Know the Law - Addendum

Shortly following my post mentioning the couple in New York that were arrested for failing to register home-schooled kids, I was reading Rational Jenn's blog. She mentioned that it's a bad idea to trust sites such as HSLDA for verification of the laws in your area. Allowing a third-party to translate or summarize the laws in your area increases the chance that you may receive bad information. Considering the stakes, it is imperative that you know this specific corner of law inside and out. Anything less is just asking for trouble. I will admit that I myself still need to read through the Arizona Statutes in order to make sure that I will be in compliance when the time comes for me to register Kylie. I will be reading through them, and if I come across anything specific worth mentioning, I will post it. But please keep in mind that I am not a lawyer and any other third-party may not be either. Even if they are lawyers, they can make mistakes. The point is that we all need to go to the source and do our best to understand the law. It's the only way to be sure.

I recommend visiting www.azleg.gov and doing your own search for the relevant statutes. I checked it out and I was finally able to find what I was looking for. However, they must have changed their website recently because their FAQ is misleading as to how to perform a search. It asks you to use a link on the main page that doesn't exist (unless my browser doesn't support it for some reason). Anyway, this is how I navigated to the proper area of their site:

1. Go to www.azleg.gov

2. Roll your mouse over "Legislative Council" on the menu bar just below the banner photo of the capitol building. This will drop down a menu.

3. From the menu select "Arizona Revised Statutes".

4. In the "Search Phrase" box type, "home school". I tried "homeschool" and "homeschooling", but neither of these produced any results. So make sure you have a space between "home" and "school".

5. Click the Search button. This will yield results that I think include the relevant statutes and some that aren't so relevant.

If you happen to find more related statutes, please post your comments here so others can benefit from the time you spent searching.

As Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust, but verify."