Field guide · Confirm with the authority before you file
Homeschooling in Alabama
Church School Student Enrollment Form, countersigned by the church school's administrator and returned to your local public school superintendent when you first enrol your child in a church school. That is one of three routes in Alabama; a private school or a certified private tutor are the others.
Notify, level 2 of 4
What Alabama actually asks of a family teaching their own children. Written plainly, and honest where the answer is that nobody asks for anything.
You tell
The public school superintendent of the district where your child lives
By
When you enrol your child in the church school
Who reviews it
The church school's administrator countersigns the enrollment form. The local public school superintendent receives the form and must be told if your child leaves the church school. The Alabama Department of Education, the State Board of Education and the State Superintendent have no authority to license or regulate a church school.
If you skip it
Failure to enrol or to keep the register exposes the family to the compulsory-attendance statute.
Who is in charge
Local school district (enrollment notice); the church school itself for day-to-day oversight
Who reviews your child is set out at the top of this page, in the authority's own terms.
The year
What you must file
No fixed dateYou file
Church School Student Enrollment Form
When you enrol your child in the church school
Goes to: The public school superintendent of the district where your child lives
Signed by the parent and countersigned by the church school administrator, then returned by the parent to the public school superintendent. The state's form asks for a beginning date, an ending date and the academic year, so ask your district whether it wants a new form each school year. If your child later leaves the church school, the superintendent must be told (see below).
No fixed dateYou keep
Attendance register
n/a
How often: continuous
Goes to: Kept by the church school; reported as the State Board requires
Shows enrollment and every absence of a half-day or more.
No fixed dateYou file
Notice that your child has left the church school
When your child stops attending the church school
How often: when it happens
Goes to: The local public school superintendent
The parent or guardian must notify the local public school superintendent that the child is no longer in attendance at a church school. The state's enrollment form also says that, at enrollment, the parent gives prior consent for the church school to send this notice, so check that it has been sent.
The words a reviewer uses
Enrollment and attendance, not academic outcomes.
The part the paperwork does not cover
Filing on time is the easy half. The harder half is the year in between: showing what your child actually learned, in words the reviewer recognises, without turning your home into a school.
That is what this tool is for. You say what your child did, in a sentence. It maps that to the published standards we hold for Alabama, which today are English (326 of 383), Mathematics (490 of 574), Science (271 of 604), Social Studies (5 of 1631), Physical Education (9 of 106) and Arts (2 of 115). Those figures count the topics we carry for ages 5 to 12 that cite one of Alabama's published standards. A further 176 Social Studies topics are matched only to the national C3 Framework, which is guidance, not Alabama's own standard. Then it builds the record you can hand over the day someone asks. See how it works.
Sources
- Checked 11 Aug 2026
- Checked 11 Aug 2026
- Checked 6 Oct 2026
Sources last checked on 2026-10-06: Alabama State Department of Education: memorandum of July 17, 2014 on Act 2014-245, its enclosure on Ala. Code 16-28-7, and the Church School Student Enrollment Form (Non-Public Schooling in Alabama packet linked from the ALSDE Homeschool page). That is the date we checked, not the date the rule last changed.
Check it yourself: the source we used.
Guidance, not legal advice. Rules change and districts vary: confirm with the authority named above before you file.