Texas Homeschooling Questions

Question:
I'm a junior in high school, and my parents and I have been seriously looking into home school. I've researched on the Internet and discovered that the laws regarding home schooling in Texas are extremely lenient, which pleased me obviously, but I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone can answer.

1. I'm 16 and thus when my 17th birthday rolls around, my driver's license will expire. To renew it, I need a TEA form to prove my enrollment in school. If I'm being homeschooled, how would I do this, especially since the laws say that the TEA has no hand in home schooling?

2. Does a parent need to be home at all times? The law says that no teacher or teacher certification is required to do homeschooling, merely that "a written curriculum is pursued in a bona fide manner". The law states that only reading, math, spelling, grammar, and "good citizenship" are required. My education level is well above "reading, riting, and 'r'ithmetic" and I intend to study classes like Calculus, Chemistry, Physics, etc. However, my parents don't know squat about those subjects, and I'd need to teach myself, which really is no problem. My question is, does a parent need to be home at all "normal school hours" to ensure I'm studying, even if I could be THEIR teacher? I'm really serious about learning and I'm not just doing this to get out of school.

3. When I turn 17, will I be able to get my GED without being enrolled in a public school?

Well, that's about it. If you'd be so kind, you can either send your replies to my email address or to the website. I'll definitely check back periodically!

Answer:
I would suggest you ask on Taffie, an email list for Texax homeschoolers. They will know how to deal with this.

If you are interested in Taffie, the Texas homeschooler's list, you can find out more by sending mail to taffie-requ...@jsoft.com and by putting info taffie in the body of the message. The subject line is ignored.

or try:

http://www.jsoft.com/archive/taffie Texas Homeschooling Questions