Proposed bill House Bill 2827 (H.B. 2827) in Illinois for the government to regulate homeschooling families is now dead for the year.
Will Estrada is Senior Counsel for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association.
He said in an interview with AFN that H.B. 2827 was bad news.
"…as our listeners know, we have been engaged in a massive struggle in Illinois this entire spring. Earlier this year in February, H.B. 2827, simply titled the 'Homeschool Act,' was introduced. As originally introduced, it would have put mandatory criminal class 3 misdemeanor penalties on any home school family who forgot or did not file an annual declaration form,” Estrada explains.
If the bill had passed, it would have required parents to file homeschool declarations annually, hold parents to certain teaching qualifications, allow public school officials to review homeschooler work at any time, and give the Board of Education room to place more restrictions without any legislative oversight. Failure to follow the new homeschooling mandates would result in the parents facing truancy charges, facing the possibility of jail time or their children being forcibly removed from the home.
He described this as even more "draconian" because Illinois has had really no government restrictions on homeschooling for 75 years.
"You don't have to file anything (now), and so, we go from 0 to 100 basically in the space of one legislative year. Of course, homeschoolers mobilized, and the bill was stalled. Then on a Saturday evening at midnight, the end of May 31 and the beginning of June 1, that's when the legislature adjourned, and H.B. 2827 never moved out of the Illinois House of Representatives," Estrada says.
He said this is a tremendous victory.
"It's hard to overstate what an incredible victory it was for homeschool families in Illinois, and we are absolutely thrilled that home schooling for another year is safe in Illinois."
Next moves by opponents
But the fight is not over.
"Well, we continue to remain engaged with Illinois home educators, our allies at ICHE (Illinois Christian Home Educators), and in the private school and home school communities in Illinois because we do expect that this bill or a similar one will come back in the 2026 legislative year. But for now, homeschoolers and our allies are breathing a sigh of relief in Illinois, and we continue to prepare for future years to continue to defend and advance home school freedom in Illinois and beyond."
