CT Democrats Rewrite Homeschool Bill to Win House Votes

Connecticut Democrats stripped down House Bill 5468 this week, cutting out several of the most contested provisions in a bid to lock up enough votes to pass the full House before the session closes May 6.

Gone from the revised version: the annual proof-of-instruction requirement that had homeschooling families most alarmed, and the language that would’ve let homeschooled kids take up to two public school classes or join school extracurricular activities. What’s left is narrower. Families who pull a child from public school to homeschool would need to notify the district in person. The bill would also require a one-time cross-check against the state abuse and neglect registry and a Department of Children and Families investigation database.

Rep. Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield, is carrying the bill and has been the loudest voice arguing it can still pass. She says the cuts address complaints that the original version was moving too aggressively. “The goal of HB 5468 is to prevent cases like those while imposing as little as possible on other homeschooling families, most of whom she said are doing everything right,” Leeper told reporters, tying the push for reform to the deaths of two children.

That’s the argument. Whether it holds enough Democratic votes together is the question nobody can answer yet.

Right now HB 5468 sits in limbo as an “uncalled amendment.” The House has to formally call it before members can vote, and Leeper said she expects that to happen but doesn’t know when. If it clears the House, it goes to the Senate. If it doesn’t move before May 6, when the General Assembly’s session ends, the bill dies for the year. That’s not a soft deadline. It’s a hard wall.

The data behind the legislation doesn’t come from advocacy groups. The Office of the Child Advocate reviewed a randomly selected group of 774 homeschooled children and found that 23% came from households with at least one accepted DCF report. Eight percent lived in families with four or more such reports. Under HB 5468’s surviving cross-check provision, families carrying that kind of DCF history would likely fail the initial screening the first time they notify a school of their intent to homeschool. Leeper has leaned on those numbers throughout. They’re the factual spine of her case that some oversight, even limited oversight, is justified.

Getting the bill this far wasn’t clean. Republicans on the Education Committee telegraphed a fight the moment the bill was raised. A public hearing brought hundreds of homeschooling parents and children to the statehouse, and thousands more submitted online testimony in opposition. The Education Committee passed HB 5468 in March 26 to 20, with four Democrats crossing over to vote no alongside every Republican. The bill then moved to the Appropriations Committee.

Leeper has said much of the organized resistance was steered by national homeschooling groups directing members from around the country to submit testimony. It’s a pattern that’s complicated her count. She’s had private conversations with colleagues, though the public vote tally after the committee split tells its own story about how fragile the coalition is.

A full breakdown of the rewritten bill’s provisions is available at the CT Mirror, which covered the changes in detail.

The core argument Leeper keeps returning to is proportionality. The bill she’s now pushing doesn’t require annual filings. It doesn’t open schoolhouse doors to homeschooled kids who want to take a class. It’s a one-time check against existing government databases and a face-to-face conversation when a parent decides to pull a child out of school. That’s what survived. Whether that’s enough to satisfy skeptical Democrats while not losing the lawmakers who supported the original, tougher version is the calculation she’s still working through.

The House hasn’t scheduled a vote. May 6 isn’t moving.