Word: schooling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...James Tolbert has sued the school system to change those rules. And other home-school advocates have taken this issue to Michigan's legislature, where it has split the Republican Party. For Tolbert, it's an issue of basic fairness: "The state should provide these [athletic] benefits on a nondiscriminatory basis," says Stephen Safranek, the lawyer behind the Tolberts and six other families. "We all pay the same taxes...
...this point, I realized I needed a real-life Jeeves. Who better to serve food with snootiness sufficient to obscure its Internet provenance? Ironically, my virtual Jeeves couldn't produce a human one. He did tell me of a school in the Netherlands where I could "learn the true art of butling." Smarty pants. I located a domestic agency in Beverly Hills on my own, but its best price for a footman in a morning coat was $500, minimum. In a panic, I had our bureau administrator, Judith Stoler, call the caterer she uses for TIME functions, which...
...Tolberts of Pinckney, in southeastern Michigan, are all very tall. It can be hard for girls to be big, which is one reason James and Denise Tolbert were happy that Kristina, their 16-year-old, 6-ft. 3-in. daughter, wanted to play basketball. But Pinckney High School won't let Kristina on the team. Like virtually all schools in the state, Pinckney has a rule that no one can play any sport unless she's enrolled. And Kristina and her brother Josh (only 14 and already 6 ft. 2 in.) are home schooled...
Opponents also see it as a matter of fairness--not fairness to taxpayers but to students. Officials say kids in traditional schools follow strict requirements--good attendance, decent grades--to become eligible for athletics. They say they have no way to know whether parents would lie to make their home schoolers eligible. And above all, administrators fear that home schoolers, who would parachute in for practice after a day at the house, could undermine a school's sense of community. They argue that a full-time social investment in a school is what entitles kids to play basketball...
Safranek says this argument ignores school rules, which allow enrolled students never to set foot on campus. (They can take classes at community colleges if they wish.) He suspects the rules are really motivated by bias against home schooling, and he takes offense at the notion that his clients would lie to make their kids eligible...