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South Dakota · 2026-2027 school year

South Dakota homeschool requirements, 2026-2027

Last checked against the statutes and the state's own guidance: 2026-09-04

What you must do, and by when

  • Within 30 calendar days of the first day a school-age child receives instruction at home: send the initial notification to the Department of Education or your school district, online or on the Department's paper form. It is free, it is confidential, and it is notice, not a request.
  • Within 30 days of two events only: a new notification when the child enrolls in a public or nonpublic school, or moves to a different school district. A new school year is not one of them.
  • All year: teach language arts and mathematics so as to lead to a mastery of the English language. No other subject is required.
  • Always: no person may teach more than 22 children.
  • Not asked of you: no yearly filing, no hour or day count, no standardized test, no license or degree, no board approval, no notary, no fee, no curriculum or schedule on the form, no state diploma.
  • Only exception: a public-school placement test if your child later enrolls; see step 4.

South Dakota calls home education alternative instruction, under SDCL §§ 13-27-3 and 13-27-7. You file one notification within 30 days of the day a school-age child first receives instruction at home, and you never file it again unless the child enrolls in a school or moves to a different district. Two subjects are named, language arts and mathematics, taught so as to lead to a mastery of English. There is no hour count, no test, no license, no approval, and no fee.

1File the initial notification

What the Department calls it: the Alternative Instruction Notification, or AIN, filed in the Department of Education's online system.

The initial notification does not repeat each year. South Dakota calls home education alternative instruction. You send the state or your district a short notice that your child is receiving it. You send another one only if one of two things happens: this child enrolls in a public or nonpublic school, or you move to a different school district.

  • When it is due: 30 days. Count 30 days from the start date below. Ordinary calendar days, not school days.
  • The start date: the day a school-age child first receives instruction at home. School age is what starts the clock, not enrollment and not the calendar. A child who is not yet school age has nothing to file. Each child has their own clock, so an older sibling's filing years ago does nothing for this one. Step 5 has the ages, in the law's own words.
  • Where it goes: the Department of Education or your local school district. You pick. Both are correct. The online system reaches both at once.
  • How it goes: through the state's online system, or on the Department's paper form.
  • What comes back: a signed or stamped paper copy, or the confirmation the online system gives you. That is your proof. Save it somewhere outside the online system.
  • Cost: nothing. There is no fee in the law: the chapter gives neither the Department nor a district authority to charge one.
  • Who reads it: the law says the notification is kept confidential.

If day 30 lands on a Sunday or a holiday, you get the next business day: that is how South Dakota counts a deadline (SDCL § 2-14-14, with the holidays listed in § 1-5-1). A Saturday does not move it, since it is not on that list, so file before the weekend. Either way, do not plan on needing the extra day. Send the notification in the first week after instruction starts and the question never comes up.

Filing is notice, not a request. Nobody votes on it. No school board approves it. There is no curriculum review, no interview, and no way for a district to turn down a complete notice.

Alternative instruction: SDCL § 13-27-3 · The notification and the 30 days: § 13-27-7 · Department homeschooling page

2Two events ask for a new notification

The law names two, and the list stops there:

  • Your child enrolls in a public or nonpublic school.
  • Your child moves to a different school district.

Both come from South Dakota Codified Laws (SDCL) § 13-27-7, with its thirty-day window. The Department's page also asks to be told within thirty days when a child stops alternative instruction or changes dual-credit plans; that is the agency's request, not the statute's.

If the notification is never filed. § 13-27-3 makes alternative instruction exist “upon a filing of a notification”, so a child with none is simply outside it and under the attendance law. § 13-27-11: a parent who fails to have the child attend school “or provide alternative instruction pursuant to § 13-27-3, is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor for the first offense” and a Class 1 misdemeanor for each later one, after the board's warning and the truancy officer's report (§§ 13-27-16, 13-27-20).

Special education: child find covers alternative instruction
Only if you want the district to evaluate a child for a disability.

Special education. The Department's child-find rule under SDCL chapter 13-37 (ARSD 24:05:32:01.01) says each district “shall establish a child find process to locate, identify, and evaluate all private school children with disabilities, including … children receiving alternative instruction under SDCL 13-27-3.” In plain terms: a district must look for children with disabilities among those under alternative instruction and evaluate them. Ask your resident district for an evaluation; the rule does not spell out the form of the request.

When it is due: 30 days. Count 30 days from the day of the change. Ordinary calendar days, not school days.

Everything else stays as it is. Changing curriculum, moving inside the same district, or changing an open-enrollment arrangement are not transitions in the law; a new school-age child files their own first notification under step 1, which does not reopen a sibling's. The Department does ask families to update it about some of those, and the paper form has boxes for them. That is the Department keeping its records tidy. It is a different thing from the two events above, and it carries a different weight.

The two transitions: SDCL § 13-27-7

3Teach two subjects

South Dakota names two: language arts and mathematics. That is the entire list.

