Sometimes making healthy choices means doing scary things.
Imagine staying at home with your kids for their entire lives,
for practically your entire life, nurturing them,
homeschooling them, keeping the household humming along as peacefully
as you possibly can. And then, one day, your partner decides that you
are failing your children and tells a mandated reporter that your kids
are far behind and your house is unclean, triggering a CPS call...a
homeschooler's worst nightmare.
That was Caity's reality just a few months ago. Facing the
thought that her kids, a 16yo who does best when not forced to
interact in large groups, and a 14yo trans son who is just finding his
way in the world, might suddenly be thrust into public school for the
final few years of high school, Caity chose to leave her 17-year
marriage in order to find some calm in the chaos.
Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.
Caity left expecting to receive enough financial support to cover
rent and knew she'd be able to figure out the rest. As a self-employed
single mother, she was careful to make sure that she could guarantee a
roof over their heads in her agreement with her ex-husband to file a
petition for dissolution of marriage.
Her world got turned upside down when he demanded a standardized
test-style academic assessment of the children with the goal of
placing them in public school if they were behind grade level in any
one area. Months later, she is facing costly lawyer's fees to fight
for her right to continue homeschooling them in the precious few years
they have left under her roof.
We are raising money for Caity's legal fees and are asking for
your contribution. As a self-employed single mother, Caity faces an
unfair financial burden that gives the opposing lawyer a lot of
leverage to "negotiate"--basically, strong-arm her
financially into agreeing to accept less than her children really need
to thrive. Caity can either agree to their terms, or pay a lawyer
thousands of dollars to file paperwork to fight it in court.
If you know Connor and John, Caity's kids, then you know two
young men who are unconventionally brilliant, who can hold an
intellectually stimulating conversation with just about anyone, and
who are learning that they have a lot of power to change the world by
thinking outside the box a little bit.
If you know any homeschool kids at all, you know that they are
highly likely to succeed in anything they put their minds to, and also
that they are highly unlikely to score well in a standardized test, as
their entire schooling has been centered around fostering a lifelong
love of learning rather than receiving high marks in test subjects.
Please help Caity fund her legal fees. Any contribution helps.
Let's band together and show Caity that she and her kids matter, that
they are worthy of our love and support, and that they're going to
make it after all <3