Virginia Democrat Bill Would Ban Homeschooling For Many

This month, Virginia State Sen. Stella Pekarsky, D-Fairfax, introduced a bill to the Virginia Senate to restrict families’ access to homeschool options.

SB1031, currently under consideration in Virginia’s Senate, states that a student in Virginia who is granted exemption from attending public or private school must have “bona fide religious training or belief [that] is conscientiously opposed to attendance at school.” The legislation further specifies that “bona fide religious training or belief does not include essentially political, sociological or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code.”

Pekarsky’s proposed legislation narrows the scope for reasons why Virginia’s families are permitted to choose to homeschool their children. Currently, homeschool law in Virginia only requires a notice of intent, not “bona fide religious” objection to school attendance. And really, is it appropriate for the state government to be assessing citizens’ religions as “bona fide” or otherwise?

Students Fled Virginia’s Public Schools During Covid

Aside from its questionable constitutional legitimacy, if passed, SB1031 would negatively impact many families in Virginia. According to data from Virginia Department of Education, in the 2024-2025 academic year, there are 56,008 students homeschooled in Virginia, with only 6,755 students holding religious exemptions. Pekarsky’s proposed legislation would limit the freedom of the families who have reasons other than religion for homeschooling their children. Perhaps she and her friends in the teachers unions who funded her campaign want public schools to collect tax dollars from the remaining 49,253 students, many of whom would be forced into those public schools.

As a mother who homeschooled my three children for the 2020-21 academic year when Pekarsky and the other 11 Democratic-endorsed members of the Fairfax County School Board closed the district’s schools, I find this legislation particularly abhorrent. Had SB1031 been passed prior to the school board members’ irresponsible decision to shut our children out of their classrooms, thousands of families who wanted more for their children would not have been able to pull students from the district’s laughable circus of online learning.

Online “learning” in public schools was a catalyst for change at the grassroots level. Beginning with the pandemic, enrollment in public schools declined and homeschooling rates increased significantly. In 2019-2020, there were 38,282 homeschooled students in Virginia. In the last five years, homeschooling rates in Virginia have increased by more than 28 percent.

In Fairfax County, where Pekarsky began her political career before failing up to Virginia’s Senate, homeschooling increased from 3,247 students in 2019 to 3,749 students in 2024. Many other students enrolled in private schools. During that time, the district’s enrollment declined from 189,000 students in 2019-2020 to 181,000 students in 2023-2024.

A combination of school closures and the window into all the academic things our children were not learning, and all of the political issues forced upon them, made Virginia’s parents search for better options and led to public school attrition. As public school students’ test scores declined over Pekarsky’s tenure on the school board in Fairfax County, there was a mass exodus from the district’s once flagship public schools.

Homeschooling Is the Most Likely Alternative to Public Education for the Middle Class

Of the alternatives to public schools for Virginia’s children, homeschooling is the most affordable. In academic year 2024-2025, the average annual private school tuition in the state is $15,321. Meanwhile, the average annual per pupil cost of homeschooling nationally is between $700 and $1,800. Given that homeschooled children perform significantly better on standardized tests than students attending public schools, limiting the homeschool option is an irrational and absurd abuse of power.

As Democrat-endorsed local public school officials continue to push a political agenda in our public schools, including gender-identity education beginning in third grade, Democratic politicians, such as Pekarsky, are trying to limit parents’ avenues to escape the state-sponsored indoctrination of their children. In school districts such as Fairfax County Public Schools, for example, school officials engage in the social gender transition of students without their parents’ knowledge and further compel children’s speech with mandated pronoun usage in violation of the First Amendment. Meanwhile, parents’ political objections to such nonsense are not enough of a reason, according to Pekarsky, for parents to homeschool their children.

Pekarsky’s proposed legislation is just one example of many demonstrating the Democratic Party’s devaluation of freedom, disregard for the middle class, and disconnect with the American people.

The bill was assigned to the Virginia Senate Subcommittee on Public Education for consideration on Jan. 16. If Virginia’s Democratic senators learned anything about the pulse of the American people, demonstrated by the Democratic Party’s catastrophic loss in November, they would vote against SB1031.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor to The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.