Kansas has no homeschool statute. It has something stranger and simpler: every homeschool in the state operates as a nonaccredited private school, and the one thing the state requires of the founder is an answer to a single question. What is your school called?
The legal ground is the private-school clause of the compulsory attendance law. A child between seven and eighteen satisfies the attendance requirement at a private, denominational or parochial school that is
taught by a competent instructor
K.S.A. 72-3120
for a period of time
substantially equivalent to the period of time public school is maintained in the school district
K.S.A. 72-3120
The state education department translates that yardstick into hours: 465 a year for kindergarten, 1,116 for grades one through eleven, 1,086 for grade twelve. And “competent instructor” does not mean licensed: the department’s own guidance presumes a parent competent when the school around the student is real, with curriculum, planning, testing and visible progress. What turns a household into that school is the founding act: registering the school’s name and address with the State Board of Education, once. No approval follows, because there is no approval process. No fee. No renewal. No annual report, ever.
The school exists when you name it
Kansas grants the school in exchange for its name. The district still needs the letter.
Registration founds the new school; it does not close the old one’s roll. A student who stops appearing at a Kansas public school without a withdrawal letter is not a private-school student in the district’s records, they are an enrolled child collecting unexcused absences. The letter is the hinge of the whole move, and in Kansas it can do something no other state’s letter in this series can: name the school your child is transferring to, because by then the school has a name.
The statute is one page at K.S.A. 72-3120, and the department keeps its plain-language rules and the registration itself on its nonaccredited private schools page.
What leaving actually requires
- A name for the school
Any honest name works, and it is worth choosing one you would put on a transcript. The registration asks for the name and the address, and that is the whole form. - The one-time registration with the State Board
Filed once, at no cost, with no approval step. It is a declaration, not an application: the state records that the school exists, and that is the end of the state’s involvement. - A withdrawal letter that names the new school
Delivered so receipt can be shown, with the last day of attendance and the name of the nonaccredited private school receiving the student. - A competent instructor and a real academic environment
The state’s own presumption: curriculum, planning, testing, progress. A structured program supplies all four by construction; a home-built plan should be able to point at each. - Hours that hold up against the yardstick
465 for kindergarten, 1,116 for grades one through eleven, 1,086 for grade twelve. Track them simply; a calendar with a running total is enough.
Where Kansas sits in the series
Five states, and Kansas is the only one that wants a christening.
| State | Is anything filed? | The one document the state actually demands |
|---|---|---|
| Delaware | A school is registered with the state | Two dated reports a year, every year |
| Idaho | Nothing | None – the standard is kept privately |
| Indiana | Nothing required; one form offered, voluntary | A daily attendance record, in the parent’s own hand |
| Iowa | The family chooses: an optional report, or nothing | An answer, only if the superintendent asks in writing |
| Kansas | The school’s name and address, once, forever | The name itself – no approval, no renewal, no reports |
Delaware registers a school and then reports to the state twice a year for as long as it runs. Kansas registers a school and never speaks to the state again. Same founding act, opposite aftermath, and a guide that lumps them together as “registration states” has missed what makes each one itself.
Naming a school this week?
Fifteen minutes on the phone covers the withdrawal letter, what the registration asks for, and how a structured program’s curriculum, teachers and records fill out the academic environment the state presumes competence from. No records required to have the conversation, and deciding against it costs nothing.
Doing it in order
Choose the name and register it
The name and the address, filed once with the State Board at no cost. Doing this first means the withdrawal letter can name a school that already exists.
Pick the last day and the first day
The last day at the public school and the first day at the new one, 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. Name the effective date and the receiving school.
Ask for the records in the same letter
Full transcript, immunization records, and course descriptions for anything half finished. Records move most easily while the file is still open.
Run the school the state presumes you can
Curriculum in place, a plan on paper, testing that shows progress, and an hours tally against the published yardstick. That environment is the competence standard, met daily rather than filed annually.
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.
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 enrolled at [name of your nonaccredited private school], a nonaccredited private school operating under Kansas law, K.S.A. 72-3120, and registered with the Kansas State Board of Education.
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 Kansas one. Whether your household’s arrangement is taught by a competent instructor for substantially equivalent time is a judgment Kansas leaves to the presumption described above, and this page has left it there too. What the page has done is quote the statute’s two operative phrases, state the department’s own hours figures, mark the registration as the one-time no-approval act it is, and link the statute and the department’s page so you are reading the sources rather than a summary of them.
If you want a person to talk it through with, that is what the counselor call is for, and it is not a sales appointment. Bring whatever records you have, or none.
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.