DCF and SERC to “review” Christian families

Every student withdrawn from Public School gets reviewed by DCF per bill

A public hearing will be held on Wednesday, March 11, starting at 10am. Sign up to speak and submit written testimony here: https://www.cga.ct.gov/2026/eddata/pha/pdf/2026PHA00311-R001000ED-PHA.PDF.

Use Family Institute of Connecticut Action’s Action Center to send your legislator an e-mail today.

HB5468 is a bill in the Education Committee that targets families who withdraw their children from public school to be reported to DCF for a review. The bill then requires ongoing reporting requirements for homeschooled and students attending non-accredited centers including dozens of students at small Christian “schools”. These are some of the requirements . . .

• First, ALL PARENTS must get approval from the Department of Children and Families, State Department of Education and their local school board before withdrawing their child from public school (line 191). Simply receiving services, like counseling by DCF, will trigger a refusal to withdraw your child from public school (lines 185-186). See “Constitutional Issues” about suspicion-less government screening at bottom and here.
• A copy of a child’s private, FERPA protected, education records will be compiled and DCF shall “conduct a review” (lines 177 – 178). See discussion of FERPA in this blog post.
• Note: the education records may include whether their child pursued a secret social gender transition or whether their parent objected; any interactions with staff or complaints by other students/staff. The bill does not identify what parts of the educational record, if any, are transmitted and kept by DCF and DOE (Department of Education), under what conditions they would be maintained, reviewed, tracked or transferred and to whom.
• Any compiled record or parts thereof, shared with DCF and DOE, will include personal information that is not directed to be deleted under this bill. This is very concerning for families who may be removing their child to avoid social transitioning of their child’s gender by the school or to provide their children with a Christian Worldview. DCF has threatened families and actually removed a child from their Christian home with NO FINDING OF ABUSE because their parents would not affirm a gender transition, including surgery.
• Personal information in the education files may get mined and added to databases with no guarantee of privacy protection or that it won’t be sold or otherwise transferred to third parties including SERC (sec. 7).

Then families have ongoing onerous compliance requirements for attending a non-accredited Christian (or secular) private institution or homeschooling . .

Annual forms: Once withdrawn, these families must file a number of forms including an annual “continuation of equivalent instruction forms” (line 107, 117 of HB5468). Even if they participate in a non-accredited institution (lines 51-55).

DEMONSTRATIONS OF EQUIVALENT INSTRUCTION: At the end of every school year, families must “demonstrate” their child received “equivalent instruction” (line 219), even if they were enrolled in a non-accredited private institution. If they homeschool, or if their center has not received “accreditation by an accrediting agency approved by the Department of Education” (lines 51-55) a family must prove each year that their child(ren) received “equivalent instruction” to the local school board or SERC.

What is “equivalent instruction”? Sec. 2 of the bill outlines how families, if enrolled in a non-accredited private entity or homeschooling, will still need to show “equivalent instruction”. They may “submit a portfolio” that may include a “nationally normed standardized test” or submit to the Connecticut state-wide mastery examination. Families are responsible for the time and expense involved to administer these tests. How will non-accredited Christian education facilities accommodate some families that must leave for a week or more to undergo mandatory mastery testing?

YOUR PORTFOLIO REVIEWED BY SERC. Christian families who homeschool or send their children to a non-accredited institution may have their personal information, scores and/or portfolio reviewed by the State Education Resource Center (“SERC”). SERC’s specialty is DEI programs and teaching oppressor/victim narratives to school-aged children (line 241). Read more about it here. Your child’s beautiful and classical Christian curriculum may be data-mined and judged by practitioners of restorative practices and more . . .

Why wouldn’t a institution be accredited? Because it is very expensive, time consuming and cumbersome. Many schools by Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” or CT’s elite boarding schools are accredited, sometimes by multiple accrediting organizations. But dozens of facilities are not and there is nothing wrong with that. Nevertheless, parents who enroll their children, as permitted by CT law, will be treated unequally from other students and have to report to their local Board of Education each year and prove equivalent instruction.

Below is a list of institutions provided by the National Center for Education Statistics that may not be “accredited” according to research done by FIC staff. IF AN INSTITUTION IS NOT “ACCREDITED” OR OTHERWISE EXEMPT UNDER THE BILL, THEN THEIR STUDENTS MAY BE TREATED AS THOUGH THEY ARE HOMESCHOOLERS AND MAY NEED TO DEMONSTRATE “EDUCATIONAL EQUIVALENCY” ANNUALLY TO THE BOE OR SERC.

Share this with your local Christian (and secular) institution and ask them if future enrolled families would be affected by these draconian rules and submit testimony for the public hearing, and this is very important: ASK YOUR PRINCIPAL OR TRUSTEE TO REQUEST A MEETING WITH THE LEGISLATORS WHERE YOUR CENTER IS LOCATED AND DISCUSS THIS BILL. FIC is happy to accompany them -just reach out to our Director of Public Policy at ppdirector@ctfamily.org.

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES: The provision in Connecticut HB 5468 authorizing the routine sharing of a child’s personal information with the Connecticut Department of Children and Families so the agency can check whether a parent is already under supervision raises important constitutional and civil-liberty concerns. Courts have long recognized that government intrusion into the parent-child relationship implicates fundamental parental rights and family integrity, as recognized in Troxel v. Granville. In addition, child protection investigations have been treated by courts as governmental searches that implicate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, particularly when families are subjected to scrutiny without individualized suspicion. While protecting children is an unquestionably important goal, policies that require routine disclosure of family information to an investigatory agency—even when there is no allegation of abuse or neglect—risk treating ordinary families as subjects of government screening. The legislature should carefully consider whether this type of suspicionless data sharing is necessary, narrowly tailored, and consistent with the constitutional protections afforded to parents and families. A lawsuit related to this bill in front of the currently structured Supreme Court is likely to be viewed favorably by the majority which has taken strong positions recently in favor of parental rights.