SPECTRUM: How Much Autonomy Should We Give Homeschoolers in Alaska

Sandcastle Day School sounds nice. The rosy imagery would probably catch my eye.

And Sandcastle Day School exists. Well, it existed. 13 students and two teachers. There was a hiccup, though. Last week, one of the students, a 17 year old girl, crawled out a window and called the police. When law enforcement showed up, they found “horrific conditions,” according to CNN. Malnourished children ranging from age two to 29 – three of whom were found “shackled to beds with chains and padlocks in foul-smelling quarters[.]”

That puts a blemish on the whole sandcastle imagery. The lawfully-recognized school's two administrators, David and Louise Turpin, were the children's parents. They face charges of torture and child endangerment. Or, as they call it and California law backs up, education. California is one of several states that requires only a notice of intent to homeschool. Ten other states, Alaska included, don't even require that. That's a problem. Sandcastle Day School is hardly an isolated incident.

In 2016, Anchorage homeschool parent-teachers Patricia Haugstad-Hogan and Timothy Hogan were arrested after their two daughters showed up at Covenant House. The girls, ages 16 and 17, had run away from a basement they called home. APD Detective Will Cameron described it as living in “complete filth” and the daughters said that they hadn't had heat or power in over a year. “Neither had been to a dentist or a doctor in several years,” the Anchorage Daily News reported at the time, and there was “garbage and junk scattered throughout the house, nearly covering the floor and the ceiling. Small footpaths were carved through the trash. A strong odor of old trash and rotting food emanated from the floor of the living room.” The parents – I mean teachers – lived in a camper in the driveway.

Until the arrest, this was a school.

A month earlier, the Alaska Department of Law announced that fellow home school teacher Echo Terry was indicted for “alleged starvation and abuse of three adopted children in her Anchorage home.” The foster children were rushed to the hospital for “malnutrition, dehydration, [and] neglect,” the district attorney said. A grand jury would indict Terry on 15 charges of assault and child endangerment. The trial is scheduled for next month.

And then there were the five adopted children – students – of Patrick and Sherry Kelly; two boys, age 13 and 11, and three girls, 15, 14, and six years old. The Kellys withdrew them from public school when they moved to Big Lake in 2001, where they were beaten, forced to sleep outside, and made to go to the restroom in a bucket. One boy, T.J. White, suffered a broken arm. Another time, Patrick Kelly doused him with snow after he caught fire from a kerosene lamp, their lone source of heat. The third degree burns festered. He was kept outside so long “he had to endure maggots infesting open wounds,” the Daily Mail noted. He was beaten with belts, switches, logs, metal pipes, and shovels. His biological aunt called authorities after learning of the conditions on a visit, but to no avail. The Kellys were finally arrested in the summer of 2004.

Our backyard is littered with atrocities. Violence thrives in the shadows of unaccountability. And it's sanctioned by state law, (AS 14/30.10.) which requires compulsory education for children between seven and 16 years of age, but can be waved so long as the child is “being educated in the child's home by a parent or legal guardian.” Per the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit homeschooling advocacy group, “There are no mandatory notification, parent qualification, instruction time, subject, bookkeeping, or assessment requirements.”

We should probably do something about that.

Education can be a bristly topic. Parents logically expect a certain modicum of control over their children's education – a request the state honors. But allowing them to be completely disappeared by parents who, in documented cases and numerous convictions use that autonomy to abuse and sexually assault them, how much of a leash are we talking about?

In 2015, two very different bills were introduced in the Alaska State Legislature. The first was offered by then-House Majority Leader Charisse Millett (R-Anchorage). Dubbed Erin's Law after Erin Merryn- a sexual abuse survivor who has been lobbying state legislatures across the country to require schools to teach age-appropriate sexual abuse and assault awareness prevention curricula- HB44 represented an important step forward. Rep. Geran Tarr (D-Anchorage) introduced a nearly identical bill and Senate Minority Leader Berta Gardner (D-Anchorage) dropped a companion bill in the senate. All three bills ended up on the desk of Sen. Mike Dunleavy (R-Wasilla), then-chair of the Senate Education Committee.

Dunleavy tried to leave them there until the session expired, and, despite public pressure, succeeded. When Governor Bill Walker (I-Alaska) called for a special session that summer to address the ongoing budget crisis, he included HB44 in the agenda. That leads us to the other bill. Dunleavy introduced SB89 that spring. The proposal would have allowed parents to opt their children out of any curriculum pertaining to sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, or anything else they found objectionable for reasons they need not disclose. It never reached the senate floor because it was horrible and would have deprived children of clearly-needed education (parents can still opt them out under current law).

When he realized Erin's Law had become a priority, and then noticed that all three proposals with that aim were stuffed in his desk, he rewrote it to include his ill-fated legislation, despite being absolutely antithetical to Millett's original bill. The public outcry grew louder. People were pissed. Erin's Law eventually passed, but after much tumult. Before the legislature gaveled out of the special session, now-retired Sen. Charlie Huggins (R-Wasilla) asked to be added as a cosponsor for Dunleavy's SB89. He was joined by several other senate majority members in a symbolic gesture of support for denying children sexual assault awareness and prevention education.

Breaking: Alaska has a really big sexual assault problem. We lead the nation in sexual violence. Forbes ranks Anchorage and Fairbanks as the two most dangerous cities for women. One in three Alaskan girls and one in five boys will be sexually abused or assaulted before the age of 18, the Alaska Children's Alliance reports. And the trauma is predominantly perperated out by someone who knows the victim and is too often a family member. The first sign is when they stop showing up to school; when they're cut off from the outside world and its prying eyes. For some reason, nobody wants to do anything about that. Quite the opposite, Sen. Cathy Giessel (R-Anchorage) said, in support of Dunleavy's SB89, that the authority of parents over their child's education is not “given by government,” but instead is a “God-given authority.”

That's what Papa Pilgrim said too.

There are ways to address this. Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island all have laws requiring parents to submit annual written notice to their local school's superintendent informing them of homeschooling. Parents have to submit a form detailing the child and education plan (age, grade, level, curricula, textbooks, etc.). Quarterly assessments of the child's progress are required. If they don't, or if the child's progress fails established benchmarks, the school district can file a report of suspected educational neglect, which parents can appeal. The school district is allowed to intervene and bring in social services if the red flags stack up. That doesn't seem overly restrictive. Abuse shrouded in homeschooling shouldn't require maggot-infested wounds, bed-chains, or honey buckets to spur intervention.

But, some people disagree. Like Mike Dunleavy, the GOP frontrunner for governor, and Charlie Huggins, a candidate until just last week.