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Why It Matters - A Word from the Administrator

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Thursday, March 6, 2014



   Written by Martha Freitag        
            This has been an interesting week in the PHEA office . . . one where someone is asking the question, “Why does it matter?” while someone else is experiencing the pain of finding out the hard way that it really did matter.  What is ‘it’ you ask?  RECORDS.  Records and more specifically turning them in to PHEA.
            This week we have had two families wanting to register with us.  They have high school students – seniors actually which makes the issue even more critical.  Neither wants to turn in grades to us, so they are asking, “Why does it matter?”
So here is the answer to why it matters.  First, we all know that the home schooling law in South Carolina requires us to do semi-annual progress reports.  By the time your student is in middle school, these reports should be in the form of numerical grades.  (The exception to this is with our special needs students.)  This means you do have the records, so the real question is, “Why do we have to send them in?”
Most of you know this is a fairly new policy for PHEA so let me explain how it came about.  All home school associations are accountable to the State Department of Education.  When they make a law or give the authority to another entity to make the rules, we have to abide by the laws and rules.  These laws and rules (especially the rules) are subject to change.  When they change, we have to change as well.
One of the laws is that we must use the South Carolina Uniform Grading Policy (SC UGP).  We began helping parents with transcripts as the SC UGP can be confusing to work with.  Around that same time, the Commission on Higher Education (CHE) changed the rules of how to apply for the Palmetto Fellows Scholarship.  Originally home schoolers could apply directly to the CHE for the scholarship.  There were so many issues with the GPAs and transcripts that the CHE made a rule that home schoolers could only apply through their associations and just like that we had to change.  In order to apply for the scholarship, the associations had to provide a class ranking.  As leadership at the CHE has changed, so too has the interpretation of the rules that are in place governing this scholarship.  It has gone from 1) telling the top seniors and just providing the names and school districts of the rest of the seniors (no addresses or other identifying information) to 2) doing a GPA for all seniors to 3) doing a class ranking for sophomores, juniors and seniors (because students can qualify in each of those years) to 4) providing a document to the CHE stating our policies on who and how we do the class ranking.  We have to abide by this if we want to be able to nominate students for these scholarships.  So a large part of why it matters is because PHEA has to follow the law and the rules.  When a family does not follow our policies, they actually put the entire association and all its members in jeopardy.  The State Department could revoke our status as a legal association.
There is however another reason, much closer to home for why it matters.  As home school parents, we pour our heart and soul into preparing our children for the life ahead of them.  We would not intentionally do something that would make their future more difficult, but sometimes we are too short sighted and do not follow through with paper work.  I have had countless parents tell me, “My senior is not planning to go to college, so we don’t need to do a transcript.”  This brings us to the family who learned the hard way why it matters.  Every year we receive requests for older records, sometimes from the parents, sometimes for the students themselves.  It may be that there was a fire or flood that destroyed the records or it may be as simple as the parent not keeping the records once the student has left home.  This week we had a young lady ask for copies of her transcript and diploma.  When we went to the file, we had nothing for her.  We checked the family’s file and they were not registered with us during her senior year, though they were registered both before and after that.  We have no record that the family home schooled or that the girl graduated.  Our hands are tied – we are unable to help her because her parents did not follow through with the paper work.  And here is the really rough part, the girl graduated in 2004!  Now, ten years later she needs her records and there are none.
None of us knows what the future holds.  We may have a student that we know for sure will not be going on to college when they graduate.  We do not know however if in the course of their lives, they will decide they do want to go on.  If they do, they will need access to those records.  It is not only for college either, that they need the records.  More places are requiring a copy of the high school diploma for employment.  Also this week, we had a mom call us asking if she could come pick up the diploma she had just ordered rather than waiting for it to come in the mail.  Her daughter graduated in December and was already working.  There was a new law passed that people employed in this field must have a copy of their diplomas in their work files.  If she did not bring it by the next day, she was going to be fired.  We have had graduates contact us to get their records to: to go on to college, to work in their chosen field, and to join the military, even to become a New York City fireman (after 9/11). This young man had graduated from college but the NYC FPD rules required the high school diploma.  Since none of us can tell our children’s futures, we need to do everything we can to make sure they can pursue whatever dream God leads them to.  So next time you sit down to fill out those horrible class ranking forms, do it lovingly, knowing you are making sure your child will have access to their records even if it is ten years from now.  It matters!
 

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