How Withdrawal Works in Oregon
Oregon routes home schooling through Education Service Districts, the regional offices that serve multiple school districts across the state. You send your local ESD a one-time notice of intent within 10 days of withdrawing, and you notify your child's public school so attendance stops. There is no approval step and no parent credential. The notice is filed once, not every year, which is different from most states and a welcome simplification once you know it.
Oregon Revised Statutes Section 339.035 governs this process. Your ESD is the legal recipient of the notice, not your local school district. Many families who have home schooled in other states assume they need to notify the local school superintendent; in Oregon, the notice goes to the regional ESD. Getting that address right is the most important logistical step in the withdrawal.
Oregon's compulsory school age runs from 6 through 18. If your child is in that range and currently enrolled in a public school, withdrawing means replacing that enrollment with a home school program that is on record with your ESD. The one-time ESD notice and your school withdrawal note together close out the public school enrollment and establish your home school.
Step 1: Send the One-Time Notice to Your ESD
Within 10 days of withdrawing your child from public school, send a written notice of intent to your local Education Service District. The notice identifies each child by name and age and states your intent to provide home schooling in the required subjects. Oregon does not require a specific form -- a written letter with those elements is sufficient.
The ESD is a regional agency that serves multiple school districts. Your local ESD is determined by the county your family lives in, not by the district your child attended. Look up your ESD on the Oregon Department of Education website before writing your notice so it goes to the right office.
This notice is filed once. You do not re-file it each year. The only time you file again is if you move to a county served by a different ESD, at which point you file with the new ESD within 10 days of establishing your program there. Keep a copy of your original notice and any acknowledgment from the ESD. That copy is your documentation of compliance for as long as you home school in the same ESD area.
We cover the ESD notice and all ongoing requirements in our Oregon homeschooling guide. Before you begin teaching, a free reading assessment gives you a picture of where your child's skills stand so you can match your curriculum to where instruction needs to begin.
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Step 2: Notify the Public School
Send your child's public school a short written notice that the child is withdrawn to home school. A brief letter to the school office is sufficient. Written notice stops attendance tracking and creates a record of the withdrawal date. The ESD notice establishes your home school regionally, while the note to the school closes out local attendance records; both steps together complete the transition.
Keep a copy of the school notice alongside your ESD notice in the same folder. If you want to request records from the public school -- transcripts, immunization records, prior assessment results -- ask at the same time as the withdrawal notice. The school may take a few days to prepare them, and making the request on the same day as the notice keeps the timeline efficient.
For a mid-year withdrawal, send the ESD notice within 10 days of withdrawing and the school notice close to the same day, so your child moves directly from public school enrollment to home school with no gap.
Step 3: Keep Records and Know the Testing Schedule
Keep a copy of your ESD notice and your school withdrawal letter together in one folder. Because the ESD notice is one-time, your main ongoing record is the notice copy itself. The rest of your recordkeeping in Oregon follows from the testing schedule, which is lighter than most families expect when they first look into it.
Oregon requires a standardized test at the end of grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 only -- not every year. You complete the test by August 15 of the year the grade is completed. You keep the score reports in your own files; you do not submit them to the district or ESD routinely. The ESD may request them, and if your child scores below the 15th percentile in the same subject over two consecutive testing periods, additional oversight may follow. Plan your curriculum with those grade-level checkpoints in mind. Use our homeschooling guide to structure what to teach before each testing grade.
While you are in contact with the public school, request any records you want before the withdrawal is complete. Transcripts, immunization records, and prior assessments belong to the family and are worth collecting at the point of withdrawal.
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Special Education and Common Snags
If your child has an Individualized Education Program, the special education services the public school provides end when your child withdraws to home school. The mandatory IEP entitlement does not carry over. Oregon school districts may offer certain services to non-public school students with disabilities on a voluntary basis, but those services are not guaranteed and are not the same as what the IEP required the public school to provide. Contact your district's special education office before withdrawing if your child receives IEP services and depends on them.
The most common snag in Oregon is sending the notice to the wrong office. Families often address it to their school district superintendent, as they would in most other states. In Oregon, it goes to the Education Service District -- the regional office. Find your ESD before you write the notice, confirm the correct mailing or email submission address, and send it there. Filing with the school district by mistake does not establish your home school under Oregon law.
The second point of confusion is assuming the notice is annual. It is not. File it once, keep a copy, and you are done with the notice obligation until you move to a new ESD area. You do not need to re-file each fall the way you would in states like New York or Georgia. Oregon's one-time notice is a genuine simplification that families often do not realize until they have been home schooling for a year and wonder when to file again. The answer is: you already did.
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A Note from Homeschool Teacher Guide: What This Really Means for You
Oregon has two quirks worth getting right, and both make life easier once you know them. First, your notice goes to the Education Service District, the regional office, not your school district. Second, it is one-time, so you file it within 10 days of withdrawing and never again unless you move to a new ESD. Send that notice, send a short note to your child's school, and keep copies. The only recurring item is testing at grades 3, 5, 8, and 10, and you keep those results yourself. Our Oregon homeschooling guide covers the testing schedule in full.