Since our group started in 1985, we have not had any significant issues with safety and privacy. We believe this is due to the fact that we take each member/family's safety and privacy VERY seriously. We are very careful about the distribution and publication of member information. We are VERY serious about safety and privacy, and especially about protecting our children.

We are not a "reporting agency". Our information is not provided to any other individual or organization (such as the Department of Education or State/National homeschool organizations).

The information we get from our members is used for the following purposes:

• To give us an address to which we can mail your newsletter.
• To give us the ability to contact you via phone or e-mail.
• To give us information so that we can perform statistical analysis on the number of students, grades of students, and gender of our students. This helps us predict trends so that we can plan accordingly.
• To help us create a Directory for our members (Directories are distributed to current Home Ed members only and can not be used for solicitation or incorporation into any other mailing lists).

Home Ed information and communications are for the direct use of Home Ed members ONLY. For the protection of our children and families overall, any reproduction, copying, or redistribution of any Home Ed information is strictly prohibited, without the prior written consent of Home Ed.

Should anyone find Home Ed information useful, they need to become members of Home Ed...providing us with the required standard information on our membership form.

To protect our families (and particularly our children):

• We DON'T e-mail our newsletters. Our newsletters often contain personal information - names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, where our kids are meeting, etc. Through experience we've learned that, when in e-mail form, this information is too easily passed on or posted. The information then becomes easily accessible...possibly to someone who shouldn't see it.
• We DON'T e-mail specific information about our events. Specific event information is only available to our members - people we can identify. Again, e-mails are too easily forwarded or posted.
• We DON'T post our activities or other detailed information on our web site. This would include an online version of our newsletter, a calendar of activities, etc.. We don't want the possible whereabouts of our children to be public information (for their protection). All of this type of information is in our newsletters - where it is sent to identifiable individuals.
• We DON'T have a chat board or e-mail loop. Much of the information discussed or posted in these public forums is information that can expose our families (or children) to unknown parties.
• We DON'T release our list of names to other organizations.