BY J. HARRIS, WITH REBEKAH ANDERSON

When you first heard its name, it sounded like something out of a cheap science-fiction novel, “Citizen alert! HR-6 has escaped and is on the rampage!” Maybe you didn’t know all the details or understand the implications when the news first broke, but you knew this alert was all too real, “Home schoolers rights are in jeopardy! Call your congressman! Our rights are being threatened!”

      How did it happen? Why did it happen? The ominous HR-6 was the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Educational Act of 1965. It was introduced in the Committee on Education and Labor. So what does that mean to home schoolers? Well, it didn’t mean much until George Miller, a Congressman from California, added a last minute amendment that would require full-time teachers to be state certified. Another member of the committee, Dick Armey (R-TX), didn’t like the sound of it and offered his own amendment that would clarify that none of this would affect anything but pub­lic schools. Home, private, and religious schools would be pro­tected. When given this opportunity to clarify their position and protect home and private schools, the Democrats refused and voted down Armey’s amendment.

      It was at this juncture that the Home School Legal Defense stepped in. Alerted by Dick Armey about HR-6, HSLDA and its legislative arm, the Congressional Action Program (CAP), went into action. On Tuesday, February 15th, Mike Farris announced the grave situation to the entire staff.  He had written an alert the previous night and wanted it in :he mail to all 39,000 members of HSLDA the next day. The staff flew into action, fueled by the urgency of the situation.

Everyone was busy. The art department was on the phone arranging overnight printing of letters and envelopes. The attorneys began to schedule radio shows, television, anything to get the word out. Doug Phillips, who heads up the CAP pro­gram, led a team of 60 home-school parents, all trained, volun­teer lobbyists, on a personal visit to the offices of each of the 435 members of the House of Representatives. Home-school leaders on HSLDA’s FAX alert network were immediately informed.

Miraculously, all of the printing arrived the next day. 39,000 envelopes had to be stuffed. The entire staff joined together. The feeling of everyone was expressed by one of the lines in the alert, “TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.”

      But as Jayme Farris remembers, there was a feeling of hope in the midst of the chaos, “We all felt if we did our part, God was going to do something amazing.”

In the legal library, serving as a make-shift mailing room, a fax from the home schoolers from Tennessee was posted on the wall reading, “The Lion is on the Move”. The reference from C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia gave hope to those rushing to get the word out.

Later that same day, the phone barrage to HSLDA began. People across the country were calling for information. “What is HR-6? What can we dot” The word was getting out. The floodgates were opening.

The instructions for stopping HR-6 were straightforward and simple: call, fax or overnight a let­ter opposing this bill and supporting the “Home School/Private School Freedom Amendment” if it was going to be passed. The miraculous thing that hap­pened next is described sim­ply by saying: home school­ers did exactly that. Capitol Hill was caught unsuspect­ing and unprepared for the onslaught of calls and let­ters. One staffer told Doug Phillips, “I have been here for eight years. I have never seen anything like this before. This is the most tremendous show of force I’ve ever seen.”

As the grass roots fires roared, national attention began to be given to the bill. Dr. Dobson pre-empted his scheduled February 21 broadcast with a Mike Farris interview discussing the bill’s implications for both home and private schools. That 5ame day Rush Limbaugh mentioned the bill on his broadcast.

The bill’s supporters, still reeling from the response, tried to counter with damage control. But it was too little, too late. In a letter to his fellow representatives, Rep. Miller wrote, “These callers [the home-school community] have been vic­timized by scare tactics designed to further the political agenda of the Far Right.” He also wrote that home schoolers were the “innocent victims of this episode”. But as Mike Farris pointed out in his radio broadcast, Home School Heartbeat, home schoolers had ample reason to be concerned. “I’ve been in court far too many times defending parents facing criminal charges for teaching their children at home without being a certified teacher, to let such a provision become law,” Farris said. “Miller’s statement of his intent would have been of little use in court. It was the language of the bill which caused the concern, and nothing less than changing or removing that lan­guage would be adequate to protect the freedoms of home schoolers.”

As a result of the huge call-in campaign, Rep. William Ford and Rep. Dale Kildee, both Democrats, proposed an amendment that completely removed Miller’s teacher amend­ment provision and excluded home schools from the bill. This amendment passed 424-1, with Rep. Miller the lone “no” vote.

      Although a tremendous victory, the Ford/Kildee amendment still left unresolved problems for home schoolers. In the at least 17 states where home schools are treated as private schools, families would he unprotected. Another concern was for the home-school children who receive special education services that are federally funded. Before Dick Armey’s amend­ment, they would have been excluded.

Thus, the real victory came when the Armey Amendment was passed 374-53. This amendment prohibited any federal power over home schools and private schools in the entire act and stated that those schools which wanted to participate in fed­eral programs could do so.

After this tremendous vic­tory, some falsely claimed that home schoolers over­reacted and that HSLDA used “scare tactics” to ignite the home-school communi­ty. But what the critics wrongly interpreted as fear in home schoolers was intensity. And for a week in February, those on Capitol Hill got a strong dose of this intensity of devotion to family and to freedom they never dreamed still existed.

The most important observation to draw from the clear victory for home schoolers is the divine intervention that was present. All those battling HR-6 knew God’s hand was guiding from the beginning. He gave us the victory. And in the free­dom we presently enjoy, He should receive the glory.