Liberty Unchained

My wife and I do not see eye to eye on the whole public school situation, but we have a daughter that is of the right age.

As a compromise, I decided to let her go to school provided that I could do so without registering her.

Now, a lot of people I know tell me that one simply must register their children to be allowed to take them to school. “Everybody” knows that in order to put your children in school, you must:

• Fill out the registration form the school gives you
• Fill out the immunization form the school gives you
• Fill out all other documentation that the school gives you.

Of course, my name is not “everybody” and I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any such person…so I decided to use what I know and put it to the test.

What do I know?

Well, for starters, I know that the United States Constitution prohibits the obligation of contracts in Article 1 section 10:

“No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.”

So, there can be no law requiring a contract or preventing one from being made. That is a start.

I also know that The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land in the state of Washington as it states as much in Article I Section 2 of the Constitution of Washington.

I also know that the common schools ( which includes the public schools ) are obliged to provide education for all children residing within the borders of washington ( Sections 1 and 2 of Article 9 of the Constitution of Washington ).

Now, the forms provided list the numbers of various statutes which each document claims require one to do one thing or another. And if you look the statutes up, you will probably think that the documents are correct…until you understand two simple things that I happen to know:

1. Any “law” which contradicts the state or federal constitution is no law at all. It is actually called a nullity in law and can be used to do nothing more than make people think they must do something. Both the immunization and registration forms cannot be right because they would violate the federal ( and thus state ) constitution against obligation of contracts as well as the state constitution which obliges schools to educate children.
2. If it requires a signature to be valid, it is likely a contract. All of the documents that I was provided were contracts. They made an offer, had a consideration, had a timeframe, and required agreement. If anything within them was required by law, then no signature would be required.

So, taking these couple of simple ideas, here is what I did:

• For each document, I wrote up a simple one page letter providing what information I am willing to provide, using my own terminology.
• I stapled each letter to each of their official documents.
• I took the packet to the school, gave it to the one in charge of registration, noted that I gave all of the information I was willing to provide, gave her a chance to read it over, and asked when I would find out who my childs teacher is and have a chance to meet.

She looked it all over, noted that it looked good, and told me that I should shortly receive a date and time to come meet the teacher.

And when I noted that my response to the vaccination document should be responded to via post if it needed a response, she noted that it did not and that there really is no requirement.

For the curious, here is the key part of what I wrote for that particular item:

“I will gladly provide a ‘certified’ immunization statement once:

• It is positively proven that a common school can exclude a child simply because her parents have failed to file such a statement.
• It is positively established that the superintendent of public education can create law which is applicable to the general population rather than regulations which are only applicable to the schools.

Satisfactory proof shall consist of validated documents tracing the powers claimed to be exercised over the People of Washington from the Constitution of Washington to any statute that is claimed to be a public law in this state.

Exclusion of my daughter from the common schools without proving the right to do so shall constitute both a plain violation of Article IX Section 1 of the constitution and possibly a trespass against the rights of my daughter as well.”

Time to prepare all responses? One hour.

The result?

My daughter will be going to the public school and I will not have any contract with the school agreeing to do what those running it want me to do. This means that unlike most people around here, the school cannot drag me into court if my daughter stays at home or skips school.

When the rubber meets the road, “School Registration” is a contract. It is the contract that is used to do all kinds of things to people and force them to have their kids to school at a specified time, on specified days, etc. The schools were established to provide a place for children to be educated. There is NO requirement that one must take ones children to them…unless of course you registered them with the school.

One last word: None of the papers I provided had my signature on them. None.

Food for thought…

And when I get a bit more time, I will define a few words that have very different legal meanings than most people might believe. Those words are “must”, “shall”, and “register”.