07.02.09
Posted in Food, Growing Challenge: Seed to Seed, Sustainability at 9:24 pm by Christina
It’s been two months since we officially entered the Seed to Seed challenge at One Green Generation. Gardening is a lot of fun, and a lot of work! The whole family is involved, although Jamie’s interests are primarily of the destructive, clipper-wielding variety. The rest of us are putting our sweat into the project. Katie and Emma have done planting, weeding and harvesting. Jeff has done those, plus infrastructure labor and design on the beds, the irrigation, and plant supports. I’ve done everything mentioned, plus starting seeds, working the greenhouse, and the R&D. (Actually, if you include the time at the farm the others have done seed starting too; I was thinking of the work here at home.)
Most things are growing well in the ground - so well that we’re harvesting and eating here at home. The farmers’ market bounty is limited to foods we aren’t growing: berries, peaches/nectarines, cherries, onions, garlic, mushrooms and potatoes are the main market items these days. If we’re growing it, we’re waiting to eat it until it’s ready in our garden! The above dinner was a casserole of roasted potatoes and summer squash, sauteed chard and kale with onions and garlic, and fresh yellow plums. Boy are we proud of our efforts!
The only totally failed crop at this point is the carrots; the ground is way too dense for them, heavy on the clay. Germination was incredibly poor and growth was bad too. Those got pulled to make room for other plants; the to-do list holds the task of scavenging some wood to build a raised bed for carrots with properly constituted soil for that crop. We eat a lot of carrots, so we want to get that crop going!
The previous three pictures are crops that we can’t take much credit for; they are part of the perennial plantings of our rented property. The first is yellow plums, the second grapes, the third red plums. The yellow plums are ripe now and we are preparing for plum jam (I think). A woman posted onto freecycle today looking for a plum harvest she could use for plum jam thank you/favors for her baby shower; she’ll be here Monday (and what a great idea!)
These three pictures are of the corn and pumpkin patch. We put the pumpkins in all at once, and divided the corn into two plantings. The first picture is on the tall side of the patch - the corn is close to five feet there. The second picture shows the second planting; the corn sprouted just fine there, and we’re hopeful it will be able to grow up through those maniac pumpkin plants! The third picture is a close up of the pumpkins; each plant has too many blossoms to count! (They’re a small eating variety, no giant jack o’lanterns.) I hope we - and everyone we know! - can store the bounty successfully through the winter!
Above are the strawberries. These were transplant divisions from an active patch at the farm that was being relocated. we didn’t let these bear this year, pinching back the flowers and the runners to encourage a strong mother plant. Next year they can go crazy like pumpkins
Along the fence beyond the strawberries I put in some potato vines, which are supposedly vigorous and also supposedly shade tolerant; to me they look exactly as they did when I planted them, oh, eight weeks ago? Probably just not enough sunshine; it’s too bad. It’s an ugly chain fence with wood or plastic slats dimming the view into the neighbor’s yard. I thought a shade and drought tolerant vine would be more aesthetic, and also provide color and attraction to beneficial bugs. Try, try again! The shade wildflower mix in front is fully sprouted though - not much blossom yet but we’ll give it time.
These two are the non-pumpkin curcurbits (a plant family for rotational gardening, which approach helps prevent the build-up of soil diseases). The first is the black-mulched bed of melons, two varieties, which started strong in the greenhouse and were transplanted into the ground June 19th. I don’t see much growth there in the last two weeks. Melons like a hot microclimate, hence the black mulch. I wanted to plant these in beds near the house, training them up trellises and giving the fruit sling supports, but our co-tenant planted other stuff where I had intended them to go. (The reflected heat from the house would improve the microclimate.) The black mulch helps keep the soil warmer, but doesn’t do much for the air around the plants; I’ve got it on the task list to get a hoop-house over at least some of the melons to see if that improves their growth. The second bed is the crazy summer squashes, with some giant sunflowers thrown in for good measure. Thank goodness for hungry friends!
These three are the Solanaceae beds, hosting plants from the nightshade family: mostly tomatoes, with some eggplants and peppers to try. Potatoes and tobacco are in the same family. First picture is the early plants of slicer and cherry tomatoes; a plant of cherries is just starting to turn ripe, and all the plants have plenty of fruits and flowers presaging an excellent harvest. I hope I can keep us in baguettes and fresh mozzarella so we can enjoy summer bruschetta to our hearts’ mouths’ content! The second bed is eggplant and sweet pepper interspersed with homegrown French marigolds; there are a few sauce tomatoes at the end. The eggplants and peppers are not thriving; again, I think this is a heat issue. The third pic is the sauce tomatoes that I started from seed I harvested last year, from slightly overripe tomatoes I gleaned at a local farm (in exchange for picking market-quality produce), which tomatoes I sauced and canned. My first batch of starts never came up under the initial heat/moisture conservation system; my thought is I cooked them, judging from the steam. The second round of starts thrived in the mini-greenhouse and went into the ground June 19th. They’re doing well and I’m looking forward to pulling out my food mill again. There are several varieties of basil planted with the sauce tomatoes, too.
