Connecticut is poised to enact landmark homeschool regulations, raising debate about government control over private education.
James Mason, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, told the Washington Examiner his organization is writing a letter to Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) requesting he veto House Bill 5468, in a last-ditch effort to keep the bill from becoming law. The measure passed the state legislature earlier this month after a series of cases were highlighted in which homeschooled children were abused.
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“I think it’s a mistake to regulate homeschooling based on those tragic events,” Mason said. “The bill that was passed wouldn’t have prevented them and restrict the liberties of many, many parents in the future that have no connection at all to neglect. We’re writing to the governor to ask him to veto the bill because it infringes on the rights of many without really affecting the goal that the legislature has in mind.”
Lamont has signaled he will greenlight the measure, which would require parents to register in person with the state annually to homeschool their child.
The proposition would also stop parents from homeschooling their children if they are on the Department of Children and Families’ Child Abuse and Neglect Registry or are the subject of an ongoing DCF investigation. Under the bill, the parents’ homeschooling requests would not be effective until DCF checks that none of the adults living at the home are on the registry. If DCF finds an open case in the household, the children cannot be withdrawn from school.
Democrats such as state Sen. Douglas McCrory, co-chairman of the Education Committee, have argued those are commonsense measures that prevent abusers from harming vulnerable children. Mason and Republicans in the state legislature believe the measure goes too far and fails to address the root of the abuse cases that sparked calls for more stringent homeschooling regulations to be passed in the first place. They blame the abuse cases on DCF, contending that if the agency had done its job and followed through on leads and open cases, the issues could have been avoided.
“That agency is a train wreck,” Republican state Sen. Eric Berthel said. “It’s off the rails. It needs to go through substantial reform and be fixed before they should be allowed to interact with another family and another child.”
HB 5468, or An Act Concerning the Provision of Parent-Managed Learning, was prompted by several widely reported child abuse cases in Connecticut that have occurred in recent years in homeschooled homes. In March, Eve Rogers was found dead in her home, with authorities saying there were signs she had been sexually assaulted. DCF had an open investigation into the family at the time of her death.
In October, police found 11-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia dead in a plastic bin. An autopsy showed she had been dead for roughly a year at the time of her finding, and that she had passed due to child abuse and starvation. DCF had investigated the Torres-Garcia family as well before the child was found.
In 2025, a man in Waterbury set fire to his room, saying he had been held against his will for 20 years since he was pulled out of public school to be homeschooled as a child. School officials said they contacted DCF 20 times with concerns. In 2023, a 10-year-old New London boy was found malnourished, walking with a limp, and had a broken finger. DCF said they had held no prior involvement in that case.
Democrats blamed Connecticut’s lax homeschooling regulations, known as some of the most laissez-faire in New England, contending that little state oversight allowed cases of abuse to go unchecked.
“It was very important to know that the adults who are responsible for educating these children do not have a history of harming children,” McCrory said, arguing that since schoolteachers are required to pass a similar DCF check, it makes sense to apply that same standard when the child’s teacher is their parent.
Homeschooling advocates argued that DCF bears the burden of the blame, pointing to a case highlighted last month where a child committed suicide within an hour of a DCF visit. The homeschooling bill lawmakers passed to target such abuse fails to solve the root of the issue, they say.
Mason, the HSLDA president, said the bill’s provisions are overly broad, pointing to the requirement that a DCF check must be completed before parents can withdraw their kids from public schools.
“That’s going to affect lots of people,” he said. “A DCF background check could take days or weeks. And that’s a horrible consequence.”
“If you think that the right is fundamental, you shouldn’t have to wait for that,” he added. “And the reason lots of people withdraw from public school in the middle of the school year is sort of a crisis with their kids: bullying, or health problems, or school anxiety, and any number of reasons. And so those parents wouldn’t be able to withdraw until the background check was completed.”
Mason also expressed concern about the provision preventing parents from homeschooling their children if they are on DCF’s Child Abuse and Neglect Registry, or are the subject of an ongoing DCF investigation. The homeschooling advocate said many on the list have not yet had a court hearing or any involvement by a judge establishing credible guilt or evidence of neglect.
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“The central register is determined by the investigating caseworker,” he said. “There’s lots of literature out there that says that being placed on the registry is an error-prone approach that has long-term consequences on people who don’t deserve it.”
“It includes neglect, and neglect is such a broad concept that it often encompasses people who are simply poor or disproportionately affects people of color,” he added. “It’s an administrative list that is easy to get on and incredibly difficult to get off, and doesn’t include any of the due process guarantees that a court case would.”
