Positive Article From Connecticut Post on Parental Rights Hearing Held on 2/19/08

Article Title: School policies decried in Hartford
By: KEN DIXON
Published in: Connecticut Post (newspaper)
Publication date: 2/20/08

This is a good article about the public hearing held in Hartford yesterday about parental rights, specifically that a parent should be able to disenroll their child from public school if they so desire.

This media report discusses two families who suffered at the hands of DCF and schools.

One family is from Trumbull and concerns the Preusch family. I have heard their testimony twice now, they also testified at the June 2007 hearing held before the new DCF commissioner was sworn in. This is perhaps the worst story I’ve ever heard. This story doesn’t tell the whole story but it is enough to realize the horror that some children and families go through. Can you imagine school staff telling the parents that instead of using a home bound program or homeschooling that the mother should sit in their family car in the school parking lot in the cold month of February while the mother oversees the completion of school work? I mean, who would even dream up such an arrangement?

The story of the Jackson family, from Milford, is also mentioned. The mother shared that her son was diagnosed with autism and in her testimony, the mother stated the school refused to comply with the recommendations given by autism experts about the special services her son needed, while in school. She said after the school refused also, to grant a homebound program she removed him to homeschool him using private tutors and specialists so she could give the program recommended by the autism experts. Instead of accepting the disenrollment of the parents the child was deemed truant by the school staff. This report states the family is in litigation with the school system.

My heart goes out to both of these families and to all families who have had problems disenrolling their children from public school!

For more of my blog posts on this subject click on my label “Connecticut DCF Investigating Homeschoolers Issues”.

Technorati Tags: parental rights, Connecticut Senate Bill 162, withdrawal from school, problems with public school, homeschooling regulation, autism.