Last two! Top is a cole family bed - chard, kale and broccoli at this point. (We had to get some herbs in the ground before leaving on vacation and put a block of those at the end of the first chard planting so they’d get irrigated while we were gone.) More chard than kale, as we’re not totally into eating kale yet; I’m increasing the mixture in the meals I cook, though, so it shouldn’t take long to acclimate to it. The broccoli is growing but no florets yet; not sure what will happen there. This bed is where Jamie can indulge his clipper fetish; I assist with leaf selection, but he gets to cut all the greens! The bottom picture is the bush beans, with the poorly located summer savory buried in the middle. (Too bad, because I love savory and use it in almost everything; but it’s very spindly. I’ll try and relocate a couple of plants and see how they do.) The beans were planted successively, first the left and then the right so the shadows would fall into the path rather than onto the smaller plants. It’s a three-bean mix, yellow, purple and green. There’s another half of this bed to prepare for a third and fourth succession, for beans through the fall!
I’m planning to harvest seeds from the sauce tomatoes and the pumpkins at least. The sauce tomatoes are time-staggered from the slicers, so the pollination shouldn’t be affected; the pumpkins are separated from the row of mixed summer squash by a tall row of tomatoes. I’m hopeful that planning will do the job and my seed-to-seed challenge will be successfully met with a strong year-two showing! I read today that only around 10% of home growers start their own seeds, which really surprised me given the price difference; the U.S. really does face a cost-versus-time imbalance! I’m proud of myself; almost everything in the garden was done from seed. Even the plants we brought home from the farm, we helped start the seeds back in January. Only the strawberries weren’t from seed, and they usually aren’t for anyone 
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Posted in Commentary, Current Events, Environment, Activism, Sustainability at 4:04 pm by Christina
A year ago, I learned about peak oil. Peak oil is the point in time when maximum production (extraction) of petroleum occurs. There is a peak because petroleum is, practically speaking, a finite and non-renewable resource. (Petroleum is technically renewable; it just takes millions of years and precise geologic conditions to create it.) Energy Bulletin has a good peak oil primer. The term “peak oil” has a specific scientific meaning; as a concept, “peak oil” refers more generally to the imminent decline in the availability of fossil fuel energies.
Peak oil is not something universally acknowledged. As with climate change, though, the majority of scientists admit the geologic reality of the decline of fossil fuels and argue only about the shape of the graph.
The challenge of peak oil comes in the form of our consumption of and dependence upon fossil fuels. In the rich world, demand for and consumption of fossil fuels has increased annually to catch up with supplies over the last 150 years. Liquid hydrocarbons (petroleum, aka crude oil) as well as the various natural gases have been so abundant and are so chemically useful that commerce and industry have derived hundreds of thousands of products from them:
- plastics in every room of every home, office and factory
- synthetic fibers like nylon and polyester for clothes, carpeting
- pharmaceuticals and other medical applications
- fertilizers and pesticides for food production
- asphalt and other construction products
- manufacturing components
and so forth.
These end-use products are highly visible to us, but of course hydrocarbons are overwhelming consumed as combustible fuels, either directly in fuel tanks of cars, tractors and airplanes, or indirectly when powering the conversion of other resources into consumable products: cotton into the clothes I’m wearing, or silicon into the computer chips powering my laptop.
Citizens of rich countries have learned to consume fossil fuel as if it were alcohol and they college students on spring break. We live many miles from friends and family and our jobs, and count it as nothing because we can hop in the car or book a flight. Our consumption is not only metaphorical; our agricultural system uses ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy, making our consumption literal as well. I have read estimates that our individual hydrocarbon consumption is equivalent to harnessing the labor energy of one hundred or more human slaves. Fossil fuels are not necessary for human survival; hundreds of thousands of years of human existence proves that. But we are as practically and psychologically dependent on them as any addict is to their drug.
Peak oil would present a challenge at our current consumption and dependence levels. But those levels are not peaking; they are rising. India and China, with one-third of the global population, have the steepest consumption curves as their economies strive for U.S. levels; no country has a falling consumption curve. With peak production upon us, supplies will decrease against rising consumption.
How we handle that gap will determine our future.
To be continued in Part Two: Looking for the Way Out.
