The fight for homeschooling has long been fought on both the local and federal stage, but as time goes on, more of our freedoms are constantly swallowed up by the inconquerable urge of lawmakers to regulate their constituents into oblivion. The newest affront on our freedom as both homeschoolers and Americans comes as Connecticut begins to hold hearings on new homeschooling regulations. The proposed regulations are eerily reminiscent of the Make Homeschool Safe Act proposed by blatantly anti-homeschooling group The Coalition for Responsible Home Education in 2024. This model legislation, of which several parts have been passed in various states, would severely infringe on a family's freedom to homeschool their children without the burden and utter invasion of privacy that is unnecessary government regulation. The state of Connecticut, claiming the lack of regulation on homeschooling as an emergency, is attempting to use examples of those who have fallen through the cracks in the system to justify restricting the freedom of all home educators in the state, when it's actually the government agencies like DCF who failed to investigate these instances. The burden and responsibility to ensure this small amount of cases of home abuse do not occur should fall on the government agencies designed to handle them, but instead Connecticut is shielding them from scrutiny, and instead letting the blame fall on the ever-present scapegoat of those who simply want to see their children succeed out of a public-school environment. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Parham v. J.R.: “The statist notion that governmental power should supersede parental authority in all cases because some parents abuse and neglect children is repugnant to American tradition.”

With the dissolution of the Department of Education, legislation on homeschooling will now be left up to the states. Though the first effects of this are being felt in Connecticut, unless people stand up against the oncoming storm of unneeded and constricting legislation, it won't be long before it reaches every state in America. 

Please sign this petition to urge our legislators to stop infringing on the rights of Americans.