NARS and Private School Law

THE LAW: PRIVATE SCHOOLS in MAINE

Six items are explained below.

NARS is listed on Maine’s Dept of Education web site.
NARS fulfills Maine law and provides “equivalent instruction” under the guidance of our state-certified teachers.
The Maine Dept of Education’s School Approval Office has supplied NARS with a letter verifying our status as a recognized private school.
NARS is fully accredited.
Important background and additional insight: the State of Maine Dept. of Education lost in Federal Court
Students in all 50 states are served by our private school.

1. NARS is listed on the State of Maine’s web site under the Dept. of Education’s educational directory.

This listing identifies NARS's status as authorized under Maine law and “recognized by the department as providing equivalent instruction.” (more below in item 3)

Currently, 180 Maine Private Schools qualify for this status (an estimated 11,000 Maine students attend these private schools), and as you can see, NARS is one of them.

http://www.maine.gov/education/eddir/schcontact.htm#priv (go to item 5e)

We hope you find that this listing alone is enough to offer validation that NARS is authorized under state law and recognized by the Dept of Education as providing equivalent instruction, and that our status is, indeed, “equivalent.”

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2. NARS fulfills Maine law and provides “equivalent instruction” as provided in the statute.

The State's responsibility for this classification of private schools is limited. It includes authorizing and recognizing schools which are sufficient to provide "equivalent instruction" under Maine law. To emphasize this point, Maine law allows students registered in those schools to fulfill the compulsory school attendance law (truancy), which is the leverage states have to enforce compliance.

Here is the citation from the law.

20-A MRSA §5001-A, sub-§3, ¶A, as amended by PL 1991, c. 602, §1 and affected by §4 and affected by PL 1995, c. 610, §2:

“A. Equivalent instruction alternatives are as follows.

(1) A person is excused from attending a public day school if the person obtains equivalent instruction in:

(a) A private school approved for attendance purposes pursuant to section 2901;

(b) A private school recognized by the department as providing equivalent instruction;

(d) Any other manner arranged for by the school board and approved by the commissioner.”

NARS complies with item A (1) (b).

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3. The Maine Dept of Education School Approval Office has supplied a letter identifying NARS as fulfilling this provision of the law. A copy of that letter is attached as a pdf file.

The letter is signed by Edwin “Buzz” Kastuck.

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4. NARS is fully accredited.

Q. Is NARS program accredited by the State of Maine?
A. NARS is fully accredited. And, to be absolutely technical, STATES do not give accreditation to schools. Private accrediting agencies award accreditation...Maine does not offer accreditation to any school -- not public schools, not private schools. Be aware that the terms educator’s use can be confusing -- for example, some states, like Maine, use the word “approved” to denote that a certain school is approved to receive public funds. (Since rural states do not have schools in every town, some towns tuition their students to private schools nearby. These schools need to be “approved” to receive public funds because the towns pay the tuition, not the parents.)

NARS is truly a PRIVATE school -- it does NOT care to receive public funding with so many strings attached. As a state-authorized private school, recognized by the Dept. of Education, NARS has never sought this additional “approved” status. Rather, we prefer to maintain the required minimal accountability to the state and exchange it for our direct accountability to the families who use our services. NARS is totally funded by our modest tuition. If we do a good job for the families we serve, they stay with us. If the families feel they have not been served well, they leave and take their tuition with them. Private schooling is a powerful tool in “parental choice.”

Q. So,. if the States do not offer accreditation to schools, then how does a school become accredited?
A. All schools must seek accreditation from some independent, external, private source. All schools which identify themselves as accredited have obtained that accreditation in the same way -- they have voluntarily sought after it from the sources appropriate to the school. In our case we use the National Private Schools Association Accreditation Alliance.

Although we have been a State-Authorized Private School, recognized by the Maine Department of Education for 16 years, we recently sought further credentials with the NPSA, and as you can see from the attached letter (attached as a pdf), we have achieved the status "Fully Accredited." This step is our 5-year accreditation. This status is renewable with annual updated information and periodic site visits from the accreditation team.

The attached NPSA letter states, in part:
"This Fully Accredited Status demonstrates your
commitment to the educational process and assures public
confidence in your well deserved reputation. North Atlantic
Regional School is an outstanding academic institution
whose quality program deserves recognition."

