Congressman Johnson & Pastor McAtee Chit Chat

Dear Pastor McAtee,

Thank you for contacting my office with your concerns regarding House Bill 5912. I greatly appreciate hearing from constituents and other Michigan citizens about issues of importance to them because it helps me know what I need to be paying attention to. Your willingness to communicate with us allows me to be up-to-date and aware of those whom I represent.

HB 5912, introduced by Representative Clack on March 19, is much less an intrusion on privacy and more an accounting mechanism to see who is learning where. The bill would require the parent or legal guardian of a child being educated at home to furnish the following to the superintendent of your local school district: the name and age of each child who is being educated at home, the number/name of the school district and the city/township and county in which the parent or legal guardian resides and the name and address of the parent or legal guardian. The very same regulation is already required of those that attend nonpublic school.

Please let me assure you that this bill would not affect the way you teach your children or limit your choice to home school. If the intent of this bill were to do so I most definitely would not have cosponsored this bill. The bill would simply bring home schooling under the same umbrella as other nonpublic school entities. This “umbrella” currently does not nor does it seek to regulate non-public schools. This bill is not an effort to ease in regulations on the home schooling community.

The concern of home schooling parents, children, and other advocates is reasonable, though I urge you to consider the positive aspects of the present bill as written, rather than the possibility for negative legislation in the future. If this bill is passed, the children who are home schooled in a mischievous manner will be recognized and helped. Although these children make up a very small percentage of those who are home schooled, we cannot justify leaving these children behind and letting their guardians get away with neglecting our youth’s education.

Once again, I thank you for contacting me about House Bill 5912. I assure you that your thoughts, concerns, and suggestions will be considered when I am asked to vote on HB 5912. Please feel free to contact me again regarding this or any other issue.

Sincerely,

Bert Johnson
State Representative
District 5
517-373-0144
bjohnson@house.mi.gov

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Dear Representative Johnson,

I am a homeschooling parent. I do not want to be under the State’s umbrella. The State has no more business in regulating how I educate my children then I have any business in regulating how the State paves roads. In short I don’t want to be under your umbrella and you have no constitutional authority to try and force home schoolers under your umbrella.

Your ‘accounting mechanism’ is an intrusion of my privacy because it is none of your business and it requires me to compromise my privacy by forcing me to report to busybody school districts! Since I don’t owe the State anything as it pertains to my children’s education your bill is most certainly a intrusion of privacy, your protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

My advice remains the same and that advice is that when the State shows itself able to implement an ‘accounting mechanism’ that actually leads to government schooled children being educated past the level of moron I will be glad then to consider the possibility that home schoolers will need to have an accounting mechanism. You complain about the home schooled children who might be educated in a mischievous manner and yet every day in thousands of schools throughout Michigan children are consistently educated in a mischievous manner. I continue to believe that students not educated at all would be better served then students educated in Michigan Schools — such is the abysmal state of government education.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. I wish your response would have reflected more common sense on your part. I know you have good intentions Congressman but you need to provide solutions for what your are responsible for (Government schools in Michigan) before you take it upon yourself to be responsible for what is not your responsibility.

Leave my children alone,

Bret L. McAtee
Pastor — Charlotte Christian Reformed Church

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane