As investigators continue to look for records and details about the 16 children discovered in a filthy home in Vinton County last week, many are asking what could have been done to ensure the well-being of the kids.
The four adults who lived in that house with the kids have been charged with child endangerment, and there are no records of the kids having attended school. The incident is leading one state lawmaker to consider putting more guardrails around home schooling, as the children in the Siders family were not enrolled in school.
“Clearly this family was not fit to be doing home schooling, and we need to figure out what we can do to make sure this does not happen again,” said Rep Bill Blessing (R-Colerain Twp.).
Blessing said he’s wondering whether government documents could be cross-checked periodically to ensure home-schooled children don’t fall off the radar. He suggested artificial intelligence might be helpful in finding inconsistencies to detect whether kids are really being taught at home.
“There has to be some tax information. There has to be some Medicaid information. There has to be some education information," Blessing said. "They are all siloed in the various departments or agencies. But if you have some sort of AI system that looks and tries to catch red flags but is looking at all of that data, I think we might have been able to catch that earlier.”
Blessing said he doesn’t want to burden home-school families with additional paperwork, but he said more accountability is needed to ensure all home-schooled kids are actually getting an education.
