>> New efforts to regulate homeschooling in Illinois have touched off a heated debate.

Backers say Illinois is one of 12 states without any home schooling regulations.

new bill aims to change that by requiring families to register with their local school district.

If they plan to homeschool their children.

Supporters say it's aimed at ensuring kids are getting the education they need and are better protected from potential neglect.

Here's a bit from a hearing last week in Springfield.

>> This bill is written in part by people who were homeschooled and get the need to balance champ children's rights.

parents freedom to choose how they educate their kids.

It provides a safe base line to protect kids from the small minority of parents who use homes going as a way to hide abuse or neglect their children.

This bill will intimidate and discourage parents from choosing this much better option for their children.

>> This bill in polls, additional burdens on already stretched local schools, police departments and courts.

This bill would require school districts to manage increase administrative tasks related schooling.

>> Joining us now with more are Shuffield say homeschooling parent and via zoom, Democratic State Representative Tara Costa.

Howard, thank you both for joining us.

Latasha Fields it like to begin with you.

Please.

Youth been homeschooling your children for 18 years after you took your eldest out of public school.

What motivated you to start homeschooling?

Yes, a pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much for having me on.

>> Well, for us, it was a call of God faith as Christians.

it was about the type of shipping a biblical worldview.

We have for them out of his She's a home-schooled.

The college credit.

We just graduated our second oldest in May of 2024 and he's entering training to welding program with 2 more Fifteen-year-old signing the 9 year-old daughter.

Yes.

And and so we also have a microscope.

So at 10 this I have a lot of babies Michael and yes, absolutely.

Yes.

Representative Koster Howard, you know, we mentioned some of those concerns.

Folks raised about overreach.

That includes.

>> You know, mandating certain elements of the curriculum.

What exactly does this bill called for students to be taught?

>> Actually, that is a ready.

The current law here in Illinois that they have to be tied language Arts sorry, Science, Math, social studies, health, physical education.

already current laws.

that's nothing new.

>> You know, the session fields Do you think any of these sorts of registration requirements, for example?

Well, that significantly affect you and and other parents who home school.

Yes, absolutely.

And so the our proponents of this bill claim that is just formality is just a farm.

What we're looking at the bill is not just a this this bill, the 60 page Bill will entail truancy penalty, criminality, parents that don't comply would have 30 days in jail.

They would have $500 fines and also with the whole idea of the Corcoran, Kentucky Education review, the current way that they will allow is we don't have to produce an educational per and it does cite then we would have to satisfy the public education.

And so because of will purchase at a 2021, company at the LGBTQ+ ideology and the LGBT history that in itself is religious persecution forest and violates our First Amendment.

So we don't desire.

We all need to produce RC car.

Have government look at educational per fully out.

Another process in bill.

This very disturbing is that the bill states that Illinois has a fundamental goal for every student in the state of Illinois that their educational development is foot is to serve the public purpose of the state.

And so we as homeschool parents, we do not educate our children to some of the purple public purpose of the state.

So that in itself tells us that our children, according to this bill, will be state property in that parallel slavery with families have no of timing where my ancestors had no autonomy.

And so we don't want our children to become property of the state.

So there's a lot disingenuous in this bill.

There's a lot of egregious check colony and things in this bill that we do not stand in terms of registration as Illinois stands, there is volunteer registry.

So we don't have to be forced to register our home school programs.

>> Representative Cross the Howard.

You know how about that?

You know, tackling at least first that the idea of sort of mandating these elements of the curriculum is that the intention of this bill?

>> The intention of the bill is for the subjects to be taught.

There's nothing in this bill that requires mandated curriculum that is taught in public school.

So that is misinformation.

That is incorrect.

That is part of why some of these pieces were written in a way to actually give homeschool families the opportunity to be as creative as many of them are in how they teach in the end, as long as they're teaching the subjects that all children in the state of Illinois are required to be taught is agenda high level.

There's nothing that requires the curriculum that is in public schools as far the criminality that simply not true.

Currently truancy lodge have that are already built into the state law.

So if there's a concern about the way the truancy laws are written, that's a different subject.

What the declaration form does is make sure that we know that kids are alive where they are.

We want to make sure that they're OK and that's what the declaration form does.

You know, Latasha Fields, how about that?

You supporters say this can help prevent potential abuse and neglect because >> students who are being homeschooled, although there isn't any evidence to back up that it's happening at higher rates.

It's still certainly can happen in there.

They don't have the eyes of of teachers or other school officials on them the way students in a public school might.

You know what's your take on that?

Well, I believe that as many of us over 48,000 of us in a state of Illinois submitted witness leave, said we disagree.

>> With this position that you know, that there's any idea that homeschool students are being abused.

The public school system has failed.

So this this bill is very disingenuous.

We have right now over 1000 allegations in Chicago, public schools and as of 2024 this pektor general say there's over 400 cases.

So my question to represent a casa, how or what are you doing about the allegation in the abuses in Chicago public school system?

Because it is all about a farm where these babies are not being protected in the system that they govern in the system, that they have jurisdiction over.

So that is that it's appalling.

And so we as home schoolers, we do not need a system that's already broken that out with it.

That has already proven.

>> That has failed to govern And we talk about proficiency.

We talk about educational proficiency in the state of Illinois.

There's 1.9 million students and only 39% of those babies can read grade level in only 29% or 28% are proficient in math.

And then you go to Chicago public school system for the black babies.

They're doing even worse is unconscionable.

Only 20% of black children, a Chicago public school system can read on 11 9% are proficient in math.

So we talk about warning kids have a quality education homeschoolers far exceed that.

They far exceed that expectation.

Black students that are home schooled have 15 to 42% points higher than public school peers.

So I'm all I'm in agreement with Representative Koster how we want quality education.

That's why we're home schooling.

That's why we have exit from government education system.

And so for us, this seems like a pursue like we're being punished for the failure of government education.

Representative, how about that?

I mean, with this at all, you know, go after, you know, quote, unquote, homeschooling parents.

>> Not only that, we don't believe that it does in any way, shape or form.

In fact, some of the issues that were arrayed, I think she's correct.

We want to make sure that all kids have a high quality education.

And if you actually take a look at the statistics, on the state Board of Education website.

Our 8th graders are doing great.

We're seeing those numbers come around for our public for our students here L in Illinois.

That's a good thing.

But I would like to address the comment that she made regarding abuse in Chicago public School.

We have laws on the book that require anyone comes in contact with our children in our school setting to be have a criminal background check.

If you are being homeschooled, there's nothing.

You are not subject to any laws.

I want to be clear.

>> 38 states.

>> Had this.

Requirement on the books.

She declared that you are homeschooling your children.

38 states.

>> We here in Illinois are an outlier.

We know that this is happening in Florida, Virginia, Louisiana, they are not making the same complaints.

We outlier heelan here in Illinois where we have 0 regulations and so we are not here to punish anyone.

In fact, we want to applaud those families that are being transparent and are doing it that so well.

But frankly, the statistics that are being re cited, there's no statistic out there that actually says that home school students are better.

That's actually accurate.

We don't know how many homeschool students there actually are here in the state of Illinois because they don't register.

They don't have to declare anything.

And so we don't really know how many children there are.

So we have no data that actually backs up.

What is being said.

What we do is that we have children who have passed away with died at the hands abusive parents.

That is what we want act.

>> And representative, I know we've got a much more that we could possibly say about this,