It was March of 2022 when Alicia Teitelbaum, a Stamford mother of three, made her decision.  Her second-grader Britney, who had a speech delay, had spent two years surrounded by people wearing masks. Evelyn, her fourth-grade daughter, was still struggling to catch up after missing many weeks of school in 2020 with exhaustion brought on by Lyme disease. “I was literally pulling out chunks of my hair,” Evelyn, now 13, recalled. “It was definitely not a healthy environment with me.”  Teitelbaum said she’d tried to be involved at her children’s school. She was a member of the Parent Teacher Association, worked on a community garden project and developed a food-saving program. But she said she felt the school didn’t want parents’ input.  Teitelbaum’s youngest daughter was set to start kindergarten the next school year, but a recently-passed state law meant the family would no longer qualify for vaccine exemptions — which Teitelbaum wanted because of concerns about health conditions in the family.  She decided that, starting the following year, her three daughters would receive their education at home.  Teitelbaum was part of a wave of parents across the country who moved away from traditional school systems after the pandemic hit. The experience of watching children struggle to sit in front of screens and fall farther behind in their learning galvanized a new cohort of parents to take on the task of educating their children themselves.  With schools now back to pre-pandemic, in-person, maskless learning, many of those new homeschool parents have decided to stick with it.  It’s difficult to get solid estimates of the number of homeschoolers in the country — particularly in Connecticut, where parents aren’t required to inform their local district that they’re homeschooling.  The U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey found that about 5.9% of children in the U.S. were reported as being homeschooled in the 2023-24 school year. The survey also found Connecticut had one of the lowest proportions of homeschoolers that year, at about 3% of the total student population. According to state data from 2023-24, just over 1,800 children were reported as being homeschooled.  National figures show that the rise in homeschooling was widespread that year. The Institute for Educational Policy at Johns Hopkins University found that 19 of 21 states that reported data on homeschooling showed a higher number of children in homeschool in 2023-24 compared to the prior year. (Connecticut wasn’t among the states included in the study.)  Connecticut families who are part of the recent wave of new homeschoolers said the benefits quickly became clear.  They said homeschooling brought their families closer, with siblings learning side-by-side and parents and children spending their days together. It gave children more freedom to explore their own interests and learn at their own pace. Parents of children with learning disabilities say by teaching them at home, they’re more able to provide the attention and services their children need — which they often don’t receive in school. Many parents believed they’d found the answer. But then, more questions came.  This image provided by the Waterbury Police Department shows the home where a Connecticut man told authorities his stepmother held him captive for two decades since he was a boy. (Waterbury Police Department) Earlier this year, homeschooling came under scrutiny from state lawmakers after multiple high-profile cases of child abuse made national news. In May, the public learned of a Waterbury man who was allegedly held captive for two decades after being withdrawn from public school.  The state Office of the Child Advocate released a report that found withdrawals of children from public schools had been used to hide abuse. Of 774 children who were withdrawn to be homeschooled between 2021 and 2024, about a quarter were in families where there had been at least one report of abuse or neglect that the Department of Children and Families judged to merit more attention. (The state doesn’t keep equivalent data on the families of children who attend public schools.) Alongside the report, Acting Child Advocate Christina Ghio drafted recommendations that the state require homeschool parents to inform their local school districts each year that they’re homeschooling, and that their children receive an annual academic evaluation. She also recommended that local school districts review the records of any family seeking to withdraw a child for homeschooling, to see whether there are any past reports of abuse and neglect.  Ghio said the recommendations were based on two goals: to make sure homeschooled children are being educated and to keep them “healthy and safe.”  “ We acknowledge there are a lot of parents that are doing homeschooling and doing a wonderful job, and this is not an allocation of blame on those parents,” she said. “The reality, though, is we currently have a system where we know that some children are being removed from school for the stated purpose of homeschooling to hide abuse and neglect. And that’s not acceptable.”  The assurances have done little to calm the fears of parents like Teitelbaum.  Many homeschooling parents — who have devoted resources, time and money to giving their children what they feel is the best education possible — say they feel they’re being blamed for the state’s shortcomings. They point to failures by the state Department of Children and Families to monitor families who were reported for neglect and abuse before they pulled their children from the public schools — families like that of 11-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-García, who was abused and died in 2024 and whose mother allegedly claimed the child was being homeschooled in another state.  