Resources on peak oil:
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04.26.09
Posted in Household, Food, Growing Challenge: Seed to Seed, Sustainability at 7:01 pm by Christina
Our family has increased our sustainability goals enormously over the last year; that shift motivated our move to a location more convenient to activities (for biking and walking), with a smaller house and a larger yard. The last was very important to us, as we wanted to get ourselves involved in the production of our own food. We started last summer volunteering at a local organic farm, Terra Bella, after speaking with them at the farmers’ market. (It’s called wwoofing, for “world wide opportunities in organic farming”.) They get our labor once a week on average, and we get the benefit of their expertise; we also got to take home lots of starts from their high-yield greenhouse.
I decided to participate in The Growing Challenge: From Seed to Seed, which is sponsored by Melinda of One Green Generation in Seattle. Our garden is of significant size, 40×50 (plus lots of fruit trees around the perimeter as well). We share it with a co-tenant, an elderly Lebanese woman, the mother of our landlord, who will be gone for three months this summer to Lebanon; so while she has about 100 linear feet of fava beans active right now, the rest of the garden is under our care and planning and the favas will revert to us after she harvests them.
Because we are novice gardeners and because the plot is so very large, we (I really - Jeff is more labor than R&D) are implementing a combination of cover-cropping (basically leaving some of the space resting) and also sequential planting since our growing season here is long and strong (i.e., instead of planting 40 linear feet of beans, we’ll plant 10 feet at four different times). We are following organic principles as well as a system of companion planting and crop rotation based on Great Garden Companions by Sally Jean Cunningham.
We machine-tilled most of the garden, and brought in two cubic yards of compost from the municipal transfer station, made from our curbside green waste bins (which accept kitchen waste as well as yard waste). We made 11 mounded wide beds, amended them with compost, and set up a drip irrigation system (with the help of Sean from Terra Bella) wherein each bed has its own valve(s) for excellent watering control. (Very important with our current drought!) Everything got mulched over with straw. We got some input from Sean about our planting layout and forged ahead!
Our current planting status:
- 14 different summer squash plants, of I think 7 varieties, planted and mulched with companion plantings of marjoram, sweet alyssum, and some N-plant I have to get the farm to tell me again (third or fourth time!)
- 19 tomato plants of 7 different varieties for fresh eating, also 3 tomatillo plants, mulched and interplanted with marigolds (and eventually basil varieties)
- 6ft by 3ft planted with three varieties of carrots (will be sowed sequentially across the summer and fall)
- 10ft of bush beans (mixed varieties) with marigolds
- maybe 12ft x 2ft interplanted with broccoli, chard and kale, as well as sweet alyssum and marigold
- 25ft (with three fruit trees in the row) set with strawberry plants; these won’t be allowed to bear this year to promote good core growth
I started numerous things in newspaper pots (using the Pot Maker) that I created while watching Jane Austen movies, Jane Eyre, etc. Not all of these starts were successful; the beans were too wet (and I later read better started in the ground, which wasn’t ready at the time!), and others were I’m sure too hot, judging by the fact that I could observe steam when I lifted the plastic bag I was trying to conserve moisture with. I also used “potting soil” which was likely too dense; for the second set I tracked down a “seed starter” mix. Jamie and I biked to the hardware store last week for a clear shower curtain which we used to construct a more easily ventilated greenhouse (using the worktable and two soil-filled buckets). Under that setup, the 5-day marigolds are up after only 3 days. Successful starts under the original system include small sugar pumpkins (which are still coming up a week later, so very variable) and Autumn Beauty sunflowers. New starts in the curtain greenhouse:
- 8 pots lovage
- 12 pots chive
- 8 pots basil blend
- 12 pots French marigold (which is the variety with scientifically demonstrated nematodicidal effect)
- 16 pots red bunching onions (scallions)
- 22 pots flat leaf parsley
- 14 pots of striped roma tomatoes, for canning (which heirloom seeds I collected myself last year from gleaned tomatoes I was allowed to harvest after picking market-ready tomatoes for the producer)
Other than the tomatoes, these starts are for interplanting with main crops in the garden. Oh, and Emma has been doing some stealth (but approved) planting of nasturtium seeds and the like; we’ll have to wait for sprouts to see what she accomplished!
This project is huge for our family, in terms of the learning curve and especially the physical labor commitment. The size of the garden is large for a starter, but we have good advisors and are hoping to donate oversupply to our local food bank and/or shelter. Katie loves the gardening and the farming; Emma will do some, but prefers to choose wildly rather than meld seamlessly into the task list. Jamie is of course mercurial about it, sometimes being helpful, other times being quite a handful (or footful, since we have to keep him off the plants!). Jamie is getting part of the garden for himself, which corralling will hopefully be successful; Emma is trying to be patient with Mom trying to adapt to her requests.
