Be Alert, but Please Remain Calm

A bill was introduced in the Illinois Senate asking for a manatory registration of all private school students. If this were actually passed into law, this would mean that a student attending a local brick and mortar Catholic or Jewish or Christian or Montessori or Waldorf or Sudbury..... school, as well as a homeschooled student, who did not submit the form would be found to not be in compliance (possibly even truant, although no punishment is mentioned that I have seen). No private school is going to want this.

In addition - consider:
How is IL going to pay for staff to file and organze the millions of pieces of paper this would generate?
How is IL going to pay for people to follow through on pieces of paper not sent?

I am very opposed to this.  Yet, I am asking for calm and that folks NOT contact their state Congressional Reps yet - contrary to much of the list chatter going on.  Right now this proposal hasn't even been handed over to the Education Committee. It is way too soon folks.

There are a lot of steps in between something being proposed and something actually being voted on by all the Reps. The vast majority of these proposals are never even seen by our Reps because they are withdrawn or don't make it out of committee. Many of those still don't make it to a vote on the floor because the sponsor doesn't have the votes.

We need to work to NOT be overly reactionary. It makes us seem like a bunch of ill-informed people. If we are smart enough to homeschool we certainly are smart enough to undersand the Illinois Constitution and how our government works.

On the other hand, it is WONDERFUL knowing that if this ever did make it to a third reading in committee we could raise an alarm and get such quick action! 

A link to the proposed changes:
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=84&GA=97&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=136&GAID=11&LegID=54913&SpecSess=&Session=