Rather than regulating homeschooling, parents like Teitelbaum say they want the state to audit DCF and address problems in its operations. “I don’t understand why the legislative body is protecting DCF as a government agency instead of saying, ‘We have major failures going on, let’s fix them,’” Teitelbaum said. DCF spokesperson Peter Yazbak said in a statement that the agency is “committed to being as transparent as possible and welcome further dialogue and feedback from families, legislators, advocates and community partners to enhance our case practice and best protect children.” Parents and advocates also frequently mention the challenges faced by the public schools — chronic absenteeism, for example, or the number of students in public schools who aren’t reading or doing math at grade level. They say the state should be focusing on what’s already under its control. “Fix your house that’s broken rather than trying to regulate what we’re doing,” Teitelbaum said.  Students interact during a homeschooling co-op session in Stamford on November 13, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror The Evergreen Co-op Social Club One might assume all homeschool arrangements look similar: a group of siblings scribbling in workbooks around a dining room table. But these days the educational experience is more varied, and more communal.  Take, for example, the co-op — a collective of parents who teach classes to their own children and other children in the group. Three years ago, Teitelbaum founded her own co-op along with nine other families in Stamford.  With the blessing of her pastor at the Church of Christ in Stamford, they transformed the building into the home of the Evergreen Co-op Social Club, which meets on Mondays and Thursdays and offers a mix of classes that they switch up every 10 weeks. Most of the co-op parents spent the other three days of the week covering more academic subjects like math and language arts at home. On an October morning inside the church, children as young as toddlers all the way through high school were scattered in classrooms, or sitting outside in the sunshine for their classes. No space was left unused. Jackets, bookbags and shoes lined the hallway from the main worship space to classroom and fellowship areas.  Downstairs, a parish social space filled with tables and chairs served as a cafeteria during lunchtime and a space for art and cooking classes during the day. Amy Irish, a mom of two, was downstairs checking on the earrings that her students had fashioned out of clay, part of a jewelry-making class she teaches.  The classes range from three to 12 students who are roughly the same age. All are taught by parents, who offer instruction in subjects aligned with their expertise or interests. Irish, a former yoga teacher, also teaches a section on hula-hooping. John Questel, a father of three who worked as an electrician in the U.S. Navy, said he sometimes teaches an introductory class on circuits.  Like the other parents, Irish and Questel said it was the pandemic that pushed them to homeschool. Irish, who at the time had a second-grader and a toddler, said it was impossible to get her second-grader to sit in front of a screen while responding to her toddler’s demands for attention.  “Remote hybrid learning was so terrible,” Questel said. Even before that, his son Steven didn’t like school. The boy had trouble reading, and while the public school gave him extra help, as soon as he’d get caught up, all the extra help would disappear, Questel said. And his son would fall behind once again.  Kiera Teitelbaum, 8, climbs a tree outside of her homeschooling co-op in Stamford on November 13, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Homeschooling was his wife’s idea, and initially he wasn’t thrilled, Questel said. He’d grown up in public school, and his perception of homeschoolers was that they were antisocial and didn’t have the necessary skills to succeed in life. But discovering the existence of co-ops, coupled with the fact that his wife had a master’s degree in education, convinced him to give it a shot.  Several of the homeschool parents have backgrounds in education. Brittany Velazquez, who drives to the co-op from her home just over the state line in New York, was a former teacher and assistant principal in the New York City Public Schools. Her oldest son, Amari, was only a baby when COVID began, but her experiences working in the school system during the pandemic made her realize that she wanted to take charge of her son’s education herself.  “ I can give him a more well-rounded education because I know what he’s into,” she explained. “One-to-one learning would be the ideal situation for anybody. So I kind of just took it and then ran with it at that time.”  Some of the parents who send their children to Evergreen have exceptional skills they teach the children. For instance, Teitelbaum said one of their parents who worked on Broadway has taught a music class. At picnic tables outside the church, a parent who works at the Greenwich Country Day School was teaching carpentry, demonstrating how to use a drill and explaining different drill bits. In a “Model UN” class — in which students pick a country to represent and learn about the United Nations — one of the guest speakers was a mother who’d worked as a translator during the Kosovo War.   Angela Watson, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the director of the university’s Homeschool Research Lab, said the availability of groups like co-ops, along with a vast array of online resources and materials, should alleviate concerns that parents might not have enough education themselves in order to teach their children. Several of the parents said they also have tutors who work with their children on days they aren’t at the co-op.  