Participating in the Growing Challenge will likely mean weekly updates far more brief than this introduction, consisting mostly of fact lists for the week. I still want to get a post written up about the very first sentence - our explosion of sustainability goals in the last year - but that will be another time. For now, I wanted to get linked into the Challenge to share with others working on similar projects. All the best!!!
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02.16.09
Posted in Life in general at 12:16 pm by Christina
Biggest news We moved at Halloween. Not very far, back west over the hills into Castro Valley. Our new home is smaller than the Dublin behemoth, and we are doing our best to be efficient in our use of space. It’s pretty successful so far. Primary reasons for moving: to locate ourselves closer to most of our activities; to reduce our square footage and our rent; to live on a property with food-producing potential. We are enjoying an additional benefit - this is a wonderfully quiet cul-de-sac street, with plenty of children. There is a family of homeschoolers (girls 12, 10, 7), and a number of toddlers; when it’s not raining, the kids are congregating in the front yard and riding their bikes on the street. It’s a terrific enhancement to our days!
Jamie We’ve got a lively three-year-old on our hands now. Jamie loves dearly to play both Little House prairie dress up and trains-and-trucks; he enjoys baking and heavy construction. Non-traditional gender is an issue I want to explore here… Now that we’re back west of the hills, Jamie is taking monthly classes at Sulphur Creek, our local nature center and wildlife rehabilitation facility. This week he starts a twice-weekly toddler swim class, and in March he’ll start a gymnastics class. He loves these outings, and with Jeff working at home, they are very easy to manage because the girls can stay home and do what they want. Jamie is of course deep into the first individuation - colloquially known as “the terrible twos”, though we have never felt that way about them. We noticed with both girls that this period didn’t start until around three as well; I hypothesize that our parenting style contributes to this delay, and I suspect that it also contributes to why it doesn’t seem so terrible.
Emma Now 9.5 years old, our middle child enjoys her music and her playtime more than anything. Having started harp a mere year ago, she has progressed so rapidly that she was able to accompany the homeschool choir on a Celtic piece just a few weeks ago. Her dedication is such that she is able to practice an hour a day, six days a week, in addition to her two lessons (she also plays the violin), and she is self-teaching piano and making terrific progress there. Living on our new street, Emma has finally been able to develop her bike-riding confidence and graduated to a larger bike with gears and hand brakes. She is exploring new interests such as horseback riding and pottery via generous grandparental birthday present. As a child with a mild temperament, Emma and her parents struggle to maintain the time and space necessary for strong attachment around the more obviously presenting needs of her demanding siblings.
Katie A teenager at last, although she has been an adolescent for almost two years now if the non-chronological markers are any indication. This stage comes with nice privileges, like being able to wander the streets unsupervised, subscribe to New Moon magazine, and stay up later. Katie now spends 6 hours a day on her homeschooling responsibilities, which include 1.5 hours of music on her three instruments (violin, flute and piano). She would love to add twice-weekly ballet to her schedule, toward her goal of acheiving en pointe, and there is a good program nearby; the challenge of how the overall load will adjust has not yet been resolved. Katie is going through the second individuation stage toward maturity (and boy is it fun sometimes having two doing that at once!); the biggest challenge is anger and stress management, and we are looking into activities that can help with that.
Christina I am thrilled with our new house for the big reason that it is a ten-minute walk from the theater where I do my music! The closeness to rehearsals there and for ensembles at people’s homes means I can spend more time doing the actual music (when before I had to count a lot of commute time each week into the total). Just yesterday I auditioned an operatic trio with two great friends and I believe we blew the director away with our performance. Much of my time is taken up of course with the kids, their activities and their homeschooling. What additional time I have is devoted to what is called “peak oil preparation”; this means lifestyle adaptation, planning and development toward what Jeff and I believe is the rapidly approaching global change away from a petroleum-centered society. (Another issue that will get much more attention in individual posts.)
Jeff Continuing to financially support our family, Jeff has been what we feel is phenomenally successful as a consultant for the pharmaceutical industry, though we have no other data points. He has captured the attention of significant corporate clients, won extended contracts and negotiated substantial billing rates. To achieve that he has developed solid personal skills in business, marketing and networking, but for the most part his success is based on customer satisfaction and referrals; in other words, his work is self-perpetuating based on his excellent performance. We are of course concerned about the U.S. and global economies and their impact on his industry and on our family; to that end we are trying new business strategies like articles, presentations, and targeted marketing of specific contracts, and we have worked like fiends to conserve as much as possible of the income gained during these productive years. Jeff has added some hobby-like activities to his life after a number of years dedicated solely to family and work; he enjoys playing and writing text adventure games with the girls, and is trying to coalesce a regular group of friends interested in enjoying games and conversation.
