Connecticut’s 2025 legislative session ended in early June with no resolution on whether, or how, the state should regulate homeschooling.

In the months since, a working group convened to consider the issue met twice and disbanded. Current state law governing homeschooling specifies only what subjects should be covered and little else.

But a vocal contingent of homeschool families — who packed the state Capitol earlier this year, urging lawmakers to drop fledgling efforts to regulate home-based education — are keeping up the fight in the legislature’s off season.

[RELATED: In CT, homeschooling debate heats up as parents plan daily protests at Capitol]

Rebecca Urrutia, a mother of four who lives in Tolland, says she watched her children struggle in the public schools. But since she decided to homeschool, she said they’ve been thriving. 

“I’m watching them stand up for themselves. I’m watching them be able to socialize with people of all ages, be able to nurture younger ones and look up to older ones,” Urrutia said during a forum held by a small group of Republican lawmakers in Tolland on Monday.

“The socialization that we have gotten through homeschooling is so far beyond what we had when we were in the public school and never saw each other, and we’re having it as a family,” she said. 

The lawmakers now taking up the cause, on Urrutia and other parents’ behalf, include Rep. Tammy Nuccio, R-Tolland, Rep. Anne Dauphinais, R-Killingly, and Rep. Tim Ackert, R-Coventry. About 15 parents, children and homeschool advocates spoke at the Monday forum they hosted, underscoring that independence from the state was part of the reason they valued homeschooling, and insisting that they should be allowed to continue as they have in the past. 

Nuccio said she was compelled to invite constituents to share their stories after seeing the turnout at the Capitol this spring. “I walked out of the Appropriations room to a Capitol full of about 2,000-plus people. And I had never seen that for any cause anywhere in the state,” Nuccio recalled. 

Monday’s forum also came just days after Deborah Stevenson, an attorney who represents several homeschooling organizations in Connecticut and the founder of the National Home Education Legal Defense, published a summary of documents she obtained through a Freedom of Information request from several state agencies.

The documents showed that lawmakers had drafted legislation that would have required parents withdrawing their children from public school to present a description of the curriculum they would use in homeschooling and a health assessment or proof of enrollment in a private school.

The drafts also included requirements that homeschooling parents present an annual academic evaluation of their child to the state. Parents of homeschoolers are not currently required to formally evaluate their children, although some parents say they do assess their children’s progress using standardized evaluations. 

Cathy DeCaprio, who homeschooled her seven children over the course of 25 years, said she felt that forcing standardized assessments on homeschoolers would undermine their ability to teach children at their own pace. “Words like equivalency and standardized tests concern me. The beauty in why homeschoolers do better on standardized tests is because of the flexibility that is offered,” DeCaprio said. 

DeCaprio said one of her children had been able to attend the Yale School of Music, which she attributed to the flexibility that homeschool allowed for her child to put aside other subjects, like Algebra II, to focus on music. She said all of her children are now functioning adults, even one who struggled early on in his schooling career. “You can’t put the public system onto a family. It doesn’t even make sense to do that. It won’t be effective,” she said.

Parents also balked at the idea of having to appear back at their local school district each year. 

“I had a really terrible experience in the public schools. And to have to go back to the system that failed you to prove that you’re not abusing your children is insanity,” Urrutia said.

(Tolland Public Schools superintendent Walter Willett said that while they can’t comment on specific families, “the district is committed fulfilling the needs of children and their families, and respects the right of families to take the actions they feel are in the best interest of their children.”)

The fact that the General Assembly got as far as drafting legislation this year came as upsetting news to homeschool parents — even though the bills never came up for a hearing or a vote.

Dauphinais, the ranking member on the Children’s Committee, told The Connecticut Mirror that she’d been unaware of it. Christina Ghio, acting state Child Advocate, said she had sent the draft legislation to the chairs of both the Education and Children’s Committees, but that ultimately it had gone nowhere. 

Homeschooling in the spotlight

The argument over homeschooling and regulation came to the forefront in May, after the Office of the Child Advocate published a report saying that withdrawals of children from public school under the pretense of homeschooling had been used to hide abuse; the report recommended the state establish certain checks to ensure homeschoolers were meeting standards of academic progress and wellbeing. 

After an outcry from the homeschool community, lawmakers didn’t move forward with legislation this spring. But the topic remains contentious, and discussions continue to break down. A working group of lawmakers and homeschool advocates that was meant to discuss the topic recently disbanded over disagreements in how the group should run. 

The idea of regulating homeschooling has arisen in the state legislature in the past. In 2017, after 17-year-old Matthew Tirado died from starvation and abuse at home, the Office of the Child Advocate proposed a bill placing stricter requirements on homeschoolers that ultimately failed in 2019. 

