Another successful event advocating for homeschooling at California’s State Capitol!
– Assembly Member Gallagher speaking on the steps of the Capitol –
This Year’s Capitol Day Schedule
The goal of Capitol Day every year is to provide information about private home education to our California state legislators and their staff in a friendly, professional manner. This allows legislators and their staff the opportunity to visit with real homeschool families.
On January 18th, around one hundred people gathered in Sacramento to kick off Capitol Day with an informative and inspiring day of training.
Family Protection Ministries (FPM) and Christian Home Educators Association (CHEA) sponsored Capitol Day 2024! This year’s event spanned a total of three days. Wednesday, January 17th, was a training day at Sun River Church, where attendees were trained for Capitol visits and heard from inspirational speakers. On Thursday the 18th, we did Capitol office visits in the morning and gathered back at Sun River in the evening for Freedom Night. On the morning of Friday the 19th, we met once more at Sun River Church to share as a group about how the Capitol office visits went and learn about the need for district office visits.
An impressive slate of speakers entertained, motivated, and provided valuable information about the inner workings of California government, advocacy, and Biblical principles. Speakers included California Assembly Member James Gallagher, executive director of HSLDA Action Joel Grewe, Dr. Brian Ray of NHERI, and missionary and pastor to the Capitol Frank Erb. Nathan Pierce and Drew Olender of FPM were also featured along with Xedrick Paredes who interned with FPM!
Each session throughout the day provided valuable information about private home education and the importance of advocacy. Attendees were engaged and challenged with the information they received. It was wonderful to see families attend together, all learning about the necessity and the means to advocate for private home education.
FPM staff took feedback from participants as they completed their office visits. It was wonderful to hear about how the visits went, and how many young people were given the opportunity to speak up and advocate for their own education! The information gathered during this debriefing time will help build a valuable database of information about which legislative offices have staff that are friendly to private home education.
– Capitol Day attendees with a legislative aide –
How It Went!
In the end, every legislator’s office received a packet containing information about how private home education legally works in California and documenting its excellent results. Many groups were able to get walk-in visits with a legislator or staff member, providing those offices with an in-person connection with an actual homeschool family. Some families were even able to personally meet with their own representative!
A huge thank you to CHEA for their dedicated partnership with us. They have partnered with us for many years and we appreciate everything they do to get this event up and running.
Thank you to all the families who sacrificed their time to come for training and to do the invaluable work of delivering packets to every legislator’s office. Making and building those connections is vital to defending our homeschool freedoms. We also want to thank all our volunteers who pitched in and made the training day run so smoothly. Most of all, we want to give glory to God, our Creator and King. We always want our Lord Jesus to be honored in what we do.
This event is especially vital for the many new legislators and their new aides who have not yet become familiar with private home education. In fact, a significant number of the legislators and their aides have no idea how private homeschooling works, either practically or legally, or that there are homeschoolers in their districts. These visits go a long way toward helping them see that homeschoolers are good, law-abiding citizens who are living and working in their districts.
Don’t miss next year’s Capitol Day, 2025!
Preparations for Capitol Day 2025 are underway, more information is coming soon!
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