FIC Blog

S.B. 46–a bill that would stop unsolicited sexually oriented messages targeted at children’s e-mail, cellphones, pagers and faxes–was reported out of the Legislative Commissioner’s Office today. But if the Judiciary Committee does not vote on it by their “JF” date, Mar. 27th, the bill will likely die. You can help pass the bill by clicking here to e-mail members of the Committee and your own Senator and Representative.

We are also happy to report that a threat to the right to homeschool in Connecticut appears to be dead. We received this alert today from NHELD:

After waiting seven hours to testify at the legislature’s Education Committee on March 13, 2006, homeschoolers informed the committee of the serious consequences to homeschool families of committee bill SB634, which proposed changing the current language of section 10-184 from “parents and THOSE who have the care of children” to “parents and legal guardians”. Changing the language effectively would have made it illegal for relatives such as grandparents to homeschool their grandchildren.

Education Committee Chairman Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, who opposed homeschoolers last session in their attempt to adopt a bill allowing parents to withdraw their children unconditionally from public school, this time, following the testimony, stated on the record that “he was convinced” and that “as far as he was concerned the entire bill was dead”. Fleischmann added that some members of the committee may want to preserve the changes to a second portion of the bill that deals with residency requirements for children attending public school, but he added that it is likely the entire bill will be killed.

However, the fight to protect homeschooling may not be over for this session:

We still need volunteers to continue to keep the pressure on legislators to let them know that Rep. Arthur O’Neill will be proposing an amendment later in the session that will allow parents to withdraw their children from public school unconditionally.

We will keep our members up-to-date on what they can do to help.