State Representative Anne Dauphinais, the Ranking House Republican Member on the Committee on Children, issued the following statement:

“I am infuriated by Governor Lamont’s misguided wrongheaded attack on the homeschooling community following this evil case of neglect in Waterbury. For him to suggest that looking into homeschooling regulations would be a starting point for the General Assembly to attempt to prevent this in the future is very telling. This is about a failure of a state agency, plain and simple.

The Governor’s knee-jerk approach to single out homeschoolers is nothing more than weak attempt to get a politically motivated issue across the finish line. For years, legislative Democrats have been fixated on homeschoolers, and the Governor’s accusations will only motivate them to further focus in a direction that will do nothing to solve this problem.

The sensible approach is to let the criminal investigations into this heartbreaking twenty-year ordeal reveal the facts, which at this point show this tragedy had nothing to do with homeschooling and everything to do with catastrophic failure by a state agency responsible for the well-being with of children. Shifting the blame to homeschooling is a cowardly step in the wrong direction and is wholly unacceptable, and I’ll fight this attack every step he tries to take it.”