Homeschool requirements · Kansas
Homeschooling in Kansas
Light paperwork · A notice or an enrollment form, then keep your own records.
Register your homeschool once as a non-accredited private school with the state board and teach for a period substantially equivalent to public schools.
What Kansas asks
| Notice | One-time registration of the school name and address with the Kansas State Department of Education. |
|---|---|
| Days and hours | 186 days |
| Subjects | Not specified |
| Assessment | None required. |
| Records to keep | Attendance records recommended. |
| Parent qualification | Must be a 'competent' instructor (no credential required). |
| Worth knowing | 186 days mirrors the public-school calendar used as the equivalence benchmark. |
Deadlines
These are the dates the app tracks for Kansas. Districts vary; the app lets you edit any of them.
| What | When | To whom | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register as a nonaccredited private school Notice · File online | Once, when you begin | Kansas State Department of Education | Your district sets this date, not the state. HomeSchool Scribe has deliberately left the reminder off, because any date it picked would be invented. Confirm the date with your district or in your approved plan, then add your own reminder. Kansas does not authorize homeschooling by name in statute. A homeschool counts as a nonaccredited private school, and K.S.A. 72-4346 puts registration of the school's name and address with the State Board of Education on the official custodian of the school's records. KSDE is plain about the shape of it: no fee, no approval process or review, and "Only register your home school once" - there is no annual renewal. The same online form carries an Update option for a change of school name or address and an Inactive option (KSDE's page calls it Non-Active) for when the school closes. It asks for registration type, school name, street address, city, state, county and ZIP. KSDE warns that the form works poorly on a phone and calls a computer or tablet best practice, so this one is worth opening somewhere other than this app. Compulsory attendance in Kansas runs from age 7 to under 18. Neither the statute nor KSDE sets a filing date, so this reminder sits at the start of the school year; a family that starts mid-year registers then instead. That placement is the app's, not a legal deadline. |
| Tell the previous school the child has transferred Notice · Mail it | Once, when you begin | The public or accredited school the child attended | Only for a child leaving a Kansas public or accredited school. KSDE says the school previously attended must be notified by the parent or guardian, and that if this step is not completed the school is required by law to report the student as truant, so this is the step that heads off a truancy referral. It goes to that school, not to the state. KSDE names no form, no method and no date for it, and also says to keep a copy of the homeschool registration for the school the student is withdrawn from. The start-of-year placement here is the app's, not a legal date. A child who has never been enrolled anywhere else has nothing to send. |
| Keep attendance, hours and a course of study Records · Keep in your files | By the end of the school year | Keep in your files | Nothing is filed after registration: no annual notice, no report, no testing and no evaluation. What Kansas asks instead is that classes run for a period substantially equivalent to public school, which KSDE states as at least 186 days of not less than 6 hours a day, or 1,116 hours a year for grades 1 through 11, taught by competent instructors with no credential required. KSDE gives no hours figure for grade 12. The attendance and hours report is what shows that standard was met. K.S.A. 72-4345 through 72-4347 exist only so that a school a pupil later transfers to can ask for the pupil records, and an accredited school may test a transferring student before accepting credit, so grades and a course of study are worth keeping beside the attendance. A Kansas nonaccredited private school issues its own high school diploma, which KSDE notes the State of Kansas does not recognize as meeting any requirement, and KSDE's fact sheet lists 21 units it recommends for a nonaccredited school's graduates - one more reason to build the transcript as you go. No Kansas statute or KSDE page sets a retention period; three years is this app's planning default. |
What HomeSchool Scribe does in Kansas
- Register as a nonaccredited private school: Prepares the notice letter; opens the portal and keeps your confirmation.
- Tell the previous school the child has transferred: Prepares the notice letter; reminds you 14 days and 2 days before; lets you mark it filed with the date.
- Keep attendance, hours and a course of study: Prepares the attendance and hours report, the hours log and the course of study; keeps it in records.
Attendance and hours fill in from the lessons you check off, so the documents above come from records you already have.
Read the law yourself
Kansas State Department of Education · HSLDA’s Kansas summary · Register as a nonaccredited private school portal
Not legal advicePlanning summaries in plain language, reviewed 2026-09-29. Deadlines and recipients vary by district; confirm with Kansas’s current law or a homeschool legal organization before you file anything. If something here is out of date, tell us and we’ll fix it for every family in Kansas.