Erin Reeves, a former hairstylist, said she’s taught a few courses on the subject, including a color and styling class that ended with the kids having their hair dyed. Reeves said she initially said no to teaching at the co-op. “ The idea of teaching other kids was overwhelming to me,” Reeves said. “I was like, I feel like I’m barely teaching mine.” That has changed. This semester, Reeves and a group of 11-year-olds are reading “Bridge to Terabithia,” a short novel about two friends who create an imaginary kingdom. The kids are creating costumes and props for their own “kingdom” — an undersea one. Teitelbaum’s daughter Britney was dressed in a mermaid costume, wearing a crown she made from construction paper and carrying a trident made out of aluminum foil. At the end of the class, they’d perform a play.  Britney Teitelbaum, 11, left, constructs a prop for a play during a homeschooling co-op session in Stamford on November 13, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Reeves discovered the co-op through Teitelbaum after she’d decided to pull her daughters from school during the pandemic. Her oldest, Violet, who was in second grade when the pandemic hit, has dyslexia and ADHD, which made online schooling nearly impossible for her.  “I couldn’t even unload my dishwasher,” Reeves said. “They both just needed help constantly.”  Violet, who is now 13, said she remembers struggling in elementary school and that she was bullied because of her dyslexia. She said her parents had to bribe her with money and candy to get her to go to school.  Reeves said she was nervous at first about the idea of homeschooling a child with a reading disability. She did a lot of research on her own and hired a tutor specializing in dyslexia. Then they discovered the co-op, which she said both her daughters loved.  In some ways the co-op feels like a series of after-school clubs and activities, designed to bring students together and expand their interests and knowledge.  The co-op breaks down what parents say is one of the major misconceptions about homeschooling: that the children are isolated and have no social life. In addition to participating in co-ops, homeschool students often enroll in sports. Some of the students participate in Barefoot University, a weekly group that offers activities focused on nature and the outdoors. Teitelbaum’s daughters are part of a writing group that meets online with a former writing teacher who offers coaching. Questel’s 15-year-old son Steven is enrolled in online college courses.  “ My kids are so social, and they just have so many interesting experiences all around,” said Irish.  Teitelbaum repeatedly refers to the co-op as having the “village mentality.” It’s a place where the families know one another and are invested in one another’s lives, she said.  “They’re all my kids,” she said.  An estimated 2,150 people showed up to the Legislative Office Building in Hartford during an informational session about homeschooling on May 5, 2025.. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror What’s best for kids Homeschool organizations have a history of success — in many states — in pressuring lawmakers to recognize homeschooling as a legitimate form of education, and then to loosen restrictions on it.  In the book “Homeschool: An American History,” Milton Gaither wrote that state lawmakers who try to strengthen regulations on homeschooling almost always fail “due to massive outcry from homeschoolers.” Gaither even cited an example from Connecticut, when, in 2002, a state representative proposed legislation requiring local superintendents to approve homeschoolers’ curriculum and mandating that parents who homeschool have at least a high school diploma. Over 1,000 people showed up in opposition to the bill, which never saw the light of day.  Something similar happened this year. In May, as lawmakers conducted a hearing on the child advocate’s report and recommendations, thousands of homeschool families crowded into the Legislative Office Building in Hartford to protest the possibility of new regulations. They stayed on for several days, many of them with children in tow, displaying signs throughout the building’s lobby and atrium.  Ultimately, lawmakers decided not to raise any new legislation establishing new requirements for homeschoolers.   Unlike some of its neighboring states, Connecticut doesn’t require homeschoolers to submit an instructional plan or submit the results of a yearly academic test. It’s one of 12 states that doesn’t even require homeschoolers to notify local districts that they plan to homeschool.  Ghio, Connecticut’s acting child advocate, said her recommendations for homeschooling were meant to strike a balance between parents’ rights to teach and care for their children as they deem fit and children’s rights to be educated and well-cared for.  Watson, at Johns Hopkins, said she believes that for a state like Connecticut, with no regulations around homeschooling, to add in stringent requirements would be extremely difficult. Instead, she suggested the state use incentives for homeschoolers to participate more in the wider public school community — like offering free testing or free curriculum, or allowing homeschoolers to participate in sports and extracurriculars in their local school districts.  “Connecticut is one of the only states in the country that doesn’t provide for any access at all for homeschooled children to their local public schools,” Watson said.  Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association for Public School Superintendents, said allowing that kind of participation in public school activities could be complicated, raising questions about insurance and how to handle situations in which a child gets hurt or refuses to follow rules.  And Ghio said the incentives Watson suggested wouldn’t resolve the problem of parents who withdraw children from school in order to isolate them from society.  An estimated 2,150 people showed up to the Legislative Office Building in Hartford during an informational session about homeschooling earlier this month. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Coral Karrass, a mother of three who serves as treasurer of the Connecticut Homeschool Network, one of the largest homeschool organizations in the state, said she felt recent conversations at the Capitol were creating a picture of homeschooling families as “secretive abusers.”  “ It’s hurtful. It’s so hurtful,” she said.  She said she often speaks with parents who tell her about the difficulties they’d had with their local public school. She said while public schools are necessary, they aren’t the ideal place for all students.  “We care about kids,” she said. “I think that everyone should want to see what is best for every child, no matter what that might be, no matter what that looks like.”  Karrass was homeschooling before the pandemic. She and her sister taught their combined five children together. They switched back-and-forth between their two homes, carrying a bag that contained notes from whoever had taught the previous day.  She and her sister both needed to work — they work gig jobs making deliveries — and the arrangement allowed them to educate their kids while earning money.  Her niece and daughter were close in age, as were her nephew and her son, meaning they could do similar assignments. Karrass said she established a tiered system, where each child would do assignments on a similar theme, but at their own level.  She described it as resembling a one-room schoolhouse. The older children care for the younger ones, she said, and it’s a better example of the kind of relationships they would encounter as adults.  “I think when you go out into the real world, even in college … you’re mixed with a wider variety of people,” Karrass said. “It’s more like a realistic community than I think what a public or private school setting gives.”  Karrass hadn’t expected to homeschool. Her oldest daughter, Abbi, was a January baby, and she barely missed the cutoff date to enroll in kindergarten. The little girl seemed ready to start learning, so Karrass decided she’d try teaching her for a year. By the end of that year, Abbi was reading at an advanced level.  Rather than put her in a classroom where she would be far ahead of her peers, Karrass said, she decided to continue homeschooling her. When Karrass’s sister saw what she was doing, she wanted to join in.  Through an online chat group, Karrass connected with Diane Connors, president and co-founder of CHN, who she said helped guide her through the homeschool process. She said the organization provides parents with critical support in everything from finding curriculum to establishing a routine. Karrass also developed a list of free and inexpensive resources for parents who don’t have a lot of money to spend on homeschooling. “Money should not be an obstacle,” Karrass said. “If you have access to the internet, ignorance is a choice.”  Research from Johns Hopkins shows that parents of gifted students, like Karrass, often turn to homeschooling when the local school district can’t meet their needs.  The same is true of children with special needs. Watson said that “upwards of 20% to 30%” of homeschoolers fit that description.  That was the case for Kathryn, a single mother of two boys who pulled her younger son out to homeschool during the 2021-22 school year. Kathryn asked that only her middle name be used because her older son is still receiving special education services through their local school district, and she’s concerned about repercussions.  Kathryn’s sons are both on the autism spectrum, she said, and getting special education services for her older son was a “full legal battle.” He was being restrained and secluded on a near-weekly basis — so much that he developed claustrophobia. Eventually, her local district placed him in a specialized school outside the district.  Her younger son’s challenges started in first grade. She said she couldn’t get his school to provide him with a special education plan, called an IEP, and he was being bullied. By Christmas of that year, Kathryn said, he was trying to figure out how to avoid going to school. But it wasn’t long before the pandemic hit, and Kathryn began working from home more. That allowed her the time to homeschool her younger son.  She now works a hybrid schedule. On the days she’s home, she gives her son assignments he can do independently. The teaching continues year-round, including on evenings and weekends. On the days Kathryn goes to the office, a nanny stays with her son, who is now 10 years old. He’s also part of a co-op, and plays adaptive sports.  Kathryn said she’s concerned with the idea of additional regulations for homeschoolers. The idea of being forced to check in with the school district annually makes no sense, she said. “They already failed my child once. Why would they step in again?” An estimated 2,150 people showed up to the Legislative Office Building in Hartford during an informational session about homeschooling. