No school for Amish kids

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December 19, 2009

By KATHY MELLOTT The Tribune-Democrat Sat Dec 19, 2009, 11:48 PM EST

NICKTOWN — On March 17, Cambria County sheriff’s deputies padlocked the Swartzentruber Amish school and its two outhouses in Barr Township.

It has been nine months and the 22 school-age children of the ultra conservative religious sect apparently are not receiving any education.

The schoolhouse remains padlocked, they apparently are not being homeschooled and none has been enrolled in the Northern Cambria School District where they reside, officials said.

“If they’re not being educated in an Amish school, they are in violation of the law,” district Superintendent Tom Estep said. “We don’t know who they are or where they are.”

The sect’s latest attorney, Thomas Dickey of Altoona, said this week that the school continues to be padlocked and apparently no education is going on.

“We’re attempting to get something worked out there,” Dickey said.

The 20 families in the sect, which shuns modern ways, moved to Cambria County from Wayne County, Ohio more than a decade ago. They built a school in Barr Township, two outhouses, assigned a teacher and opened the doors.

They never notified the state Department of Education, as required, to report numbers of students and lesson plans, said district Solicitor Gary Jubas.

“Homeschoolers and others must register with the state and submit a plan. There is usually a program submitted by the Amish,” he said. “But through our investigation it appears they have not submitted a plan.”

The education department first learned in October that the Barr Township Swartzentruber Amish school existed when The Tribune-Democrat called to check on the status of the children.

State officials notified Northern Cambria that something needed to be done about the unschooled children, but little appears to have changed since that time.

The department continues to refer calls about the situation to the local school district.

“We have local control. It’s the school district’s responsibility to keep tabs on all the children in their school district,” education department spokeswoman Leah Harris said.

Estep was frustrated with the situation in October and that frustration has not diminished.

“They’ve been illegal since they’ve been here, which is longer than I’ve been here,” he said.

Jubas said he is attempting to reach Dickey in the hopes of getting a list of family names to send notices that they are in violation of the state law requiring all children be in some form of education.

But, outside of this approach, Estep said the only other option is to hire people to do a door-to-door census of all residences in the school district, a costly move.

“We’d like them to be educated, certainly, but we’re not going to spend a lot of the district’s money because they’re not going to comply anyway,” he said.

The district would like to compile a list of the Amish parents with school-age children, notify them of the law and their options, then file charges for those who fail to comply.

“If I found one, I’d go after them,” Estep said.

State law says all children between the ages of 8 and 17 (in Philadelphia the age is 6 to 17) must be in a registered education program.

The Amish and similar sects won a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1972 which allows their students to exit the education system at the end of the eighth grade.

Failure to see that the eligible children are educated could result in a summary offense filed at the district judge level. Parents can be fined up to $300 for each violation or attend court ordered parenting classes and community service.

Further failure to comply could result in parents being sentenced to five days in the county jail, according to the state education department.

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