Legislators want homeschooling oversight after death of 9-year-old girl allegedly abused in a South Jersey home
“We don’t know how many others Mayas there are out there,” said state Sen. John Burzichelli, a Democrat who represents Gloucester County.
New Jersey legislators are calling for changes to the state’s homeschooling rules after a 9-year-old girl died in a Paulsboro home.
Maya Thomas died Oct. 13 after India Miller and Sean Scott, her mother and stepfather, called police to report that they suspected their daughter was struck by a vehicle. Instead, an autopsy revealed “injuries not consistent with a vehicle crash” that suggested she had faced “prolonged abuse,” prosecutors said last week. Her parents were charged with her murder, among other charges.
Lynn Miller, Maya’s maternal grandmother who lives in Spokane, Wash., told NJ.com last week that Miller and Scott homeschooled Maya to hide her bruises.
Maya lived across the street from Second Baptist Church and next to the playground at Loudenslager Elementary School, where she would have attended if she wasn’t homeschooled, local officials said.
“It’s just heartbreaking when you think this 9-year-old child could see a beautifully manicured playground at the school,” said state Sen. John Burzichelli, a Democrat who represents Gloucester County.
Burzichelli, the former mayor of Paulsboro, lives two blocks from the home where Miller and Scott allegedly abused Maya. He said he drives by the house every day, and he never saw anything suspicious. None of his neighbors have either, Burzichelli said, but there are now rumors.
“Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing,” Burzichelli said. “There are now some stories. Somebody saw her mother at the post office, saw [Maya] with her mother on another occasion. The child looked like maybe she had a bruise. But there weren’t enough interactions where that stuff could be registered.”
Now, Burzichelli and his colleague, state Sen. Paul Moriarty, are calling for more protections for children who don’t go to school.
New Jersey is one of only 13 states that the Home School Legal Defense Association recognizes as having “low regulations” for homeschooling. Parents in New Jersey don’t have to notify the state that they are homeschooling their children. It’s unclear exactly how many children across the state are homeschooled.
Parents who homeschool also don’t need any teaching qualifications. No review or approval is required for curriculums set by parents, and local boards of education aren’t required to establish records for children who learn outside of school.
Parents and guardians only need to give their children “equivalent instruction” to typical schooling, and previous state court cases have affirmed that the term applies only to academic lessons, not social development, according to the New Jersey Department of Education.
“We don’t know how many others Mayas there are out there that are suffering behind a barrier that has caused them to drop off the radar screen and become invisible,” Burzichelli said. “That’s a 9-year-old child that had no one else to speak for her.”
Homeschooling can be successful, Burzichelli said, so he doesn’t want to upend New Jersey’s education rules. But it’s currently too easy for children with no record to slip through the cracks, he said. If Maya had gone to school, Burzichelli said, a watchful teacher likely would’ve noticed her injuries.
Burzichelli said his office is researching homeschooling rules implemented by other states and coordinating with Legislature leadership to soon propose legislation to refresh the state’s alternative education statute.
He isn’t certain yet which child protections New Jersey should take from other states, but he wants to find a system that protects kids from flying under the radar, including a potential requirement for homeschooled children to meet with the school district annually and to ban guardians with criminal records from teaching children at home.
This wouldn’t be the first time state legislators have tried to amend New Jersey’s homeschooling rules.
Last year, after a Gloucester Township couple was charged with abusing their homeschooled teenager by locking her in a dog crate, both the New Jersey Assembly and Senate introduced bills that would have required children in home education programs and their parents to meet annually with a school district representative. Burzichelli was a sponsor, but the bill didn’t progress to a vote in either chamber.
An identical bill was proposed in January but hasn’t progressed. Another bill that followed the Gloucester Township case, proposed by state Assemblyman Sterley Stanley, would have required registration and oversight of home education programs, but that didn’t get anywhere, either.
Burzichelli said he wants to meet with homeschool advocates to make sure new legislation can move forward.
“We don’t have the luxury of making this a war with people who may not be favorable to this,” Burzichelli said.
The state’s homeschooling advocates say they worry conflating homeschooling and Maya’s murder could hurt parents who elect to teach from home.
“Keeping a child home is not the same as homeschooling. Genuine homeschooling involves educating a child; a child being kept out of school does not, by itself, establish that homeschooling is taking place,” the New Jersey Homeschool Freedom Association wrote in a statement.
The NJHFA instructed parents to call Burzichelli and Moriarty Monday to “express [their concerns] that public statements connecting this tragedy to homeschooling risk stigmatizing thousands of responsible New Jersey homeschooling families.”
Pamela Kerr, a New Jersey Homeschool Association board member, expressed similar sentiments in a social media message to The Inquirer.
“Please be clear that Maya Thomas’ murder is a tragedy that has nothing to do with homeschooling,” Kerr wrote. “Abuse happens all too often. It happens to children who attend school. It happens to adults who go to work. Less frequently, it happens to children or adults who have been secluded from society and unlawfully restrained.”
Kerr added that children who are homeschooled don’t have to fear ongoing safety issues, like school lockdowns, and they benefit from individualized attention. Kerr said the NJHA believes New Jersey’s current law “appropriately gives parents the opportunity and right to educate their children without undue interference.”
Paulsboro Mayor John Giovannitti, who has worked in the borough’s school district for 39 years and now serves as an assistant principal, said the state should track children who learn at home.
He also said those children should have access to Paulsboro’s counseling services and extracurricular programming to keep them as engaged in the community as possible.
“A twice-a-year check to see how they’re doing, I don’t think it could hurt,” Giovannitti said. “It’s just, ‘Where is this kid? How are they doing?’”
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