Connecticut requires no notice of intent, no filing, no curriculum approval and no contact with any official before a family begins homeschooling. Every other page in this series explains a deadline. This one explains why the absence of a deadline is the thing to be careful with.
The whole legal basis is one clause of the attendance statute. A parent must send the child to public school unless the parent:
is able to show that the child is elsewhere receiving equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools
Connecticut General Statutes § 10-184
No form is named. No office is named. No date is named. The Connecticut General Assembly’s own research office puts it flatly: a parent choosing another route is not required to take the initiative to show anyone anything before starting. The famous C-14 notice of intent, the form districts sometimes hand out as though it were mandatory, is a State Board of Education suggested procedure from 1990. It is not law, and a family cannot be compelled to file it.
So where is the catch?
In the roll. Your child’s school keeps an enrollment roll, and nothing about § 10-184 takes a name off it. A child who simply stops showing up is, on paper, not a homeschooler but an enrolled student who is absent, and enrolled students who are absent are what truancy processes exist to chase. Families who drifted out of a Connecticut school without a formal exit have found the conversation restarting weeks later with an attendance officer, in the worst cases as an educational-neglect referral, over a child who was being schooled at the kitchen table the whole time.
In Arkansas the danger is filing late. In Connecticut the danger is leaving messily. The one document that matters here is the one no statute mentions:
The withdrawal letter is the whole ceremony
One short letter to the school, stating that your child is withdrawn as of a named date to receive equivalent instruction elsewhere under § 10-184, delivered in a way you can prove. It closes the roll cleanly, it dates the change, and it is the piece of paper you produce if anyone ever asks when public school ended and home education began.
The C-14, plainly
Because your district may mention it, here is what it is and is not:
- It is a suggested procedure
Adopted by the State Board of Education as guidance. The state education department treats following it as satisfying the equivalent-instruction requirement, which is its practical appeal. - It is not a statute
The General Assembly’s research office and every serious treatment of the subject agree: it cannot be required, and filing it is the family’s choice. - Some families file it
Usually for the paper trail: a stamped copy is easy evidence that the district was told. - Some families decline it
Usually on principle, or because the withdrawal letter already dates the change of enrollment. Declining is lawful. - This page takes no side
Both are Connecticut practice. What it does say: whichever you choose, the withdrawal letter itself is not optional if your child is currently enrolled.
The legislature’s own summary of all of this is short and readable at the OLR report on home schooling in Connecticut, and the text and history of the guidelines sit on the C-14 guidelines page.
Where Connecticut sits in the series
Four states, and the paperwork points in a different direction in each.
| State | What the law demands | The paper that actually matters |
|---|---|---|
| Arkansas | Notice by August 15, or five school days before leaving | The dated notice of intent |
| Colorado | Notice fourteen days before the program begins | The notice, to a district you choose |
| Mississippi | A certificate by September 15, to a county officer | The certificate of enrollment |
| Connecticut | No filing at all | The withdrawal letter, which no statute mentions |
Connecticut is the only row where the state’s demand is empty and the practical requirement is not. A guide written for a notice state tells a Connecticut family to file something they do not owe; a guide that says “Connecticut requires nothing” and stops sends them out the door with the roll still open behind them.
Making the exit clean, and the next enrollment ready?
Fifteen minutes on the phone covers the withdrawal letter, what the transcript request should say, and what equivalent instruction will look like on paper for your household. No records required to have the conversation, and deciding against it costs nothing.
Doing it in order
Pick the last day and the first day
The last day of attendance and the day home education begins, ideally adjacent. Both dates go in the letter, and the gap between them is where a roll stays open by accident.
Send the withdrawal letter so receipt can be shown
Email to the principal and the registrar together works, because the reply is your proof. Hand delivery with a date-stamped copy works. A conversation in the car line does not.
Ask for the records in the same letter
Full transcript, immunization records, and course descriptions for anything half finished. Records move most easily while the student is still on the roll, which is precisely today.
Decide about the C-14 with your eyes open
It is voluntary. Filing it buys a stamped paper trail; declining it is lawful and common. Either way the withdrawal letter has already done the load-bearing work.
Keep what shows equivalent instruction
Section 10-184 says able to show, so keep the enrollment confirmation, the curriculum outline, the work samples. Nobody is owed them on a schedule; you simply want them findable if a question ever comes.
The withdrawal letter, ready to send
Short is correct. This goes to the school your child attends now, addressed to the principal and copied to the registrar.
Dear Principal [name],
This letter is formal notice that our child, [student full name], date of birth [DOB], currently in grade [grade], is withdrawn from [school] effective [last day of attendance]. Beginning [start date], [he/she/they] will receive equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public schools, as provided for by Connecticut General Statutes § 10-184.
Please update your enrollment records accordingly and confirm receipt of this letter by reply. Please also send a complete transcript, immunization records, and course descriptions for any course in progress to [address / email].
Thank you for your help.
[Your name]
[Address]
[Telephone]
What we can and cannot tell you
High School of America is an accredited private school based in Florida, not a Connecticut one. Whether any particular arrangement is equivalent instruction under § 10-184 is a question about your household that we are not the right people to answer, and this page has not answered it. What it has done is separate the thing the law requires, which is nothing, from the thing a clean exit requires, which is one provable letter, and pointed you at the state’s own text for the rest.
If you want a person to talk it through with, that is what the counselor call is for, and it is not a sales appointment. Bring whatever records you have, or none.
The wider picture sits on the requirements state by state, and if you are early enough to still be deciding, the three-route comparison weighs this against staying exactly where you are.