In an effort to reduce truancy in Brown County, Wisconsin, police officers are enforcing the county's 1998 daytime curfew ordinance. You will find WPA's information helpful should you be approached by anyone asking questions.If a police officer questions you, WPA suggests you follow these general principles:• Stay calm and be polite.• Know and exercise your legal rights.• To protect your homeschooling freedoms, civil rights, and privacy, do only the minimum that is required to avoid having the situation become more serious.• Make sure any young people who will not be accompanied by an adult while they are out in public in the Green Bay area during conventional school hours are prepared to talk with police officers. Consider practicing with them.• For adults only: Explain that children who are accompanied by their parents are exempt from the Daytime Curfew ordinance. If necessary, show them a copy of the ordinance (see below).• For both adults and unaccompanied young people: Explain that you are a homeschooler and homeschoolers have the legal right to set their own calendars and schedules. If necessary, show the officer your PI-1206 form, including the information you have printed on the back (see below).• Don't volunteer any additional information. Don't outline the schedule your homeschool follows. Don't try to explain that whatever you were doing is part of your curriculum. Volunteering such information may lead the police officer to ask you more questions or report you to a school official or social service worker for more investigation.• In addition, WPA does not advise homeschooled parents to provide their children with written proof that their child has been excused from attending school at a particular time for two reasons. First, using the PI-1206 form to establish that the child is a homeschooler should be sufficient to prevent the child or parent from being arrested. Second, providing such excuses invites more questions.

• Tell other homeschoolers: You are required to file form PI-1206 even if you begin homeschooling after the third Friday in September. (An organization based outside Wisconsin says on its website that families who begin homeschooling after the third Friday in September do not have to file the form.) • Tell other homeschoolers: You are required to file form PI-1206 ONLINE each year you are homeschooling. (The organization based outside Wisconsin states on its website that filing a paper version of the form is an “option.”)An organization based outside Wisconsin has posted inaccurate information about homeschooling in Wisconsin on their website. If homeschoolers take action based on this information, critics and opponents of homeschooling will be able to claim that homeschoolers are not obeying the law. This could easily lead to increased state regulation of homeschooling in Wisconsin, which since 1984 has had one of the best homeschooling laws in the country. Wisconsin homeschoolers are NOT required to take state-mandated tests, are NOT required to submit their curriculums for review and approval, are NOT required to report to school officials, etc. Homeschoolers in most other states are required to do one or more of these. Let's work together through WPA to maintain our freedoms. Let's not allow dangerous and inaccurate information from outside Wisconsin to rob us of our freedoms.