A longtime member of the Nauset Regional School Committee says the district has not been following its own policies on homeschool oversight.
That's according to Tyler Jager of the Provincetown Independent.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke with Tyler to learn more about how the former school committee chair's claims may tie into a lawsuit against a religious group in Orleans.
Gilda Geist Who is Chris Easley and what did he tell you about his experience with homeschooling oversight in the Nauset Regional School District?
Tyler Jager Chris Easley is the former longtime chair of the Regional School Committee in the Nauset district, which covers enrollment from Brewster to Wellfleet and also takes high school students from Truro and from Provincetown. He's one of the longest serving members on the school committee, having first been elected in 2014. And what Easley told us is, over that whole tenure, he believed there was minimal and limited oversight of homeschooling in the school district, and in particular, the school's responsibility for ensuring every child's getting an education in the district. And one part of that is the superintendent is supposed to send a report annually to the school committee on how homeschooled students are faring, and Easley says the committee never received it in that time. We checked all available meeting minutes for the period we're looking at, and as far as we can tell, they appear to corroborate his claim.
GG What laws or policies exist here in Massachusetts that are supposed to make sure students who are homeschooled are actually getting an education? And from your reporting, does it seem like Nauset Regional School District followed those laws?
TJ It does actually. And as far as we can tell, the school is following the minimum state requirements on homeschooling oversight. But it's also worth noting that we've heard from other school districts as well that those rules are quite limited. Now, Massachusetts is an approval state, meaning that a district or superintendent needs to approve a parent or guardian's homeschooling plan. And then after that, it's really up to school districts to decide what additional oversight they want to conduct at their own discretion. But the guidance on what approval or monitoring is supposed to take place is really quite vague.
GG How does all of this tie into the ongoing lawsuit against the Community of Jesus, the religious group in Orleans?
TJ It's relevant because while we don't know the number of students who were actually homeschooled in the school district in this period (the district couldn't get that information to us), we do know that at least one student, Oliver Ortolani, alleges in federal court that he was deprived of nearly two years of schooling in the Nauset district during this time. Now, Ortolani says he grew up in the Community of Jesus and lived there during this period that he alleges he expected to be homeschooled, in 2019 and 2020. And instead, he says, members of this group brought him to work at a construction site at the age of 12 for up to 16 hours a day.
GG You reached out to a lot of different people from the school district and beyond for this story. How did folks respond to Easley's claims?
TJ You know, when it came to the school district itself, its current administration, we didn't get very far in getting a lot of substantial response to Easley's claims. And one point to note is there has been a great degree of turnover in this school district since the period that we're really looking at here, 2019 and 2020. We've had two school superintendents since that period, and very few of the current school committee members were actually serving in the period that Easley was serving. This was also during the pandemic, at least for the second half of the period that Ortolani alleges he didn't get an education. We had more luck speaking to current administrators at other school districts, namely Monomoy and Dennis-Yarmouth, about their current homeschool plans. And some policies do diverge from Nauset's. Monomoy, for instance, we heard from the director of curriculum instruction there. Robin Millen checks in on their homeschooled students at least two times a year. And the superintendent of Dennis-Yarmouth recounted having done follow-ups with students he was concerned about in homeschooling plans, including at least one case where he filed a report to the state on behalf of a student who he worried wasn't receiving an education.
You can read Tyler's whole story, Oversight of Homeschooling Was Weak, Says Easley, in the Provincetown Independent.