It adds one condition on how you teach them. All instruction has to be given “so as to lead to a mastery of the English language.” Those are the statute's own words. They describe the result your program aims at.

What that clause does not mean. You may teach in another language. You may raise a bilingual child. You may study a world language. No English test is owed to anyone.

South Dakota requires no other subject. Science, social studies, history, art, music, health, and PE are each your own choice here. They are wise for most children and they open doors later. This page keeps the two the law names visibly apart from the many a good education holds.

No person may teach more than 22 children. The count follows the person doing the teaching, not the family or the building. For an ordinary family this never comes up. It matters to a co-op where one adult teaches a large group.

You need no license, no degree, no diploma and no GED to teach your own child. The statute says the person providing instruction is not required to be certified, and nothing else in the chapter adds a qualification.

Two subjects, English mastery, the 22-child limit, no certification: SDCL § 13-27-3

4What South Dakota does not require

South Dakota's alternative-instruction law covers only what is below. Every line below is something other states ask for and South Dakota does not. Each one names where that answer comes from.

  • No filing again just because a new year starts. File again only after public or nonpublic school enrollment, or a move to a different district. SDCL § 13-27-7: the notification “is not required thereafter” unless a child enrolls in a public or nonpublic school, or moves districts.
  • No hour count and no day count. Trellis shows you no target, because South Dakota sets none. The 2021 law (SL 2021 ch 76) struck the old “equivalent period of time” wording out of § 13-27-3. What is left says nothing about time at all.
  • No standardized testing duty while receiving alternative instruction. Not in 4th grade, not in 8th, and not in 11th during a homeschool year. The 2021 law (SL 2021 ch 76) deleted that paragraph from § 13-27-3, and struck the clause that let a board refuse a family after a low score.
  • No teaching license, no college degree, no diploma and no GED. SDCL § 13-27-3: “The person providing instruction is not required to be certified.”
  • No school board approval. Nobody votes on your filing. SD DOE FAQ 1.4, and SL 2021 ch 76 removed alternative instruction from § 13-27-2 entirely.
  • No birth certificate with your notification. Proof of age is a separate matter, and it belongs to school sports. SD DOE FAQ 1.3. The school sports rule is § 13-36-7.
  • No fee. As the filing step says: the word fee does not appear in the chapter, and SDCL ch. 13-27 gives the Department no authority to charge.
  • No notary, and no witnesses. Your own signature finishes the form. The 2021 law (SL 2021 ch 76) struck that requirement.
  • No curriculum, no schedule, no grade level, no instructor's name and no place of instruction. SDCL § 13-27-7 lists what the form asks for and then says the Department's form “may not require more details than set forth by this section.”
  • No immunization records, no Social Security number, no test scores, no attendance logs and no work samples. The same section caps the form: § 13-27-7 says the Department's form “may not require more details than set forth by this section.”
  • No science, social studies, health, PE, fine arts or civics requirement. SDCL § 13-27-3 names language arts and mathematics, and stops.
  • No state diploma. You issue your child's diploma and transcript yourself. Nothing in ch. 13-27 provides a state credential for an alternative-instruction student.
The one test that exists belongs to the district
If your child later enrolls in a public school, the district gives a placement test. Not a homeschool duty.

One test really does exist, and it belongs to somebody else. If your child later enrolls in a public school, the district tests them to decide which grade to place them in. That is the law telling the district what to do on the way in, not a choice they make. It is still not a homeschool duty: no result is owed to anyone while you are teaching at home, and nothing about it reaches back into the years you taught.

SDCL § 13-27-3 · § 13-27-7 · Placement testing on public-school entry: § 13-27-29

5Ages, in the law's own words

This page does not work out ages for you. Here is what § 13-27-1 says, so you can read it against your own child.

In plain words: a child who is at least six by September 1 (or five to six, if the parent chooses to start) is covered. That runs until the child turns eighteen, graduates, is excused, or withdraws. The statute itself:

A parent, guardian, or other custodian of a child, who is not younger than five or older than six by the first day of September, or any child who, by the first day of September, is at least six years old, shall cause the child to regularly attend a public or nonpublic school or receive alternative instruction, as set forth in § 13-27-3, until the child is eighteen years old, has graduated, or is excused or withdraws as provided in this chapter.

Each child shall attend kindergarten prior to age seven. Any child who transfers from another state may proceed in a continuous educational program without interruption if the child has not previously attended kindergarten.

  • The duty ends four ways. Your child turns eighteen, graduates, is excused, or withdraws. Any one of the four ends it. Excused is the religious route of § 13-27-1.1. It covers a child who has finished eighth grade, in a family belonging to a recognized church that objects to regular high school. The church must run its own supervised program of instruction.
  • “Until eighteen” means the birthday. The duty ends on the day your child turns eighteen, not at the end of that school year.
  • Kindergarten before age seven is a real command, and it is easy to miss.
  • A child who moves here keeps going
    Transferred in without kindergarten? Nobody sends that child back to start over.

