A state report recommending greater protections for homeschooled children is facing pushback from advocates and state Republican leaders.
State Sen. Vincent Candelora, a Republican, said a report by the Office of the Child Advocate, shifts blame from the state, to parents.
“We are going to fight this attempt to deflect responsibility from the government," Candelora said.
The report, “A review of children withdrawn from school for equivalent instruction elsewhere,” outlines a series of recommendations in the wake of an incident in Waterbury where a 32-year-old man escaped captivity after allegedly being held hostage in a small room in the home of his stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, since he was in the fourth grade.
He was enrolled in Waterbury public schools but withdrawn in or around fifth grade, according to the report.
The child advocate’s new recommendations include mandating annual review of instruction outcomes for homeschooled children, and greater coordination between local school districts and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) among others.
Advocates say the recommendations encroach on their parental rights, while the Office of the Child Advocate states the recommendations simply bring the state up to par with neighboring states, which already have similar homeschooling regulations.
State Rep. Jennifer Leeper, a Democrat representing Fairfield and Southport, said current state regulations don’t have many safeguards to prevent incidents such as what happened in Waterbury.
“If a student is exited from school and is kept home, not in a community, there is never anyone else, no mandated reporter or otherwise to see if a child is abused or neglected,” Leeper said.
The report outlines four recommendations, which also include verifying children withdrawn from public schools are indeed receiving instruction at private school or through homeschooling.
Caseworkers would also have to undergo training to determine if a child is receiving instruction.
The report also suggests districts should be required to conduct internal assessments if there have been any previous reports of child abuse or neglect made to DCF.
But some parents who homeschool their children are opposed to additional oversights, claiming they infringe on their rights.
Kenyetta Hayes, a Fairfield County resident who homeschools her children, spoke at an informational hearing Monday at the state Capitol. Hayes, who is a Democrat, opposes the proposed new measures and agrees with many state Republican lawmakers who say the rules infringe upon parental rights.
“It's about parent rights and having to be able to choose how we educate our children because of a failing system,” Hayes said.
Acting Child Advocate Christina Ghio said the recommendations, if implemented in the future, would bring Connecticut up to the same regulations that neighboring states, such as New York, have long had.
While state GOP leaders attacked the report, claiming state Democrats were using the Waterbury incident as an excuse for greater state power, Ghio pointed out her office had previously recommended safeguards for children with disabilities, in the wake of the death of Matthew Tirado, a nonverbal autistic teen who died from child abuse.
Ghio said Matthew’s mother made a request to withdraw her other child from third grade months before his death, which did not trigger a report to DCF, despite the school making numerous reports to the department.
During the hearing, Ghio said she supports homeschooling, and said homeschooling in itself is not a risk factor for abuse.
But she said there is a growing relationship between withdrawal from school and what she called, non-purposeful homeschooling.
“We're talking about instances in which, in reaction to something like chronic absenteeism, like DCF referrals that parents remove their children say they're homeschooling, but are not, in fact, homeschooling,” Ghio said. “Those are the kids that we're worried about.”
Despite those concerns, state Republican lawmakers such as State Sen. Rob Sampson, said additional regulation is not needed, calling the incident in Waterbury an “isolated incident” despite previous documented incidents of children being killed by caregivers or dying of neglect.
“That is a failure of the state government,” Sampson said. “That is the failure of one of our state agencies. I think that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they ought to be looking into that first and foremost before they start digging into the lives of private citizens who've done nothing wrong.”