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02.10.09
Posted in Life in general at 6:28 pm by Christina
Is everyone’s life crazy? I mean, I’m pretty happy with mine overall, but I’m not a naturally driven writer, so it’s pretty easy for me to fall off the blog and stop sharing via this medium about what’s going on for us. I was contacted today by someone I haven’t spoken with since college, with questions about some issues that are dear to me; she mentioned that she had enjoyed reading my blog and I realized it had been a long time since I’d made any posts.
There’s still plenty going on for me and my family that could be shared, including new projects and undertakings that I haven’t mentioned here before. There are some wonderful photos to share, and issues that need discussion. I am enamored of my automated Outlook calendar; I think I’ll find a time when writing a blog post is a doable endeavor and set up a regular reminder to do that. If you’ve been hanging out wondering when I’ll be returning, look for something in the next week - now I just need to figure out what of the many ideas to write about!
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03.17.08
Posted in Books, Health, Food at 1:45 pm by Christina
Jeff and I began our second juice fast of our new cycle, the last one being in late January. I have confirmed that via the fasting efforts I will achieve my immediate goal of getting within the weight requirements for private health insurance, so that is reassuring. Now I am working on concurrent efforts to the fasting: exercise issues, and emotional eating issues.
I am finding that my choice to do high-density willpower bursts (the fasts) is a more sustainable approach for me than trying to maintain a constantly high level of vigilance across all three fields of play: nutrition, exercise, and personal growth/healing. My overall nutrition is good for maintenance, and will be great once I’ve gained better success with regular exercise. (That’s even given bouts of emotional eating.) Tackling the caloric restriction necessary for actually losing weight through concentrated fasting is working well, given all the factors involved.
I have made some discoveries in my readings on the growth and healing front. Two important books I’ve read recently are The Solution by Laurel Mellin (R.D.) and The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs. The Solution discusses six areas that lead to an inappropriate relationship with food: weak nurturing, ineffective limits, body shame, poor vitality, unbalanced eating, and stalled living. The Simple Living Guide is about voluntary simplicity, the concept of paring down excess in your life in order to live it more fully. In particular, things I learned about myself from time with these books:
If my life seems so busy that I’m having trouble making time for things that are important, then my life is too busy and I need to reprioritize.
I have difficulty accepting “necessary pain” in life, very much preferring an easy road.
My expectations are often so high that I can’t even get started because I know failure is inevitable.
These observations give me areas to focus my energies when not on an active fast.
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Posted in Travel, Family at 8:44 am by Christina
Jamie and I are recently returned from New York and the funeral of my grandfather, Raymond Pisani. He was in his nineties and had been declining for several months, presumably from advanced bladder cancer for which the family had decided to cease regular treatments. Pepa had been progressively senile and the treatments were extremely difficult for him starting about a year ago.
Jamie and I traveled east with the generous company of my brother and nephew, who both flew into Oakland rather than heading due east; this was a big deal especially for my brother, because he could have gone direct from LA and conserved more than a day of personal time. We so appreciated their company and assistance! We no doubt could have managed the trip, but it would have meant violating my minimum food and entertainment requirements for a 6+ hour trip with a toddler…
We spent 2.5 days with my extended Pisani family honoring my grandfather’s life. After Tuesday’s full travel day, Wednesday was spent visiting, both at Grandma’s apartment and at the funeral home. Thursday we attended the church and cemetery services, as well as a family luncheon after those. Thursday evening we looked through many old family photographs: Pepa’s parents and his youth; a special journal of pictures sent to him from the U.S., mostly from Grandma, while he was stationed in the Pacific (as an Army dentist) during WW2; and snaps of him as a father after the war.
There were military honors at the cemetery, and I asked my father afterwards if Pepa would have appreciated so much emphasis on his army service. I was under the impression that he really didn’t enjoy that era of his life, because he lost a dear brother in Europe (without getting to say goodbye due to an unexpected deployment followed by the death soon after; there probably wasn’t even time for letters to be sent) and also didn’t meet his oldest child for almost two years. Although his parents had emigrated from Italy and others made trips there to meet relatives and visit the ancestral soil, he always refused to leave the United States because of what had happened the first and only time he ever did so, during the war. However, I learned from my dad that quite to the contrary, despite the obvious tragic aspects of the war, my grandfather was otherwise quite happy with military service. He wanted to remain in the army as a career officer after the war, but my grandmother didn’t like the frequent relocations. He served in the reserves for about twenty more years, enjoying his two-week stints each summer and retiring as (I believe) a lieutenant colonel. He even tried to reenlist for the Korean War, but was “too old” at that point. My dad said that the regimentation and order were most appealing to him, the chain of command, as well as the fact that he could enjoy his dentistry without being in private practice. Pepa was a very meek personality and although he was a successful dentist from the moment he graduated at the top of class, the management aspects of private practice (getting people to pay you what you asked and so forth) were incredibly stressful for him.
