Most states leave one question unanswered, and it is the question that keeps a parent awake: when the year is over, who decides whether it was good enough? Montana is the state that wrote the answer into the statute, and the answer has your name on it.
a parent has the authority to instruct the parent’s child, stepchild, or ward in a home school and is solely responsible for: the educational philosophy of the home school; the selection of instructional materials, curriculum, and textbooks; the time, place, and method of instruction; and the evaluation of the home school instruction
Montana Code Annotated 20-5-111
Read the last item on that list again. The evaluation of the home school instruction, sitting under the words solely responsible. Montana did not forget to appoint a reviewer. It appointed one.
Why that is different from a state that simply never asks
Several states in this series ask for nothing at the end of a year, and that is genuinely a relief. It is also a silence, and a silence leaves room to wonder whether somebody is entitled to an opinion anyway. Tennessee collects your curriculum, your daily hours and your own qualifications, and then grades none of it. Wisconsin’s department has no authority to approve, deny, monitor or regulate a home based programme. Both of those are things nobody does.
Montana is the only state here where the job exists, is named, and belongs to you. Maryland lets a family choose its reviewer. Maine offers five ways to be assessed. West Virginia defines what counts as acceptable progress. Montana assigns the evaluation, by statute, to the parent, and there is nowhere to send the result because the result is not owed to anyone.
The whole list of what Montana does ask
Four things. This is the complete home school subsection, not a summary of it.
- Notify the county superintendent, once each school fiscal year
To the county in which the home school is located, not to the school your child is leaving and not to the state. The school fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30, so the notification tracks that year and not the calendar. - Keep attendance records
Kept by you, and made available to the county superintendent on request. The statute says on request and then stops, so nothing is sent in and nothing is filed. - Meet the minimum aggregate hours
The same hour counts the public schools work to, set out below. - Teach an organized course of study
Covering the subjects required of public schools as a basic instructional program. What that looks like day to day is yours to decide, which is the second item on the list at the top of this page.
| Grade | Minimum aggregate hours in a school fiscal year |
|---|---|
| Half time kindergarten | 360 hours |
| Full time kindergarten | 720 hours |
| Grades 1 through 3 | 720 hours |
| Grades 4 through 12 | 1,080 hours |
| Graduating seniors | 1,050 aggregate hours may be sufficient |
There is no test in that list, no curriculum approval, no qualification you must hold, and no decision anyone makes about you. The notification is not an application. Nothing is granted, so nothing can be refused.
Your home stopped being a school building in 2025
This part matters because the version of Montana law still sitting in most search results is the version that changed. For forty-two years, one sentence governed a private academy and a family at a kitchen table alike, and it required the home school to be housed in a building complying with applicable local health and safety regulations. The same sentence also required immunization records to be kept and produced.
House Bill 778, signed on 13 May 2025, split that section in two. Subsection 1 now covers nonpublic schools. Subsection 2 covers home schools, and those two clauses are not in it. A home school in Montana today keeps attendance records, and the building sentence is not addressed to it at all.
If you run a small private school rather than a home school, this good news is not yours.
Both requirements are still live under subsection 1. A nonpublic school in Montana still keeps immunization records and is still required to be housed in a building that complies with applicable local health and safety regulations. The 2025 change separated the two categories rather than loosening both, and a page that let you read it the other way would be doing you real damage.
Why the old sentence is worth this much space: it is the one families believed gave a county official a reason to look around their house. That premise is what the split removed. What remains is a notification to an office, once a year, and a record you keep yourself.
Want to talk the hour count through before you commit?
Fifteen minutes on the phone covers the notification, what counts toward the aggregate hours, and how a partly finished year at the public school fits into them. No records required to have the conversation, and deciding against it costs nothing.
Where Montana sits in the series
| State | Who evaluates the year |
|---|---|
| Maryland | A reviewer the family chooses, the school system or an umbrella |
| Maine | One of five, including a board where home instruction tutors hold two of three seats |
| West Virginia | A test or a certified teacher, against a defined standard |
| Tennessee | Nobody, though a great deal is collected |
| Montana | The parent, named in the statute and solely responsible for it |
What leaving actually requires
- A withdrawal letter to the school, in writing
Name the last day of attendance and deliver it so receipt can be shown. The school keeps your child on its roll until somebody tells it otherwise, and an unexplained empty seat is what starts a truancy call. - The notification to your county superintendent
For the county the home school is in. Once in the school fiscal year, and the year runs July to June. - A dated copy of what you sent
Yours to keep. It is the only part of the record you control, and it is what answers a question asked two years from now. - An attendance record you can actually produce
Simple is fine and simple is better. It exists to be handed over on request, which is a low bar you should be able to clear without a rebuild. - The transcript and immunization records from the school
Request both in the withdrawal letter, along with course descriptions for anything half finished. You are no longer required to hold the immunization record for the home school, and you will still want your own copy for camps, sports and anything that comes later. - An hour count you keep as you go
Not owed to anybody, and much easier than reconstructing a year in June.
Doing it in order
Pick the last day and the first day
The last day at the public school and the first day of instruction at home, ideally adjacent, so the student is never marked absent and never off every roll at once.
Send the withdrawal letter so receipt can be shown
Email the principal and the registrar together; the reply is your proof. Ask in the same letter for the transcript, immunization records, and course descriptions for any course in progress.
Notify the county superintendent
The county where the home school is located. If you are unsure which office that is, the county courthouse switchboard will know, and the call is short.
Start the attendance record on day one
Beginning it on the first day is the difference between a record and a reconstruction.
Diary the next school fiscal year
The notification comes round once a year, and the year turns over on July 1. Nothing else recurs.
The withdrawal letter, ready to send
Short is correct. This goes to the school your child attends now, addressed to the principal and copied to the registrar. The notification to the county superintendent is a separate document and does not replace this one.
Dear Principal [name],
This letter is formal notice that our child, [student full name], date of birth [DOB], currently in grade [grade], is withdrawn from [school] effective [last day of attendance]. Beginning [start date], [he/she/they] will be educated in a home school, and notification is being provided to the [county] County Superintendent of Schools under Montana Code Annotated 20-5-109.
Please update your enrollment records accordingly and confirm receipt of this letter by reply. Please also send a complete transcript, immunization records, and course descriptions for any course in progress to [address / email].
Thank you for your help.
[Your name]
[Address]
[Telephone]
What we can and cannot tell you
High School of America is an accredited private school based in Florida, not a Montana school. This page has quoted the parental authority section in full, given all four items Montana asks of a home school, set out the hour minimums by grade, dated the 2025 split to the signature on 13 May 2025, and said plainly which requirements stayed behind with nonpublic schools. What it will not do is tell you which route to take, or suggest that enrolling here satisfies or replaces the notification to your county superintendent. That notification is owed to the county whatever school your child attends next, and the choice belongs to your household, least of all to a school that gains from your enrollment.
One limit worth stating rather than implying. Being solely responsible for the evaluation is a statement about who does it, and it is not a statement that the year does not matter. Colleges, employers and the next school will all form their own view, and none of them is bound by yours. The statute settles the question of authority. It does not settle the question of whether the year went well, and nobody can settle that one for you either.
The home school requirements are at Montana Code Annotated 20-5-109, the parental authority section is at 20-5-111, and the hour minimums and the school fiscal year are at 20-1-301. The wider picture sits on the requirements state by state, and if you are early enough to still be deciding, the three-route comparison weighs this against staying exactly where you are.