The catalyst this year was the case of a Waterbury man who escaped his home after allegedly being held captive by his stepmother for two decades. The man was reportedly withdrawn from public school at around age 11.

Homeschool advocates have repeatedly insisted that neither of these cases have any connection with homeschooling, saying instead that the state of Connecticut failed to properly investigate the abuse that took place. 

Ghio told CT Mirror that her office knew of cases where parents told school districts that the children were being removed for homeschooling, but that the children, in fact, were being abused and neglected out of sight. 

“That doesn’t mean that all homeschool parents are abusing, neglecting their children. It doesn’t mean homeschooling in and of itself is bad. It means we have a problem, and the reality is that if we don’t address this gap, we will continue to leave kids at risk,” she said. 

Many of the examples of children withdrawn for homeschooling that Ghio offered in her report had already been the subject of multiple reports to the Department of Children and Families while they were still enrolled in public school. But Ghio said her biggest worry was that homeschool provides an opportunity to isolate a child from the people who are required to make reports. 

She referenced the case of a 10-year-old child she called William, who was discovered locked in a room, bruised and malnourished, in 2023. Although his family had been the subject of 13 DCF reports, including two about him, DCF wasn’t notified when his mom withdrew him from the public schools to homeschool him. William was allegedly isolated and abused after being withdrawn from public school, until the police found him. The police warrant said the mother corroborated that William was removed from school to hide his injuries.

Another proposal written in the draft bill said that if a parent told the district that they wanted to withdraw their child for homeschooling, the district would be required to review whether the school had any records of investigations or allegations against the parent that would warrant a call to the Department of Children and Families.

One person at the Monday forum, a public school student named Beckett Murray, said he agreed with the Child Advocate’s recommendation. 

“What I am seeing on that report is trying to prevent child abuse,” he said. “Most people aren’t abusing their kids. We need a way to check up on the kids to make sure that they’re not getting abused.” 

But the lawmakers there disagreed. Nuccio referenced an analysis done by the Office of the Child Advocate that found out of a sample of about 750 children over age 7 who were withdrawn to be homeschooled between 2021 and 2024, roughly a quarter were in families where there had been at least one report of abuse or neglect accepted by DCF. 

She said while there were some “egregious” cases referenced in that analysis, more than 75% of the homeschoolers had no DCF involvement. “I’m always afraid of over-legislating and looking at certain cases that feed a narrative, and then providing laws for everybody outside of that, which I don’t always think is fair,” Nuccio said. 

Lawmakers at the forum said they believed the state should be focusing on cases where abuse or neglect has been verified by DCF, rather than blanket regulations that would affect all homeschoolers. 

“All of us up here … don’t want any child abused, and I think everybody in this room would agree with that,” Dauphinais said. “These regulations and policies they’re trying to put in are over-intrusive and above and beyond that.” 

Dauphinais told CT Mirror that serious incidents happen both in school and at home, and she said she felt homeschoolers were being targeted despite having done nothing wrong. 

During a meeting of the homeschool working group last week, DCF staff underscored that homeschooling alone was not a reason for the agency to open an investigation for possible abuse and neglect.

In a statement, Peter Yazbak, communications director for the department, said that reports to DCF are for things like chronic absenteeism, physical or sexual abuse, a child being unsupervised or lack of medical care. He said they rarely are contacted just because a family decides to pull their children out of public school to homeschool.

“DCF recognizes a family’s right to choose in what setting to educate their child whether that is homeschool or a neighborhood school,” Yazbak said. “While school personnel and law enforcement are the two top mandated reporters that contact [DCF] with reports of neglect and abuse, removing a child from school to be homeschooled does not, in and of itself, constitute neglect.”

Ken Mysogland, the bureau chief for external affairs for DCF, said during the working group meeting that the department often doesn’t even know where a child is being educated when they begin to look into allegations of abuse.

“ We’re investigating allegations of child maltreatment, not allegations of homeschool,” Mysogland told the working group. 

‘Let’s figure it out’

Megan Chimento, who attended the forum and has three children between the ages of 7 and 11, told CT Mirror that she decided to homeschool her children during COVID. 

“It started just because my daughter was too young to be sitting on a device with a mask on. She was only 6, and that’s not going to be happening,” she said. 

Once she started, she said, she saw the benefits. Her children could move through subjects at their own pace, taking more time where they struggled and speeding through things that were easy. They had unlimited time together as a family, and were able to take field trips wherever they wanted to go. 

