In CT, homeschooling debate heats up as parents plan daily protests at Capitol
Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror
An estimated 2,150 people showed up to the Legislative Office Building in Hartford during an informational session about homeschooling on May 5, 2025.
Days after scrutiny of Connecticut’s homeschooling regulations sparked a political response and a rally, dozens of homeschool families are at the state Capitol protesting, and they say they don’t plan to leave.
While no bill has been proposed, a report from the Office of the Child Advocate on Monday offered several recommendations for laws officials said would make Connecticut safer for children and ensure they’re getting a proper education. Several families on Thursday said they planned to come to Hartford every day until the end of session in case legislators add homeschooling regulations to an omnibus bill.
The response is just one in a wider landscape of political reactions to the questions raised about homeschooling after a man escaped his Waterbury home, where he was allegedly held captive for decades after his parents took him out of school in the fifth grade.
The Office of the Child Advocate issued a report suggesting some abusers have used homeschooling as a way to further isolate a child and ensure school officials don’t notice the abuse. The Waterbury case isn’t the first time child abuse has occurred after a family pulls their child out of public school, the report said.
It also said Connecticut stands out as one of few states that doesn’t require homeschooling parents to compile reports about their plans for their children or their educational progress.
The Children and Education committees had an informational hearing on homeschooling on Monday, and Republicans held a press conference decrying the hearing as a distraction from failures by the state Department of Children and Families and the local district to keep the Waterbury man safe. Thousands of people gathered at the Capitol in support of homeschooling.
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans again raised the issue during debate on an unrelated bill about child welfare.
“I think it’s tenuous at best to draw any connection between homeschoolers and that incident,” said Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, on Wednesday. “It is much more likely that it had something connected to inadequate supervision by the Department of Children and Families.”
DCF Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lily said Monday that there are limits to what her department can do, and that closing some loopholes in state law could help keep kids safer. Meanwhile, Democrats have said they don’t intend to attack homeschooling and aren’t sure whether they’ll put forward a bill this session. They want to ensure children are safe and that people aren’t misusing the state’s homeschooling system, they say.
“Our colleagues on the other side are suggesting we’re attacking people,” said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, at a Thursday press briefing. “When you use that language, it’s naturally going to gin up the kind of energy that it has.
“This is part of the problem with our politics right now, where people want to leap to headlines, leap to social media posts, and suggest that Democrats are attacking homeschool families when it’s absolute nonsense, when there’s a legitimate issue here about the safety of children who are no longer enrolled in public schools and what is happening to them.”
The fear is about what could happen, parents said Thursday. They think the narrative about the Waterbury case is being unfairly spun to paint homeschooling in a bad light and they worry that lawmakers will try to sneak in measures to change the way they educate their children into a last-minute bill.
“One of the things that drew us to Connecticut was the freedom when it came to homeschooling. And so infringement upon the very open policy that they offer, we see as infringement on our right to parent the way that we want,” said Jacqueline McGovern, a mother of two young children who she plans to homeschool. “You give them an inch, they go a mile. We want to make sure that our right, uninfringed, uninhibited by government regulation, is protected.”
McGovern said some of the proposals discussed wouldn’t be bad. But she worries about where the law will end up and what that will mean when her toddler and baby are ready to start their education. She wants them to have time to play and the freedom to explore topics they’re interested in, she said.
“We can build their own curriculum, teach them different moral values that we strongly believe,” McGovern said. “And again, at the end of the day, you can teach your kids reading, writing, and arithmetic in two hours a day, and then the rest of it can be being a kid.”
During a Wednesday debate on a bill to establish a working group to study guardianship proceedings in probate court, Senate Republicans pushed to pass an amendment that also would have required the Office of the Child Advocate to study the effects of DCF employees working from home on child welfare in Connecticut.
Republicans centered the conversation on homeschooling during the debate, saying the practice was being scapegoated and that to address what happened in Waterbury would require a more holistic approach.
“On Monday, there was not a public hearing, there was an informational hearing on a topic regarding homeschooling. And I’ll be willing to bet we’re going to see a bill here in the next few weeks about that topic,” said Sen. Jason Perillo, R-Shelton, who introduced the amendment.
The amendment was voted down along party lines.
“I would recommend to everyone that we stay focused on the work on our bill,” said Children’s Committee co-chair Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Wilton.
Speaker of the House Matthew Ritter, D-Hartford, said it’s still to be determined whether there will be a bill on homeschooling and what those regulations might look like — it could be a form or some sort of reporting requirement.
The Waterbury case was an outlier, he added.
“My guess is the overwhelming majority of people who are homeschooled are done with love, care and great education, good outcomes,” Ritter said. “There probably are bad outcomes for which we have no way of tracking or having any knowledge of that happening. So you have to decide, should you say, ‘Look, we’re willing to tolerate the incidents that may happen to children to prioritize this notion of I can do whatever I want with my children?’”
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