Court Opinion

ID: 9854664
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:11:13.716197+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:12.556371
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
dissenting.
In 1916, the General Assembly first enacted the Compulsory School Attendance Law (Ga. L. 1916, p. 101), requiring that “every parent, guardian, or other person having charge and control of a child between the ages of eight and fourteen years, who is not exempted or excused as hereinafter provided, shall cause the said child to be enrolled in and to attend continuously for four months of each year a public school of the district or of the city or town in which the child resides;... Such attendance at a public school shall not be required where the child attends for the same period some other school giving instruction in the ordinary branches of an English education. . . .” Three years later, the 1916 Act was repealed and supplanted by the Act of 1919 which, among other things, created the State Board of Education (Ga. L. 1919, pp. 288, 291).
That statute became, in essence, the present code section, except that the requirement is simply that the responsible person “shall enroll and send such child or children to a public or private school.” OCGA § 20-2-690 (a) (Code Ann. § 32-2104).
The question presented in this appeal is quite simple — whether the term “private school” as used in the foregoing section is too vague to be understood by ordinary persons.
We have recently treated this issue in McCord v. State, 248 Ga. 765, 766 (285 SE2d 724) (1982), relying therein upon well-established principles of interpretation. “ Tt is a general principle of statutory law that a statute must be definite and certain in its provisions to be valid, and when it is so vague and indefinite that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application, it violates the first essential of due process of law. [Cit.]’ City of Atlanta v. Southern R. Co., 213 Ga. 736, 738 (101 SE2d 707) (1958).” In McCord, we held that the term “any immoral or indecent act” was not so vague as to violate the requirement.
Can it now be said, that the term “private school” must fail for *576vagueness?
I think not.
First, compulsory education, carrying with it criminal sanctions, has been a part of the law of Georgia since 1916.
Second, the public wisdom of requiring that parents enroll their children in an adequate educational institution is now beyond quarrel. “The child at the will of the parent could be allowed to grow up in ignorance and become a more than useless member of society; and for this great wrong brought about by the neglect of his parents the common law provided no remedy.” Board of Education v. Purse, 101 Ga. 422, 429 (28 SE2d 896) (1897), as quoted in Bateman v. Bateman, 224 Ga. 20, 25 (159 SE2d 387) (1968).
Third, the compulsory attendance law has been upheld, indirectly, in Anderson v. State, 84 Ga. App. 259 (65 SE2d 848) (1951). There, the Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction of a father who, while offering to send his child to school, refused to permit the child’s vaccination. Rejecting the father’s contention that he was, indeed, in compliance by sending the child to school, even though refusing to permit the child’s immunization, the court observed: “Such a contention is unsound for the reason that an offer to do a thing only upon waiver of the conditions precedent thereto amounts to no offer at all.” 84 Ga. App. at 265.
Finally, we have recently held that the word “school” is capable of interpretation, relying upon the dictionary definition of school as “ ‘[a]n organized source of education or training: as (1) an institution for the teaching of children.’ ” Risser v. City of Thomasville, 248 Ga. 866 (286 SE2d 727) (1982). “The cases dealing with compulsory education statutes are not applicable here. The cases and statutes cited, including Georgia’s compulsory education statute, do not use the word ‘school’ in its ordinary everyday sense. They subject the word ‘school’ to obvious words of limitation, so that the statute only applies to the public and private schools attended by children in a particular age bracket, such as ages seven to sixteen in Georgia.” (Emphasis supplied.) 248 Ga. at 867.
In order to resolve this issue in total accord with the established longevity of compulsory education, with the precedents in our state law, and with what is one of the highest of all authorities — common sense — we need only inquire as to whether or not the activities provided by the Roemhilds met the dictionary definition of school as “an organized source of education or training: as (1) an institution for the teaching of children.”
We, with the trial court below, should have no difficulty in coming easily to the conclusion that the efforts of the Roemhilds, however well-intentioned, fall far below the common understanding *577of “an organized source for education or training: as (1) an institution for the teaching of children.”
We should not destroy the Compulsory Education Act because the statutory term “private school” is not defined with all of the exceptions, exclusions, reservations, and provisos exemplifying the regulation-writing genius of a federal bureaucracy.