The town of Fremont, Nebraska, has unanimously approved a resolution allowing homeschool graduates without diplomas from an accredited institution to work for the city after a homeschooled volunteer firefighter was excluded from a full-time firefighter position.
At a city council meeting Tuesday, Resolution 2026-256 was on the agenda, calling for the city to “amend current Human Resources hiring policy to recognize and include applicants […] who have successfully completed a high school educational course of study, with a graduation certificate lawfully issued by a non-approved or home school entity.” After public comments from nearly a dozen community members, including Andrew Coates Coates and his father, Seth, the council approved the resolution 8-0.
Under its previous policy, the city elected “not to consider applicants without an accredited high school diploma or G.E.D. (high school equivalency), citing potential liability risks in hiring individuals without education ‘certification.’” Andrew Coates appeared last week at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, hosted by the Washington-based Christian conservative advocacy organization Family Research Council (FRC) at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia.
FRC President Tony Perkins introduced Coates as a 22-year-old volunteer firefighter who was “rejected from applying for a full-time job as a firefighter simply because his mom and dad love him enough to homeschool him and give him a godly education.” Coates appeared at the summit with his parents just days before the Fremont City Council was set to take up the matter.
Seth Coates said he was grateful that “we’ve just been rallied around, even by our own community, in a way that […] we never thought was even possible.” “We’ve been working on this for five months,” Seth Coates added, saying he recently met with the city council and “within a very short time, a news article went out and […] the public became aware.”