• Driver’s Ed in Delaware

    Date: 2008.11.12 | Category: Home | Tags: ,,,,,,,

    This is a follow up on the driver’s ed situation in Delaware.  We are now required to pay the fee for Driver’s Ed with public school student attend for free.  The following is a letter addressing the situation from HSLDA.  I have not heard back from anyone within the Department of Education.

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    From the HSLDA E-lert Service…

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    November 12, 2008

    Delaware–Tuition-based Driver Education Adopted

    Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

    The State Board of Education in Delaware has approved a change in the administrative regulations terminating the right of non-public school students to receive driver education during the summer months without paying tuition. A homeschool in Delaware is considered to be a non-public school. This change went into effect yesterday, November 11.

    It appears at this point that the only way to minimize the financial impact of this new law on homeschooling families is to lobby for a reasonable fee structure for the driver education. The regulation now states that the tuition to be charged must be approved by the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee of the Delaware General Assembly. In the Senate this is Senator Nancy W. Cook, and in the House of Representatives it is Representative William A. Oberle, Jr.

    Their contact information is set forth below. The information we have now is that the fee for each student in the driver education is expected to be $362.

    ACTION REQUESTED:

    Please contact Senator Cook and Representative Oberle, co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee, with this message: “Please reduce the cost of driver education during the summer for non-public school students to an affordable amount for families. We pay the same taxes as families whose children are enrolled in public school and should have the same educational benefits as they do, especially during the summer months when school is not in session.”

    Senator Nancy W. Cook,P.O. Box 1401,Dover, DE 19903,302-744-4237

    Representative William A. Oberle, Jr.; P.O. Box 1401,Dover, DE 19903,302-744-4173, William.Oberle@state.de.us

    To view the text of this new regulation, please go to

    http://www.hslda.org/elink.asp?id=5806

    BACKGROUND:

    Upon learning of this proposed change, we complained to the State Board on the basis that it was contrary to the statutory law ofDelaware which guarantees that any pupil of a certain grade level or age residing within a school district be provided with the driver education during the summertime at no charge. We also asked HSLDA member families in Delaware to express their objections to the State Board as well.

    What we did not know at the time was that on July 1, 2008, the Delaware legislature had passed an omnibus appropriations bill, one section of which authorized the Department of Education “to develop and implement a fee structure for the provision of driver’s education services to non-public school students beginning in Fiscal Year 2009.”

    This provision was buried in the middle of Senate Bill 300, a 243-page bill which zipped through both houses of the legislature in only 11days.

    If you have any questions regarding the new law, please contact my legal assistant, Jacob Hall.

    Sincerely,

    Dewitt T. Black, III

    HSLDA Senior Counsel