At a press conference held by Senate and House Republicans before an informational hearing on Connecticut’s homeschooling regulations, Alicia Teitelbaum is handing out facemasks like it’s 2020 again. On her own facemask is written, “Forced Silent.”

Teitelbaum was there with her colleague, Kenyetta Hayes, who spoke during the spirited press conference. They are both part of a homeschooling co-op of roughly fifty families in Fairfield County; they’re both Democrats, and they both say their homeschooling voices were silenced by Democratic leaders of the Committee on Children and the Education Committee in favor of voices more supportive of expanding Connecticut’s homeschool regulations.

The informational hearing was held to assess whether the state of Connecticut has enough oversight of homeschooling children following the horrific imprisonment and abuse of a child for decades in Waterbury after he was removed from the public school system, allegedly under the guise of being homeschooled, in a story that has made national headlines.

The Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) contends that Connecticut’s lax oversight of homeschooling allows abusive or neglectful parents to keep their children out of the view of mandated reporters and offered a troubling report about the number of homeschool families with DCF records. The OCA gave several legislative proposals the morning of the hearing, including independently evaluating homeschooled children to ensure academic progress and updating the Department of Children and Families (DCF) criteria for educational neglect and investigation.

Homeschool advocates argue they are being made scapegoats for the failures of state agencies like the DCF and should not be judged by public school systems that fail children and occasionally fail to report abuse and neglect of their students.

The hearing drew thousands of homeschooling parents and their children to the Capitol Monday, who overwhelmed the Legislative Office Building and whose chants outside the informational hearing could be heard on video. Like Teitelbaum and Hayes, many of them argued their voices were being silenced.

Informational hearings are not public hearings; committee chairs invite speakers to gather information for legislative purposes and therefore seek out the heads of state agencies, and organizations that can offer wide and well-researched viewpoints. Some key homeschool organizations were left off the list, however, garnering criticism from attendees and Republicans, who claimed that the hearing was essentially rigged against the homeschoolers.

“We have a room full of people and far more people, parents, and children outside this room that don’t even get an opportunity to speak today,” Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, said at the opening of the press conference. “They deserve an opportunity to speak, and they are not being provided that opportunity for a very particular reason and we know it.”

Teitelbaum says she and Kenyetta were initially contacted by the Connecticut Homeschool Network (CHN) to speak at the hearing, particularly as they’re Democrats living in Fairfield County and three of the four co-chairs of the committees – Sen. Ceci Maher, D-Darien, Rep. Corey Paris, D-Stamford, and Rep. Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield — were Democrats representing Fairfield County. 

“CHN asked us to speak because three out of the four co-chairs are all Fairfield County representatives, and they are the ones pushing for this,” Teitelbaum said. “They were trying to make a point to say your constituents don’t want this.”

But on the Friday before the Monday hearing Teitelbaum and Hayes found out they were excluded from the list of people testifying, purportedly because the committee was looking for voices that represented the whole state — but they were not the only ones allegedly left off the list. 

TEACH CT, a statewide Christian homeschooling network that is well-known at the Capitol, was also excluded from the hearing – something that was criticized by Teitelbaum, Hayes, and several other homeschool advocates, because it is one of the largest homeschool organizations in Connecticut.

Timothy Knotts, president of TEACH CT, says he was originally recommended to speak at the hearing by ranking members Rep. Anne Dauphinais, R-Killingly, and Rep. Lezlye Zupkus, R-Prospect, and was under the impression the ranking members’ requests would be honored. He then found on Friday that he would not be testifying. Instead, Knotts spoke at the Republican press conference and sat in the audience during the hearing.

“They [Dauphinais and Hayes] both recommended TEACH CT as a subject matter expert with a lot to share. We’ve been doing this for thirty years, we are made up of homeschooling families, some second-generation homeschooling Connecticut families,” Knotts said outside the hearing.

Reached for comment, Rep. Dauphinais said she offered the committee chairs five individuals across three organizations to speak on behalf of homeschoolers, as some of the proposed speakers had prior commitments and were unsure whether they could testify. That included two names from the Connecticut Homeschool Network (CHN), two names from TEACH CT, and Kenyetta Hayes. 

“The response given back was Kenyetta couldn’t speak because she wasn’t a statewide group,” Dauphinais said. But when the list of expert speakers was released, only the two individuals she recommended on behalf of CHN were on the list.

Dauphinais says the committee chairs had essentially split CHN into two by including CHN President Diane Connors as one speaker, and CHN’s attorney Deborah Stevenson as a second speaker, but in this case representing the larger National Home Education Defense League.

“We did not submit [Stevenson’s] name as part of a national group, we submitted her name as the attorney for CHN,” Dauphinais said. “They took the names and separated them on the agenda like they were speaking for two different groups. It was clearly contrived.”