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5. Background and insight into Maine's Department of Education. The State of Maine's Department of Education LOST in Federal Court.

A..
In a 1983 Federal Court suit, the Maine Association of Christian Schools beat Maine's Department of Education over the issue of school approval. Federal Justice Conrad Cyr issued a Federal Court Decision which defeated every point raised by the Maine Dept. of Education against their authority over private schools in Maine.
(Bangor Baptist Church v. Maine, 576 F. Supp.1299 (D.Me.1983).
The Dept. of Education is forced to acknowledge that we have the right to operate under the basic state guidelines for schools. We have the right to issue credits and award diplomas, we have the right to admit students, and, in short, we have the same rights and privileges as all other schools -- except the right to receive and use public funds. We are not approved to receive public funds. The school approval office must acknowledge we can do all the other things -- but they don't have to like it and they don’t have to be cooperative in answering questions about the issue. It appears their best tactic is to offer “limited truth” as it suits them and leave out all the rest.

For example, in conversations with the Department of Education, especially their career bureaucrats there, they may tell you that they do not “recognize” our diploma. Actually that is true because the law requires they recognize the SCHOOL, not the diploma! So their reply is not the WHOLE truth. The fact is, they have no authority to recognize our diploma or credits, our teachers or curriculum, or any other internal matter ever since they were court-ordered to have a hands-off approach to what private schools do. They don’t recognize the diploma, but they are FORCED to recognize the school -- that’s the law.

B.
The State of Maine Department of Education does not like to recognize the work of the 180 private schools in Maine, and that includes NARS, because it was court-ordered to do so. The state’s authority over private schools is severely restricted by the U.S. Federal Court. Especially those in the Dept's School Approval Office don't appreciate our schools, feel we reduce their head-count, and thus reduce their state and Federal dollars. They have a substantial financial reason to be against private education.

At any given time, about 11,000 students are enrolled in private schools of Maine. At $3,400 per pupil NOT in the public schools, the Maine public schools loose $37 Million dollars per year because of us. That seems to be enough to annoy them. No wonder they don't appreciate what we do.

C.
Graduates from the North Atlantic Regional High School have been accepted for admission to the colleges, universities, or programs for which they were academically qualified, including Julliard, Harvard, West Point, Cornell, Penn State, Purdue, and hundreds of other familiar schools.

NARS is a real school, and we have maintained our credentials with the other departments of State and Federal agencies as a school. We are not a cyberschool, we are not a school-in-a-mailbox, we are a school with over 2000 students.

Further,

Our IRS Federal ID number is 01-0534550
Our Maine Tax Bureau Identification Number is 1052642
Our College Board School Code Number is 200037
Our US Dept. of Transportation DOT number for our school vehicles is USDOT 750404
Our US Dept of Education ID number is 23 8 0011 8 21 2 16388
Our US Dept of Commerce Bureau of the Census ID number is 23 8 0011 8 21 2 11614
Our Maine Dept. of Labor ID number is 78200081-5 0127089000-000 8211
Our US Dept. of Labor designation is 8211-- their designation as
"Elementary and Secondary school below university grades (ordinary grades 1 through 12)."

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6. Students in all 50 states are served by our school. No residency is required to work with NARS, to earn high school credits from NARS, or to earn a diploma from NARS.

NARS is not restricted to students in any certain state(s). We are free to work with any family in any state. To be awarded a high school diploma, the student must fulfill the graduation requirements for our Maine high school diploma, regardless which state they live in.

Q. Will students still qualify for in-state tuition and state-sponsored scholarships?
A. Yes.

Your residency is determined by where you pay your taxes, where you pay your utility bills, where you are registered to vote, where your car is registered, etc. That is how in-state residency is established for scholarships and lower tuition rates, etc.

Your residency is not determined by who assists with your homeschool program. For example, if you were to use the American School in Chicago to award credits to your students, your student would earn a diploma from Illinois. If you used the University of Nebraska High School Program (another correspondence school), the high school diploma would come from Nebraska. If you used Bob Jones University's correspondence program, the diploma would come from South Carolina. And so on. But none of that changes your status as a homeschooler, and none of it changes your status as an in-state resident.

There is much more detail on our site: http://www.narhs.org