You learn something every day!
Jamie was a trooper on this trip, enduring four straight days of extreme management of his time and energy. Despite, or perhaps as a result of, being used to much freedom, he was able to cooperate with the many strictures on him as a result of planes, trains and automobiles, funeral homes, churches and restaurants. Not to mention not-toddler-proof hotel rooms and apartments, and time zone changes. I won’t overdo the modesty; much of our success arose from my own skills, developed over twelve years of traveling with my kids, resulting in choices on my part such as the original asking for traveling companions both for transport and lodging, and continuing through such actions as encouraging quiet sticker play in the back of the church and so on.
I am very glad I made the trip. I don’t know that I needed it so much for personal closure; but I would have missed out on the shared reminiscing that was so wonderful, and I know the support to those who are feeling his loss more keenly than I was greatly appreciated.
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03.07.08
Posted in Homeschooling, Commentary, Articles, Current Events, Activism, Education at 4:05 pm by Christina
A ruling came out of California’s Second Appellate Court last week, in re Rachel L., that if read quite broadly, denies everyone but credentialed teachers the right to homeschool their children in this state:
“California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children. Thus, while the petition for extraordinary writ asserts that the trial court’s refusal to order attendance in a public or private school was an abuse of discretion, we find the refusal was actually an error of law. It is clear to us that enrollment and attendance in a public full-time day school is required by California law for minor children unless (1) the child is enrolled in a private full-time day school and actually attends that private school, (2) the child is tutored by a person holding a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught, or (3) one of the other few statutory exemptions to compulsory public school attendance (Ed. Code, § 48220 et seq.) applies to the child.” (page 3)
In California, there is no “homeschooling”. There is public schooling, compulsory attendance to which is required of children aged 6 to 18; and there are a few exemptions to compulsory attendance. The pertinent exemptions from this case are listed in Ed. Code Section 48220ff. Children can be exempted from attendance by one of two paths: credentialed tutoring or private schooling. The tutoring exemption is very specific, requiring an appropriate state credential as well as regulated hours of instruction. The private school exemption (48222 in the above link) is far more general:
- “Children who are being instructed in a private full-time day school by persons capable of teaching shall be exempted.”
- Teaching must be in English, with certain exceptions.
- The school must “offer instruction in the several branches of study required to be taught in the public schools.”
- Attendance must be kept, including all absences half a day or greater.
The exemption is valid after the attendance supervisor or similarly designated official confirms that the private school is in compliance with Section 33190, the private school affidavit statute, which requires an annual filing with the state. (In practice, I don’t believe any district verifies the private school exemption proactively for every private school student; that would be incredibly costly in staff and funding each year. The exemption is only verified if an attendance challenge is made.) Interestingly,
“The verification required by this section shall not be construed as an evaluation, recognition, approval, or endorsement of any private school or course.” (48222 again)
This is echoed in 33190:
“Filing pursuant to this section shall not be interpreted to mean [legal jargon about what “mean” means] … that the State of California, the Superintendent of Public Instruction [etc.] … has made any evaluation, recognition, approval, or endorsement of the school or course … “
These clauses emphasize the determination of the state to avoid interference in the educational operations of private schools. Private schools are therefore free to pursue with broad discretion the type of education they choose, both in content and in methodology. A school is free to teach young earth creationism or to implement the free democratic school philosophy (e.g. Sudbury Valley or Summerhill strategy), or other content or methodology as they wish.
In practice, the combination of the private school exemption and the very limited private school regulations (essentially an hour or two of paperwork each year for a tiny, two-student school such as I operate) have formed the foundation for independent homeschooling in this state. There is nothing in California law, statutory or judicial, that restricts the establishment of a private school as done by homeschoolers here. No law
- says a private school can’t be located in a private residence.
- says a private school must charge tuition.
- says a private school must have a minimum number of students.
- says a private school teacher can’t instruct their own child(ren). (In fact, the criminal background check provision for school personnel states explicitly that it is waived for a parent working exclusively with their own child(ren).)
- says a private school can’t have one adult who is principal, faculty and staff simultaneously.
