June 27, 2019

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Houston City Council City of Houston P.O. Box 1562 Houston, Texas 77251

Dear Mayor Turner and Members of the Houston City Council,

By way of introduction, let me state that Texas Home School Coalition is a statewide advocacy organization for homeschooling and family rights in Texas. We advocate on behalf of approximately 150,000 homeschool families, many of whom live in your city. Our mission is to serve and protect the homeschool community in Texas, as well as to defend the right of all families to raise their children. We do this through educational efforts, advocacy, lobbying and litigation.

I am writing in regards to concerns expressed to THSC about the City Council considering the renewal of the Houston juvenile curfew ordinance. While the state of Texas allows cities to adopt such curfews, homeschool families have reasonable concerns about the continuance of this ordinance.

For 30 years, THSC has defended and supported the homeschooling community in Texas, which is the strongest and most vibrant in America. As you doubtless know, the curfew ordinance in Houston is similar to ordinances tested by many other Texas cities.

The resultant effect on the homeschool community from these ordinances has been consistently unjust throughout Texas.

Some cities have attempted to address these concerns by inserting legal defenses into curfew ordinances for a student who is out with parental permission, who is homeschooled, or who is engaged in a bona fide education-related project.

However, such provisions have been insufficient to address the disproportionate and deleterious impact that curfew ordinances have on the homeschool population. This is especially true because it forces families to incur undue legal costs to the point where most families simply pay the fine despite meritless claims against their children.

THSC exists to protect the right of families to raise their children. We believe that unnecessary state intervention into basic parenting decisions is harmful to children and families and

undermines the God-given, fundamental, constitutional right and responsibility of families to raise their children. For this reason, THSC opposes curfew ordinances not only for the sake of the homeschool community, but for the sake of the rights and well-being of all families.

Families who homeschool or who otherwise follow different school hours/days compared to public school students or public school families with special circumstances necessitating different hours on certain days are often out in public during normal school hours and summarily can be stopped, questioned, detained and fined for violation of a city’s curfew ordinance unless they can “prove” their innocence.

Modern curfew ordinances presume to judge when students should and should not be out in public by prohibiting public outings during standard school hours. Such a policy grossly mischaracterizes the standard structure of modern education as it relates to non-traditional students, which is one of the fastest growing1 form of education in America.2 These policies also negatively affect traditional students who are unnecessarily forced to justify their presence in public.

THSC has worked with many cities and homeschool families across the state to address daytime curfew problems. The list includes but is not limited to: Austin, Dallas, Magnolia, Highland Village, Bedford, Corsicana, Euless, Corpus Christi, Midlothian, Paris, Victoria, Caldwell, Lubbock, and Waco. In many of these cities, the curfew ordinance was rejected or overturned based on the evidence presented and the strong response from the community.

The most notable and recent example was the city of Austin. Thanks to input from THSC, the homeschool community and broad bipartisan efforts from a large number of other interested organizations , the Austin City Council voted in September of 2017 to end their juvenile curfew ordinance which had been in place for 27 years.

In conclusion, THSC’s experience over the last 30 years and our support of the fundamental right and responsibility of families to raise and educate their own children leads us to conclude that the renewal of a juvenile curfew ordinance by the city of Houston would be damaging to homeschool families in your community as well as to other families.

Therefore, THSC strongly opposes such a measure. We strongly urge that any further consideration of this proposal be rejected.

1 https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ 2 http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/01/why-homeschooling-is-growing/ http://www.nheri.org/homeschool-population-size-growing/

Thank you for your concern for the homeschool community in Houston and your careful consideration of this issue.

Sincerely,

Tim Lambert President Texas Home School Coalition