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Tradeoffs and priorities Parents who choose to homeschool don’t do so lightly. It requires a great deal of time and engagement, Watson said. But they say the rewards — family time, a flexible way of learning — outweigh whatever sacrifices they’ve made. “ I don’t homeschool because I think traditional public or private school education is bad,” said Trisha Kozloski, who directs the Catholic Schoolhouse Co-op in Middletown. “I do it because these children were given to me as wonderful gifts from God, and I want to be with them as much as I can. And we have a big family, and so I want us to know each other and love each other and build relationships and strong bonds.”  Parents emphasized the benefits of spending time together as a family, the flexibility of allowing children to learn at their own pace, and the absence of stigma for children with disabilities. They say their children can sleep in; that they can finish their schoolwork in a few hours, leaving time for fun excursions, and that they no longer have to rush through the mornings. For children who are deeply involved in outside activities, like dance, it allows them to focus on their passions without the pressure of a traditional schedule.  That doesn’t mean it comes without challenges. With the need for one parent to be present at home, choosing to homeschool sometimes means moving to a single income, forcing the family to be more frugal. “ Of course I would love a bigger house,” Kozloski said. “ You make these choices. And my kids are also just fine with not having these things. They don’t get everything they want. They wear hand-me-down clothes. And they’re perfectly fine children. They’re probably better for that, too.”  For some parents, it also means making the hard decision to give up a career they’ve worked toward.  “I think as a female it is very hard to say you spent five years working at a degree for something, and then say, well, my priorities have shifted,” said Teitelbaum, who worked as a physical therapist before deciding to homeschool full-time.  Velazquez, who had worked in the New York City public schools, said the decision was also difficult for her at first. “ I was really sad for a long time. At one point, I kind of felt like it was a defeat,” she said. “And then one day it really just clicked that … you have all of this value to give your most prized possession, which is your child.”   Kozloski said she was disturbed by the idea that a child was being abused by parents who lied and said they were homeschooling. But she said that those bad actions didn’t negate her good ones. “ I have nothing to hide, but that doesn’t mean you should make me prove myself. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” she said.  Kozloski said she’s worried that additional regulations would take away from the time she has to spend teaching her kids. “ My main focus is educating these kids and doing that to the best of my ability. I don’t want to be burdened by recordkeeping,” said Kozloski.  And Karrass expressed concern that the public schools, which have graduated children who were unable to read, would be responsible for determining what was or wasn’t “adequate” for homeschoolers — potentially holding them to a different standard.  Watson, of Johns Hopkins, said evidence shows that homeschooled children often do well on tests and attend college. And while her research showed that homeschooling families value academic achievement, they place less value on having their children attend prestigious universities. Parents who spoke to the Connecticut Mirror also placed a great deal of value on practical, everyday knowledge.  Karrass said it was more important to her that her children have a solid foundation rather than be pushed ahead to advanced classes. A student might be able to figure out a calculus equation but can’t add simple money, a task they would need to do every day, she said.  “Academics are great. Of course, everyone wants their kids to be straight-A students and get lots of scholarship money for college and get all the AP credits and stuff,” Kozloski said. “But I want my kids to be kind, contributing members of society in whatever way fits for them.”  Similarly, Teitelbaum said her priorities aren’t about having her children work at a Fortune 500 company or go to an Ivy League university.  “I want them to be happy. I want them to be great people,” she said.  A students walks to her homeschooling co-op session in Stamford on November 13, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror Two homeschoolers, two stories In the homeschool community, advocates refer regularly to a specific passage in Connecticut state law known as Section 10-184 — “Duties of Parents.”  It’s a law that requires parents to teach their children basic subjects, including history, mathematics, reading and writing, either by sending them to a public school or proving they are getting “equivalent instruction” somewhere else. Homeschool advocates present this law as proof that the state places the education and care of children first and foremost in the hands of the adults who raise them.  In this lies one of the biggest challenges in proposing homeschool regulations: the vast diversity in how parents teach their children and the wide spectrum of experiences that former homeschoolers say have influenced their lives, for better or worse.  Some young adults say homeschooling was the best education they could have imagined.  “I couldn’t have asked for a better education, for a better childhood,” said 21-year-old Annaliese Harper, a former homeschooler, during a forum in August in Torrington.  