Flexibility and freedom to teach their children at their own pace, as well as shared family time and outdoor experiences, were themes parents mentioned again and again on Monday. They said they wanted that freedom from additional assessments.

They also expressed frustration at a process of drafting regulations they described as happening in secret, without their knowledge.

Nicole Foote, who homeschools her four children, said she began considering it while watching her oldest daughter struggle at private school. “I would find out six months into the year that my daughter was not doing well in math. And I’m like, ‘Well, what do I do now?’” she said. 

Foote said homeschooling meant they no longer had to rush out the door in the morning. It gave them time to sit and have breakfast as a family, and also to spend time outside during the day. She pushed back on the idea that parents who hadn’t done well in school themselves couldn’t teach their children. 

“I think it’s a good thing to have our children watch us learn alongside them. And I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve sat there with my kids [and] I’m like, ‘Hey, I don’t know how to do this. Let’s figure it out,’” she said.

Ray Guidone said he decided to homeschool his four children because he felt the public schools were placing too much focus on standardized testing rather than teaching subjects that would be useful in life after school. 

Guidone said his children are involved in outside organizations like Makerspace CT in Hartford. He said his 15-year-old son is on his way to earning his pilot’s license. “They’re involved in so many different things through the town, through the state, just being more aware of what’s going on in the actual world instead of what’s being taught in the public school world,” he said. 

Children also spoke at the forum, saying they enjoyed the flexibility of their schedules and being able to read whenever they wanted to.

Annalise Harper, a former homeschooler who is now a senior at Eastern Connecticut State University, said the idea of public school — getting up early after staying up late doing homework the night before, sitting in a classroom for eight hours rather than being outside — never appealed to her. 

Harper, who is studying to become a social worker, said she was able to take college-level classes in English at the age of 16. She said her education also gave her the opportunity to learn how to talk with people of all ages, including professors, something she said her classmates struggled with.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better education, for a better childhood,” she said. 

The disbanded working group

After the legislative session ended in June, Rep. Patrick Biggins, D-Manchester, convened a working group to discuss homeschooling.  

He told CT Mirror that he’d hoped to continue the conversation begun at the informational hearing May 5 in response to the Child Advocate’s report. He said he hoped the group could be a place to answer questions from the homeschool community and provide an opportunity for their voices to be heard. 

The group included lawmakers from both parties and representatives from homeschool groups, including Stevenson, of the National Home Education Legal Defense, Diane Connors of the Connecticut Homeschool Network, and Donna Person, vice president of The Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers of CT. 

After two meetings, the working group was disbanded. Biggins said he was unhappy that people from the homeschool community were gathering outside the meeting room in protest — at the behest, he said, of some of the working group members. 

“ If you’re asking people to show up, that means you’re not actually going to engage in the conversation in the room, or you’re not going to engage in the conversation in the room in good faith,” he said. 

Connors disagreed with that interpretation, saying the people gathered outside were not protesting and carried no signs.   

“ People in the homeschool community are sensitive to the fact that their voices were shut out on May 5th. And they have asked us what was going on, and we answered them. We told them when the meetings were, and while they were shut out of the room, they have a right to be in the building, and they wanted to find out after the meeting how it was going. And we respected that,” she said. 

Working group members were also in disagreement over a previous meeting, where the Department of Children and Families had been invited to respond to questions from the working group.

Dauphinais and Connors said they believed the meeting was supposed to give them the opportunity to freely ask questions to the commissioner of DCF. Instead, multiple department staff members attended the meeting and offered prepared responses to questions that were submitted ahead of time. Yazbak said DCF believed the meeting was to discuss the questions and answers they received from the working group and noted that they could not discuss specific abuse cases because of federal privacy laws.

Biggins said he planned to continue looking into the issue on his own. “I think that there are loopholes in our system currently where bad actors can use our lack of regulations to isolate a child or do things that are not representative of the homeschool community … and not representative of what we want to see as a state,” he said. 

He said he didn’t have any suggestions for specific policies, but that he would strongly support any regulation that would enable the state to better protect children. 

Ghio said the Office of the Child Advocate would continue to push for an annual academic evaluation for homeschoolers, annual proof of enrollment and some kind of wellness check. 

At the forum, Ackert told homeschool families that the key to stopping a bill regulating homeschooling would be to keep it from reaching a vote. He said last year, Republicans had told Democratic leadership that they would filibuster the bill if it reached the floor. 

He urged homeschoolers to use their network and continue advocating. He said while everyone was against child abuse, he questioned whether the remedy being proposed was deflecting attention away from the actual problem. 

“I think the key is that you need to make sure that your voice is heard,” he said.