In Boone County, Del. Josh Holstein said the death of 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller still weighs heavily on his community.
Law enforcement discovered the girl’s body was found in a “skeletal state” on the bathroom floor of her Boone County home in April. Criminal complaint said she hadn’t eaten anything for months.
“People just can’t believe that this could be allowed to happen – that this child was not examined,” said Holstein, R-Boone.
West Virginia Watch learned that Kyneddi was taken out of public school to be homeschooled by her mother in 2021, who was charged – along with two grandparents – on Tuesday for murder in connection with the girl’s death. None of the required documents about Kyneddi’s academic progress was ever submitted to the local school authority.
Justice and other state lawmakers said earlier this year that the Legislature should check immediately to tighten the state’s homeschooling reporting requirements to prevent future tragedies. At one point, Justice said he might call a special session on the issue. But since the governor has a Special session The topic has not been addressed yet this month.
A Justice Department spokesman did not respond to questions for this article.
“Obviously something has to change. We cannot allow this to continue,” said Holstein.
State education Data published after Kyneddi’s death, showed that Fifty-seven percent of homeschooled students submitted the required materials on time. For students who are likely to be in 11th grade, that percentage dropped to 37 percent.
Holstein wants lawmakers to be able to vote again during the special session on a bill known as Raylee’s Law, which in its Latest version would suspend or possibly deny a parent’s request for home schooling if a teacher has reported suspected child abuse. The House of Representatives approved The amendment was adopted in February, but was not taken up in the Senate.
Holstein stressed that this is not a law to regulate home schooling, but rather to improve the welfare of children. “I think this is a good step … we need to put it into effect,” he said.
While the legislation may not have helped in Kyneddi’s case, the amendment’s sponsor, Ohio Democrat Del Sean Fluharty, stressed that current homeschooling laws left a loophole that allowed children to be removed from school to cover up abuse and neglect. The law is named after Raylee Browning, an eight-year-old girl Who died of abuse and neglect in 2018 in Fayette County after her parents removed her from school.
“The risk remains the same: We will see more headlines about how our laws are being exploited by people with bad intentions. The first thing an abuser wants to do is hide children from reporting,” Fluharty said.
Jim McKay, West Virginia State Coordinator for Child Abuse Prevention supported Raylee’s bill.
“There needs to be a balance between parents’ decisions about their children’s education and reasonable safeguards to ensure that children are not taken out of school to hinder an investigation into their safety,” he said.
Fluharty doubted that Justice would take up the bill in his special session, which has not yet been announced. The session is so far probably focus on the governor’s plans for a state income tax cut and a child care tax credit.
“As more and more reports emerge showing that lawmakers have not acted, all we get in response is a series of press conferences saying we’re going to work on it,” Fluharty said.
Schools face challenges in tracking missing homeschool students
The Republicans of West Virginia have rolled back Homeschooling Reporting Requirements: In 2016, the requirement for parents to submit annual assessments was eliminated.
Now, homeschool parents are required Submitting 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grade evaluations to their county school board is one of their ways to maintain contact with the local school district.
More than 30,000 children are homeschooled in West Virginia. State law does not require public school officials to follow up with homeschooling families who have failed to report a child’s progress.
State School Superintendent Michele Blatt in June recommended that lawmakers require public school attendance directors to follow up with homeschooling families who have not submitted assessments. She also noted that attendance directors are often required not only to keep track of public school students, but also to keep track of the whereabouts of homeschool and charter school students.
“I don’t think we have a structure in our families right now in West Virginia where we want to risk losing any more children in the system,” Blatt said. said beginning of the year.
There have been cases where homeschool assessments have been incorrectly reported as missing. Hope ScholarshipThe federal Education Savings Program, which provides about $4,400 per student for home schooling, requires an assessment of eligibility.
Jared Hunt, spokesman for the Treasury Department, said that in the past, schools sometimes did not know a student was participating in the Hope program and therefore did not forward the assessment. In other cases, a parent may have neglected to provide the school district with the proper documentation of their intent to operate the Hope scholarship.
“By and large, we have solved those problems and are now trying to find a better system to prevent this from happening,” he said, adding that the program has a high compliance rate of families completing the required assessments.
Other possible laws triggered by Kyneddi’s death
Holstein said he would like to work with law enforcement and the Department of Social Services to develop legislation that could give officials the authority to check on children who are missing during check-ins, such as a home-schooling reporting requirement.
“We’re not in urban centers in this state. We’re in valleys and hills and scattered all over the place. It’s pretty difficult to keep a good overview of how the kids are doing,” he said.
Supporters of home schooling in Parliament have pushed back to change any laws and said that home schooling was being blamed for Kyneddi’s death when it should have led to changes in the state’s child protection system and child welfare services.
CPS and the West Virginia State Police were aware of Kyneddi before her death.
After a controversial investigationThe Department of Health, which oversees CPS, tightened its procedures for reporting abuse and neglect and said it would change How it screens these recommendations.
McKay pointed out that the CPS hotline receives more than 100 calls a day.
“…However, focusing solely on expanding CPS interventions overlooks the greater need for support for families before they reach crisis points,” he said. “Lawmakers should expand access to family support services such as mental health resources, parenting counseling and financial assistance to prevent situations from escalating to the point where CPS becomes involved.”
DoHS Secretary Cynthia Persily told lawmakers last month that the department was there Drafting laws that allow the Department to release restricted information about deaths or near-deaths among children. subjected to a thorough examination because they refused to release information about Kyneddi, including the contents of CPS reports about the girl before her death.
A DoHS spokesperson did not respond to questions about this story.