The youngest of five, Harper — whose mother is Donna Person, vice president of the Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers in Connecticut — was homeschooled from an early age all the way through high school. Most days, she said, she would finish her work by 1 or 2 p.m. and have free time for other activities. She was involved in dance, drama, took piano lessons and showed Alpacas and goats while in 4-H.  Anneliese Harper, age 19, with a goat, during her final year of 4-H.  Credit: Courtesy of Anneliese Harper Up until high school, Harper was part of a once-a-week co-op through Classical Conversations, a Christian homeschool education program that has chapters across the country and internationally. Harper said homeschoolers would be grouped by age and study traditional subjects like math, science, history, English and Latin. The program was primarily discussion-based, with parents acting as “tutors” to help students learn.  Harper said she never felt she was missing out on anything by not attending a traditional school.  “I was thankful I didn’t have to wake up at, I don’t know, 7 a.m. and go to school and I didn’t have to be in a classroom all day. I could go outside a lot and be with my family, be with my siblings,” she said.  Her experience was different from that of 24-year-old Beau Triba, who was also homeschooled throughout his life. Triba spoke at a forum on homeschooling in May, where he said his parents were part of an evangelical Christian community that had to approve all the textbooks he used and controlled myriad aspects of his life — from what he wore to whom he could be friends with. He said he did not receive instruction and taught himself by reading the textbooks his mother gave him. “I think that my mom did the best that she could. I want to say that with my full heart,” Triba told CT Mirror. “She did not have the resources she needed to educate three young children.”  Triba, who is queer and transgender, said he struggled with anxiety and depression from a young age, made worse by the isolation he felt. He also said he felt judged by the community he was raised in.  Triba said in May that he did not feel that the education he received was equal to a public school education, that it contained inaccurate information, and that it did not prepare him for adulthood.  “I have never felt more alone than I did while being homeschooled. I did not feel supported,” Triba said.  Triba also participated in Classical Conversations, although he didn’t start the program until high school. He didn’t have a strong foundation in basic subjects, he said, and he struggled to understand the lessons. Rather than receiving additional help, Triba left a lot of the work undone, and he said his transcript falsely indicated he’d completed coursework he hadn’t.  Harper said she was able to take college-level classes in English and chemistry at the age of 16. She said that, because of her education, the English class was a review for her. She said she was well-prepared for the college environment — able to advocate for herself and interact with professors. She is now a senior at Eastern Connecticut State University, studying social work. After graduating, she plans to enroll in a masters program. She got married in May, and she said she hopes to start her own family — and plans to homeschool her children. Her experiences with social work, she said, have shown her the challenges inherent in keeping children safe in a child-welfare system that she described as “overrun.”  “I see how hard public school teachers work, how hard social workers work, but the truth is no teacher, no social worker — [no one] can know your child as well as you do and can give the most focus as a parent can,” she said.  In contrast, Triba said he struggled through two semesters of community college. He didn’t know how to read a syllabus, how to manage his time, or who to go to for help. He attempted suicide and ended up in a hospital and then in various intensive therapeutic programs. Eventually, he took a course through Hartford HealthCare to become a recovery support specialist, a job he said he enjoys.   Triba said he supports the idea of having homeschoolers regularly check in with officials — not as a punitive measure, but as a way to offer help to homeschooling families like his.  “I think there were so many resources that could have been offered that just weren’t, because nobody knew we were struggling,” Triba told CT Mirror.  In particular, Triba said, it would have been helpful to have support from social services after his first suicide attempt at age 16. He said he was not hospitalized and received no professional counseling in the aftermath.  Through the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nationwide nonprofit that advocates for legislation regulating homeschooling, Triba met other homeschoolers who also had negative experiences. He said it’s sometimes hard to talk about his own history, because he doesn’t want to interfere with those homeschoolers who are going above or beyond. He said any regulations should be made in collaboration with the whole community and should emphasize offering resources rather than investigating wrongdoing.  “I think there’s a middle ground here that we can find,” he said. “And we have to — I think we have to find this middle ground.”  Rep. Tammy Nuccio, R-Tolland, speaks at a forum on Monday night at the Tolland Senior Center. The forum, attended by five Republican lawmakers, was presented as an opportunity for homeschool advocates, parents and children to speak about their concerns around possible state regulation of homeschooling. Credit: Emilia Otte / CT Mirror A call for ‘genuine conversation’ on policy Not all parents who homeschool are against the recommendations Ghio raised.  Steve Kennedy, a Newtown resident who homeschools his four children, said he supports proposals like annual check-ins and academic assessments for homeschoolers.  