Although the recent ruling has every homeschool e-list in the state, and many more around the country, wildly abuzz with strategic discussion and well-informed indignation, in a strict reading the Second Appellate Court has changed only one aspect of California’s education law. In a Bill Clinton-esque (someone else’s beautifully appropriate adjective) application of semantics, the private school exemption statute was interpreted to mean that a student must be in physical attendance at the private school:
“Section 48222 provides an exemption from compulsory public school education for ‘[c]hildren who are being instructed in a private full-time day school.’ (Italics added.)” (ruling p.15; italicized emphasis of “in” is part of the ruling, just to be clear!)
The children in the case, while enrolled in a private school, participated in that school’s independent study program (ISP). The school in question does in fact have a campus program as well, but there are many ISP-only private schools throughout the state serving homeschoolers exclusively. What the Second Appellate Court discovered is that there is no law (pro or con) governing the authority of a private school to offer independent study. There is only Ed. Code 51745, which gives authority to public school districts and county boards of education to establish ISPs (presumably but not explicitly within the public system).
It is important to note that this case does not arise solely from a compulsory attendance challenge, but from the family’s frequent intersection with various child protective services. This particular case was instigated by one of the children on behalf of herself and I believe two of her siblings, for various reasons of neglect and/or abuse. Their court-appointed attorneys wanted them in a traditional school facility, where they would be under the regular observation of more adults; this would presumably give them more protection against said neglect and/or abuse. The trial court ruled that the parents have a constitutional right to homeschool, and the appellate court overturned that ruling of law, with the full documentation of statute and precedent.
I have concluded, from reading through the various documents and statutes, that my own homeschooling choice (to run a private school) is not affected by this ruling. I am in compliance with all the private school regulations, and my children attend, on-site, a private school within the exemption guidelines ruled in this case. I do not expect district officials to come to my door demanding truancy proceedings on my kids.
Notwithstanding the legitimacy of my own homeschooling method, I believe this ruling makes an unfairly strict interpretation of the private school exemption by denying the right of a private school to offer independent study. Since independent study is explicitly organized for the public schools in 51745, the state obviously believes it is acceptable for a student to do the bulk of their learning away from the direct supervision of their official school teacher. Given the minimalist statutory regulation of private schools in California, quite the opposite of this ruling makes better sense: that there is an implied right for a legally compliant private school similarly to offer independent study. Independent study by definition reduces a student’s exposure to their teacher; whether that teacher is public and credentialed, or private and “capable of teaching”, makes no difference. The court could easily have ignored or rejected the parents’ “constitutional right to homeschool” argument and made the case under welfare law that it was “in the best interests” of the children that they be enrolled in a traditional school.
State Superintendent Jack O’Connell went on record in response to media inquiries about this ruling that he supports “parental choice when it comes to homeschooling”, which is a bit vague but still a reasonable comment, unlike the teachers’ union officials who have cited the ruling in support of their belief that all students should be taught by a credentialed teacher, obviously in complete ignorance of CA private school regulations. Governor Schwarzenegger went on record more vehemently, calling the ruling “outrageous” and for it to be overturned by the courts or by new legislation. This support from state officials is greatly appreciated, though there is rampant speculation that they are less motivated by concern for parental rights, and more concerned with the reality that 166,000 homeschooled kids at more than $7500 per child means the state would need to find $1.245 billion merely in ADA funding (average daily attendance), to say nothing of facility space for all those kids, at a time of universal cuts to balance a state budget with a shortfall of $7 billion or more.
The assorted homeschooling advocacy groups concerned with California issues (I belong to both HSC and CHN and there are others) are strongly against legislative action and are recommending that individual homeschoolers sit tight while the legal eagles work for a milder, but still thorough, resolution to the issue. (In general, legislation is not desired because it always comes with extensive hoops that detract seriously from the efficacy of homeschooling; the most intrusive and most common is standardized testing, which as we see in the public schools causes “teaching to the test” and erodes true education and learning.) These advocates have agreed to seek from the CA Supreme Court the “depublication” of the ruling; this step would have the ruling limited to the troubled family at issue in the case, thereby denying its broader application vis a vis the statutory interpretations.
I strongly support this action as promoting both an affirmation of the rights of California homeschoolers and a positive resolution for the children at risk in the case. I have made a financial donation to the legal effort, and have offered my time and energy as a volunteer to the various legal and media teams. (I did a pre-interview with a TV reporter this morning but the manager didn’t approve his story; this afternoon, I spoke on record with a reporter for the Fresno Bee.)
