Know Your Homeschool Laws: Declaration of Intent
The Declaration of Intent is paperwork that must be submitted annually for HBI children ages 8-18.
You DO NOT file a Declaration of Intent to Homeschool for a child who is under 8 years old.
The HBI compliance covering compulsory attendance is ONLY for 8-18 year olds. The only children under 8 who are compelled to attend school are those whose parents have enrolled them in a public school. (And those need to be un-enrolled before homeschooling), but we DO NOT file DofIs for the
sub-eight set.
RCW 28A.225.015
Attendance mandatory — Six or seven year olds(1) If a parent enrolls a child who is six or seven years of age in a public school, the child is required to attend and that parent has the responsibility to ensure the child attends for the full time that school is in session. An exception shall be made to this requirement for children whose parents formally remove them from enrollment if the child is less than eight years old and a petition has not been filed against the parent under subsection (3) of this section.
Once the child turns eight, you must either declare (HBI), or send them to public or private school.
RCW 28A.200.010
Home-based instruction — Duties of parents.
Each parent whose child is receiving home-based instruction under RCW 28A.225.010(4)
shall have the duty to:
(1) File annually a signed declaration of intent that he or she is planning to cause his
or her child to receive home-based instruction. The statement shall include the name and
age of the child, shall specify whether a certificated person will be supervising the
instruction, and shall be written in a format prescribed by the superintendent of public
instruction. Each parent shall file the statement by September 15 of the school year or
within two weeks of the beginning of any public school quarter, trimester, or semester
with the superintendent of the public school district within which the parent resides or the
district that accepts the transfer, and the student shall be deemed a transfer student of the
nonresident district. Parents may apply for transfer under RCW 28A.225.220;
The law is unclear on what to do in the following situation:
Your child turns 8 in November. The annual DofI is due Sept. 15th, or “within two weeks of the beginning of any public school quarter, trimester, or semester.” Do you: a) File in September or b) File after the 8th birthday?
I would do it at whichever point is closest to the birthday. I would file in Sept. for an Oct. or Nov. birthday, and in January for a Dec. or January birthday. The law does not specify, so I look at the cut-off dates for if or not the child would be accepted into the second grade. Once your child has turned eight, you want to do it, if only for a CYA, even if your child is turning eight in the middle of the school year. In my experience, most districts are happy to take the DofI at any point in the year. The law seems to have been written to streamline the record keeping for the districts (instead of having a constant stream of DofIs rolling in), but I have never heard of a District rejecting one for not being “within two weeks of.”