that person is and should be the parent first. Retta, we're running out of time. So briefly, just give us a wrap up about VHEM.org, the Vermont home education network, your advocacy and the future of homeschooling here in the state of Vermont. I think the future of homeschooling in Vermont looks bright, it's going strong. VHEM is going to continue to be that voice between the parent and the state. When you're in a public school, you have a school system between you and the state. So public school parents don't deal with legislators' laws and agency of education staff, homeschoolers do, and they're busy educating. So I kind of fill that void, VHEM fills that void between the parent and the state is how I word it. That's the land I stand on. And one thing that's amazing about homeschooling in Vermont that I've noticed over the years is all kinds of people homeschool. Right, left, any color, education style, religious or non-religious, and I'm talking, even to a Wiccan homeschooling group in southern Vermont for several years, Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, they all homeschool, atheist homeschool, and often their religion is not the driving factor as to why they homeschool, but that they have different religious views, different political views. And I know on some of my, I had some Yahoo groups and some of the Facebooks that I'm involved in, especially the one that I'm mostly related to, discussion of these other topics is not allowed. We don't talk about God, we don't talk about religion. We don't talk about the election on these boards because the second you go there, the second you go there, the homeschooling group, it fractured. And so when I go to the state house, I want many voices, but one voice. And when you stay on one topic and that is the right to homeschool your child and determine their educational career, we all agree. It's wonderful. Wonderful. And where can parents get more information and contact you, Rhett? All right, so they can go to www.vhent.org. It's got some information on it, some old, I just always have time to do anything with it. And my email is mountainfold. That's M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N-F-O-L-D-B-T at gmail.com. It's my personal email and people can email me and just let me know what you need. We've been speaking with Rhett at Dunlap. She is with vhent.org, the Vermont Home Education Network the nonprofit advocacy organization that works to strengthen and enhance home education of school-aged children here in Vermont. Rhett, thank you so much for your time. And we thank you, the viewer for watching and we encourage you to explore this topic more if it's something that is of interest to you by again visiting vhent.org. For town meeting television, I'm Matt Kelly. Thank you for watching.