Kennedy said he decided to homeschool because he wanted to give his children a more in-depth curriculum than he felt they would receive in the public schools, particularly in the area of history. He said although he reads the state standards and has given his oldest daughter standardized assessments to make sure she’s on track, he would “welcome some feedback” from the state or local districts.   “I think the whole idea of parental rights, it kind of blanks out the child’s [rights] entirely,” said Kennedy. “It’s framed as … ‘Oh, this is the government coming in and telling you what to do,’ when really it’s like, ‘The government is making sure that children’s rights are maintained.’”   Kennedy said he didn’t believe the state was trying to force homeschoolers to enroll their children in public schools, and he said he didn’t see the policies as “particularly burdensome or intrusive.”  Rabinowitz, of the superintendents association, said she envisioned a state-run and state-funded office for homeschoolers, rather than expecting them to report to their local school districts. The office would oversee regulations, she said, but also provide support for homeschooling families. “I personally know some homeschoolers, and I’ve heard some wonderful things about homeschooling, and I think we can learn from them as well,” Rabinowitz said. “My outlook isn’t one of anything negative about homeschooling other than we need to account for all our children.”  State Rep. Patrick Biggins, D-Manchester, who served as the chair of a legislative working group on homeschooling, said conversations with constituents and research into best practices for regulating homeschooling were ongoing. “I think that the goal is to balance parents’ rights with the state’s vested interest in making sure children are safe, and making sure children are getting an education,” Biggins said, adding that he doesn’t believe the current law emphasizes those values strongly enough. “Conversations are still preliminary,” State Rep. Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield, the chair of the Education Committee, said in a text message.  State Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, the highest ranking Republican on the legislature’s Education Committee, said she also wasn’t aware of any proposed bill. She said that while she felt it was critical to protect children’s safety, she did not support singling out homeschoolers. Any changes lawmakers make, she said, should consider challenges in the public schools as well. Chemay Morales-James, who has homeschooled her children for about a decade, said she understands the desire that public school and state officials have to try to keep children safe, even as she doubts that the regulations being proposed will help children who find themselves in the most dangerous situations.    Morales-James, a former teacher, now runs a homeschool collective called My Reflection Matters. The majority of families in it are people of color who often came to homeschooling after dealing with specific challenges in the public schools. Morales-James said families in her collective often distrust the public school system because of its historic failure to serve communities of color.  She said her oldest son, who is Black, spent just three days in pre-K before she decided to pull him out. He was acting out, and she worried how teachers would perceive him as he got older. She said she knew families whose children had been placed in special education in response to what she characterized as “overactive energy.” And she said the schools sometimes failed to address what she described as “racial incidents” that would happen between students or between a student and a teacher. She also said families felt their culture and history weren’t always portrayed correctly in public school curricula. “Racism is a health crisis to many of our families,” she said, referring to the collective. “It affects people mentally and emotionally and they don’t believe that schools take that seriously enough … so they just choose to opt out.”  Morales-James homeschools her two boys, now ages 14 and 12, through a philosophy called “unschooling” — allowing their interests to guide what they study and learn. She said it removes a lot of the pressure that comes from a traditional education system.  She said that as a former teacher, she’d watched how students who didn’t learn according to a school system’s expectations would be “labeled” and feel as though they weren’t as smart as other children. She said that homeschooling allowed her own boys to learn free from the comparison with other children.  That’s one of the reasons she’s concerned about the idea of regulations around homeschooling. “Are you going to say I’m abusive because my 8-year-old didn’t reach your standard?” she said. “It’s such a tricky, fine thing because the whole reason we’re opting out is because many of us don’t believe in those standards. So then to hold us up against them, it’s like, well then, where’s our freedom?”   Morales-James said if Connecticut wants to implement regulations that would actually protect children, she believes there would need to be more dialogue between the public schools and the homeschooling community. She said she’s tired of the polarization that has thwarted sincere discussion.  “I think the options they’re giving out now — they won’t work because they have not come out of real, genuine conversations between these two groups. And until those conversations and real working happens in relationship with each other, we’re going to keep producing or promoting policy that is not going to work for either.” ...read more read less