    A child who moves here keeps going. A child who transfers in from another state and never attended kindergarten carries on in the same program. Nobody sends that child back to start over.

  • At seventeen, a student may be withdrawn from compulsory attendance
    An exit from attendance, not a graduation and not a diploma. Open if you are considering it.

    At seventeen a student may be withdrawn from compulsory attendance with written parental consent (§ 13-27-1.3). That is an exit from attendance. It is not a graduation, and it is not a diploma. Trellis will not mark high school complete from it. The statute also assigns the paperwork to “the school district”. That assumes you have a school district to deal with, and a family teaching at home may never have had one. Ask the Department how that works before you rely on it.

Birthdays near September 1 are the hard cases. Read the sentence above, and ask the Department of Education if your child's date sits close to the line. Do not let any planner, this one included, do that arithmetic for you.

School age: SDCL § 13-27-1 · Withdrawal at seventeen: § 13-27-1.3

6High school, the diploma, and the Opportunity ScholarshipWorth planning early

You issue the diploma and the transcript. South Dakota has no state homeschool credential, so the family's own record is the record. Keep it accurate and keep it forever.

The South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship has its own homeschool track. It is worth reading in 9th grade, not in 12th, because it asks for a specific list of courses. For an alternative-instruction student it asks for:

  • South Dakota residence.
  • An ACT composite of 24 or better (a superscore counts), or a comparable SAT.
  • A transcript issued by the parent or guardian named on the notification, listing the courses the statute names.
  • Entry to an in-state campus accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, within the time the statute allows.

It does not ask for a grade point average, and it does not bar a grade below C. Those two rules belong to the traditional high-school path in the administrative rules. They are not the homeschool track's rules.

The unconfirmed ACT-28 route
A separate route lets an ACT 28 stand in for the course list; nothing public says it applies to homeschoolers. Get it in writing first.

One thing nobody can answer from public sources. There is a separate route that lets an ACT score of 28 stand in for the course list. Its text points at the traditional path's course list and never mentions the homeschool section. Get written confirmation from the Board of Regents before you plan around it; this route is not written for homeschoolers, and nothing public confirms it applies to them.

The High School planner in Trellis holds the courses, credits and transcript.

Opportunity Scholarship, alternative instruction: SDCL § 13-55-31.3

Questions South Dakota families ask

Do I have to notify anyone to homeschool in South Dakota?

Show answer
Once. The initial notification goes to the Department of Education or your local district within 30 days of the day a school-age child first receives alternative instruction. It does not repeat each year. SDCL § 13-27-7.

When do I have to file again?

Show answer
Only after one of two events, within 30 days of it: the child enrolls in a public or nonpublic school, or the child moves to a different school district. Changing curriculum, moving inside the district, or adding a child are not transitions. SDCL § 13-27-7.

How many hours or days are required?

Show answer
None. The 2021 law (SL 2021 ch 76) struck the old "equivalent period of time" language; South Dakota sets no hour or day count.

Is testing required?

Show answer
No testing is required in any grade. South Dakota repealed its alternative-instruction tests in 2021 (SL 2021 ch 76). The one test that exists is the placement test a district gives a child who later enrolls in public school, and that duty is the district's. SDCL § 13-27-29.

What subjects do I have to teach?

Show answer
Two: language arts and mathematics, with all instruction given so as to lead to a mastery of the English language. Everything else is your own choice. SDCL § 13-27-3.

What records do I have to keep?

Show answer
None are required. Keep the signed or stamped copy of your notification, or the online confirmation, as your proof, and keep your own record of the work for transfers and for high school.

What are the ages?

Show answer
The statute's own words are in step 5: a child who is at least six by September 1 (or five to six, at the parent's choice), until the child turns eighteen, graduates, is excused, or withdraws; kindergarten before age seven; withdrawal at seventeen with written consent. SDCL § 13-27-1 and SDCL § 13-27-1.3.

Does South Dakota issue a homeschool diploma?

Show answer
No. You issue the diploma and the transcript, and the Opportunity Scholarship has its own homeschool track worth reading in 9th grade. What colleges read a transcript against is on the South Dakota high school and transcript page.

Can my child play sports or join activities at the public school?

Show answer
Yes. SDCL § 13-36-7: “Each public school district shall allow participation in athletics, fine arts, or activities for a child being provided alternative instruction pursuant to § 13-27-3 within the district in which the child resides.” The statute asks for proof of age and, before the season starts, a copy of the previous semester's transcript. The Department's page adds the South Dakota High School Activities Association's eligibility checklist for alternative-instruction students and an athletic physical, where one applies.

Can my child take reduced-tuition dual-credit college classes?

Show answer
Yes, with two pieces of paper. The Department's page: families “must have an Alternative Instruction Notification (AIN) on file” and “a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) must be submitted to the DOE to start the enrollment process”; the AIN form's dual-credit question is what starts it. SDCL § 13-28-37 has the student's alternative-instruction provider, which is you, approve the enrollment first.

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