If you are interested in making a financial donation to support the effort, here are the direct links for that: HSC CHN
Links to articles and statements about the case:
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02.20.08
Posted in Homeschooling, Kids, Household, Music at 10:11 am by Christina
Trying to get back into the habit of keeping friends and family informed about our lives, I’m going to share for you what our Wednesdays are like these days.
It’s a sleep-in morning for us, after a very early Tuesday; the girls’ theater troupe performs in schools Tuesday mornings, so we’re up by 7am usually. Yesterday it was 6! One of the things we love best about homeschooling is the limited use of alarm clocks (aided by the home business as well), the ability to be on our own natural rhythms.
At 10:30 Emma and I leave for her one-hour harp lesson, leaving Jamie at home with Jeff and Katie. I would like for this to not require me, for Jamie and I to be able to go to the nearby park; as a beginning harpist at 8, though, it is helping for me to be sitting in on the lessons to take notes and to understand myself what is going on.
We get home at 12:30 for lunchtime. Wednesdays are our “hot lunch” day to balance the picnic dinner (keep reading for that one). We are on a four-week meal rotation, which includes two bulk cooking meals each week. Weeks 1/3 and 2/4 I freeze a meal-sized portion to eat for hot lunch on the opposite week. Then on Wednesday mornings I do any prep work so that Jeff and Katie can put the final touches on a meal that’s ready when we get home. Today, we’re having pesto pasta, so I have to toast pine nuts and prep cauliflower for steaming; then Jeff and Katie will cook the pasta and cauliflower before we get home and we’ll eat.
We only have an hour before we head out again, this time for the rest of the day. Wednesdays are our music day from top to bottom. At 1:30 we head over to San Leandro, where I drop Katie and Emma off for their violin lessons. They bring their backpacks along and work at the teacher’s dining room table while the other is in lesson. Jamie and I go to a nearby park (unless he’s fallen asleep; but naptime is usually delayed if he’s in the car).
We pick the girls up at 3:30 and have an hour before Katie’s flute lesson starts. (The afternoon takes place in three neighboring towns.) Jamie usually falls asleep at this point, and I take the girls to another park for half an hour of fresh air and exercise. Last time they jumped off the swings for the entire thirty minutes!
At 4:15 we begin the overlap shuffle. First to Katie’s flute lesson, where she is dropped off for a 4:30 start time. Then a quick drive to Emma’s 4:45 orchestra start time. Back to Katie’s 5:00 pickup! We don’t have to be back at orchestra for Katie until 5:45, so occasionally I run an errand (like a Trader Joe’s stop for Jamie’s milk) before going back. Katie eats her picnic dinner during this interval.
Emma likes to stay to observe Katie’s orchestra (I think actually she enjoys the video games and DVD players that other siblings there have). Jamie likes to play in the van. I usually have a book along to read. The rest of us eat our picnic dinner while Katie is in orchestra.
This next bit is not happening today, because my choral auditions are finished and we don’t know which pieces were selected; most groups won’t get back into rehearsals until March anyway, so I’ve a couple of weeks off. Except for these breaks, what usually happens is that Jeff meets us at orchestra at 6:45 and I leave for my 7:00 rehearsal. Jeff hangs with Jamie until Katie is done at 7:15, and then they all head for home.
Whew! It doesn’t usually feel as crazy as it looks all written out, and although it is a lot of time on the road in a time when we are working to conserve gas and otherwise reduce our footprint, I remind myself that I am driving for a family and that I made an effort to access activities that were located as locally as possible. Most of the afternoon happens in a six-mile corridor.
This is hands-down our busiest day of the week. (Thank goodness!)
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01.14.08
Posted in Books, Reviews at 12:01 am by Christina
I haven’t written a post in quite a while, what with the girls wrapping up Oliver, my own choral concerts and the holidays, but I am motivated immediately to post about tonight’s PBS airing of Jane Austen’s Persuasion in a new adaptation for Masterpiece Theatre. What an amazing production! 90 minutes of sheer bliss as Anne Elliot encounters her rejected suitor and they discover their love still burns. As much as I adore Pride & Prejudice, both the novel and of course the BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, I think Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel. The 1995 BBC production of Persuasion starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds is exquisitely done, and this new one, staring Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones, is a beautiful rendition as well. I think one of the reasons I love Persuasion so much is that Anne Elliot is a mature heroine; on top of that, I think that for an old married lady like myself the theme of love rejuvenated is more resonant than the first-love themes in the other books.
In any case, Masterpiece Theatre is running a “Complete Jane Austen” in the coming weeks, featuring new productions of four books and rebroadcasting the Ehle/Firth Pride and Prejudice and the Kate Beckinsale Emma. I encourage you to curl up on Sunday evenings with what looks to be a terrific set of Austen films!
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