At the same time, the committee added Beau Triba, purportedly speaking on behalf of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), which is based in Massachusetts, and advocates for homeschool regulation nationally. The other individuals and agencies testifying were the commissioners of the Connecticut State Department of Education, and the Department of Children and Families; the executive directors of the Office of the Child Advocate and the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.

“It was clearly set up in favor of the groups who wanted more regulation of homeschoolers,” Dauphinais said. “I believe the whole hearing and forum was sabotaged against the homeschoolers.”

“TEACH CT had expected to be on the agenda but was booted off for reasons unknown at this point,” attorney Stevenson said during the hearing. “I think that’s an affront, because this is a state issue, it’s not a national issue, and in place of TEACH CT, I gather that the Coalition for Responsible Home Education was put in their place, which is a national group and has really no connections here in Connecticut, other than to lobby this entity.”

According to their website, CRHE was founded in 2013 by homeschool alumni who either experienced or witnessed forms of neglect or abuse and believe there should be more government oversight of homeschooling. 

“We all knew that homeschooling was sometimes used to isolate children and hide child abuse,” CHRE’s website states — essentially the exact concern that was being raised by the committees and the OCA. CHRE maintains a database of reported homeschool abuse and neglect cases.

Triba, a Connecticut native, testified that he was homeschooled by abusive parents using a religious program called Classical Conversations, and that much of his education was inaccurate. According to his statements, his mother would lie on his transcripts, he never received help after a suicide attempt, and he had no adults outside the religious homeschooling community to turn to for help.

“Stories like mine continue to happen right under your nose,” Triba said during the hearing. “There are hundreds of cases in the public record of caregivers using the cover of homeschooling to abuse and neglect their children.”

The exclusion of TEACH CT and the inclusion of the CHRE was seen by some as unfair, allowing Triba to recount personal testimony critical of religious homeschooling and not giving TEACH CT – nor Classical Conversations – a chance to offer their own testimony.

Under questioning by Dauphinais, Triba said he didn’t represent any families in Connecticut and was there on his own account as a member of CHRE. Dauphinais responded that it was unfortunate that TEACH CT and Classical Conversations wasn’t given the chance to address the hearing.

“It’s discrimination against a religious group, in my opinion, because Beau Triba vocalized heavily his disdain for this religious program and they weren’t given an opportunity to testify at all, and you would have heard another side of that,” Dauphinais said to Inside Investigator. “It was clearly, clearly planned against the homeschoolers. There were dozens of Classical Conversation families in the Capitol, and they weren’t given a chance to speak.”

Teitelbaum said it was “frustrating” that Triba was allowed to give a personal testimony but no homeschool families were allowed the same opportunity.

Reached for comment by email, Rep. Leeper said TEACH CT “was never invited by the Chairs to be a subject matter expert, so their organization was not pushed aside in favor of someone else.”

“Similarly, since the Committee Chairs held discretion over speakers, the CT Homeschool Network did not have the authority to invite other individuals or entities to speak at the informational hearing,” Leeper said. “Our committees heard from a wide variety of organizations on Monday, covering the spectrum of the homeschooling debate. Beyond the informational hearing, we have heard individually from hundreds of members of the homeschooling community sharing their perspectives, lived experiences, and concerns.”

When asked what he would have said to the committees were he invited to testify, Knotts said, “We, as parents, have a God-given right and a constitutional right to educate our children.” 

“It’s really only when we abrogate that right, when we give it up, when we don’t take the responsibility to do what we’ve been called to do, that the government rightly steps in,” Knotts said. “For the government to say we think there may be, possibly, some homeschoolers out there that we don’t know about that might not be doing a good job of this, therefore all homeschoolers must be regulated so we can check in and see what you’re doing and how your kids are when we have zero evidence that you’re not doing it well, is a clear abridgment of that right,” Knotts continued.

Outside the hearing, Teitelbaum alluded to the fact – as many did that day — that Hartford Public Schools is currently being sued by a student who allegedly graduated without the ability to read and write as evidence that public schools don’t necessarily teach students to the standards the state sets for itself, let alone homeschooling families.

Many also noted that children in the public school system are abused by their parents with no reports coming from the schools, or even abused by teachers, and that often those cases slip through the cracks, including in the Waterbury case.

During the hearing, DCF Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly said DCF had located records of investigating the case in Waterbury, and that staff followed all “policies and protocols,” meaning there must be a “systemic gap somewhere.”

“Once we go in and respond, there are limitations to what we can do in response to the information that we have,” Hill-Lilly said, “and I will tell you, based on our preliminary review, our staff followed their policies and protocols, there was not a deviation from practice and protocol. Which means there is a systemic gap somewhere.”

Teitelbaum also pointed to this year’s announcement that the winning team for the Connecticut State Science Olympiad was a Fairfield County homeschooling team, which will now go on to a national competition in Nebraska, as evidence that homeschooling can be just as effective, if not more effective, than public schools.

“You’re welcome, Connecticut,” she said.

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