For years, starting to homeschool in Connecticut took one piece of paper: a notice to your local superintendent. No state testing, no portfolio turned in for review, no annual checkup. Public Act 26-37, signed by Governor Ned Lamont on May 26, 2026, changes that. The new rules phase in between now and the 2028-29 school year; the harshest early version of the bill did not survive, and most families have time before anything new is required of them. The changes are specific, dated, and narrower than the early headlines, which makes them straightforward to plan around.
What Connecticut required before HB 5468
Connecticut has been one of the lighter states for homeschoolers, and that baseline still describes anyone homeschooling today. You file a written notice of intent with your local superintendent, you keep a home instruction plan that describes the subjects you will teach, and you maintain a portfolio of your child's work at home. You assess progress yourself. The state does not require standardized testing, and it does not collect or review your portfolio. Set against neighboring New York, with its quarterly reports and annual assessments, or Pennsylvania, with its evaluator sign-offs, Connecticut has asked for little.
Connecticut law has long allowed children to receive equivalent instruction at home, and the state's guidance laid out a suggested procedure rather than a rigid statute: file a notice of intent, keep a plan and a portfolio, and meet with the district only if questions came up. Families were trusted to run their own programs, a relationship that HB 5468 revises.
That low-regulation setup is what families operate under today, and it has not gone away. The HomeschoolFox Connecticut state page outlines the current requirements, and a letter of intent is still the document that initiates the process. What HB 5468 does is add new obligations on top of that baseline, on a timeline, and aim one of them at a narrow set of families.
What HB 5468 does
HB 5468 passed the House 96 to 53 on April 23, 2026, and the Senate 22 to 14 minutes before midnight on May 4. Governor Lamont signed it on May 26, and it became Public Act 26-37. The law makes three changes that matter to homeschooling families, and each has its own start date.
First, beginning July 1, 2027, a family that withdraws a child from public school to homeschool must complete a district withdrawal step that triggers a check of state child-welfare records. The superintendent shares the household's information with the Department of Children and Families, and the check covers every adult in the home. If any household adult is on the state child abuse and neglect registry, or is under an open DCF investigation, the withdrawal to homeschool can be blocked, even when the investigation has not been substantiated. The information the district shares includes the names, ages, addresses, and gender of household members, and the statute provides no appeal of a block while a registry listing or investigation stays open. The provision targets a narrow case, a child being moved out of a school's view during a welfare inquiry, and it reaches only families making that move.
Second, beginning July 1, 2028, every family in the state, not only homeschoolers, must file an annual intent-to-educate form by October 1, identifying how each child is being educated: public school, a nonpublic school, or home instruction. The State Department of Education will develop the form. Because it covers public, private, and home students alike, the form reads less as a homeschool rule than as a statewide enrollment census; for a homeschooling family it comes down to one form a year confirming what you already do.
Third, the part that did not make it in. An earlier version of the bill would have required homeschooling parents to submit a portfolio or standardized test scores to a designated state entity every year. Legislators removed that before passage, so the final law adds no portfolio, testing, or evaluation submission. If you are withdrawing a child from public school, the new step is the records check, not a proof-of-learning report.
Who is affected, and who is not
The DCF check is narrower than the headlines suggest. It applies to families who withdraw a child from public school on or after July 1, 2027. Families who already homeschool and children who have never enrolled in public school are grandfathered, and the withdrawal check does not apply to them as long as they continue homeschooling. Whether you can homeschool your child in Connecticut comes down to one question under the new law: are you withdrawing from public school after July 2027, or not?
Three situations cover most families. If you already homeschool and your child has never attended public school, little changes until the annual form arrives in 2028; file it by October 1 and carry on with no DCF check, no portfolio request, and no evaluation attached. If you plan to pull a child out of public school after mid-2027, expect the district withdrawal step and a records check on every adult in your household before the withdrawal can proceed, which means an open investigation involving anyone in the home can stall it. If your household is clear, the step is a form and a records check rather than a barrier; if there is an open matter, it is worth resolving it or getting advice before you file, since the block is in effect while the investigation is pending. And if a district reads more into the law than it says, asking an already-homeschooling family for a DCF check or demanding a portfolio the statute does not require, that is the moment to slow down, get the request in writing, and measure it against the text. A district cannot add requirements that the General Assembly left out, and Public Act 26-37 left out portfolios, testing, and any checks on families who were already homeschooling. If a request runs past the statute, document it and reach out to HSLDA, which tracked this bill from committee through the governor's signature.
Why Connecticut, and why now
Connecticut did not act in isolation. Supporters tied the bill to high-profile cases in which a child was pulled from public school not long before a welfare concern surfaced, and the withdrawal check is built to close that gap. Earlier in 2026, Nebraska enacted a comparable measure, LB 937, which imposes a 14-day delay before a family under an active child-welfare investigation can move a child from public school to home instruction. You can see where Nebraska now stands on its state page. Two states moving the same direction in one year does not make a national rule. Over the same months New Hampshire moved the opposite way, advancing a bill to cut its notification and evaluation requirements, so 2026 pushed both directions at once; you can compare current rules across the country on the state pages and see New Hampshire's lighter requirements for the contrast. What the pattern means for your family depends on where you live and whether you are entering homeschooling from public school.
What to do now
None of this requires panic, and a few steps cover it.
Confirm your current notice is on file, and keep a copy. The notice of intent you filed with your superintendent is your record that you started by the book; if you cannot find it, file again and save the confirmation. If you are new to this and starting from scratch, how to start homeschooling walks through the notice and the instruction plan in order.
Put the two dates on your calendar. July 1, 2027 is when a withdrawal from public school triggers the DCF check, and October 1, 2028 is the first annual intent-to-educate form. A school year planner keeps both deadlines from sneaking up on you, alongside the lessons you are already scheduling.
Keep your records organized whether or not the law asks for them. Save every piece of district correspondence in writing, and keep your child's work where you can produce it. HomeschoolFox logs activities by subject and keeps your hours and record keeping export-ready, so if a district ever asks for more than the statute requires, you have the paper trail to answer with. An attendance log and a folder of dated work samples take a few minutes a day to maintain and cover most questions a district could raise, which carries more weight in a state that now keeps a record of who is learning at home. The law as signed is narrower than the early drafts that frightened people, and a family that files on time and documents its work has little to fear under it. Hold on to the three dates that matter: May 26, 2026, for the signature, July 1, 2027, for the withdrawal check, and October 1, 2028, for the first annual form, and you have most of what Connecticut now asks of you.
