It started 12 years ago when Emily Angiletta, Stephanie Timek and Emily Silluzio were first time teachers at the Meriden, Connecticut school, staying late to plan lessons — long after the custodians shuttered the building. 

The teachers were hired under the leadership of a new principal with a new vision of what student success would look like in a low-income school. The three educators were in their 20s, fresh out of college and trying to figure out what it meant to be effective in the classroom.

More than a decade later, their friendship is like a sisterhood or a sports team: They call each other only by their last names and can practically finish each other’s sentences with a smirk and a head nod that says “yeah, that’s what I was going to say.” 

Together, they’ve experienced getting married, losing a parent and having children. They have  also lived through the highs and lows of the classroom – some years “soaring through expectations” and others questioning if their teaching had worsened. 

“We were all learning together, struggling together, learning from our mistakes, growing together,” Silluzio said, “and I think that’s a huge part of what led to our unity. We were in the same boat.”

The Barry teachers’ close relationships show not only what a culture shift in one school has done for staff, but also students. The friendship and strong working collaboration are the results of a bold plan set in motion by their former principal Dan Crispino, who helped transform the school from 5% proficiency to a in 2019. 

Now, Crispino has been tasked with scaling Barry’s academic success across the district. 

The Meriden school district, in many ways, is similar to Angilleta, Timek and Silluzio – learning, struggling and growing together. 

An almost decade-long overhaul of the district has been a systematic transformation – rooted in consistency across classrooms and campuses, accountability, hands-on oversight, relationship and trust.

It’s about finding ways to put their students “in a position to do things that people don’t believe are possible,” said Crispino, now the district’s director of school leadership. “Their backgrounds – all these things – are tough and you can’t control everything. But, what you can control is when they’re ours and that we’re giving them every single freaking thing possible to help them be successful and to get ahead of whatever challenges.”

While there’s often an expectation that students in urban districts won’t perform well because of , which affect school funding levels and supporting high student needs, Meriden is Connecticut’s and is beating the odds in how successful it’s been at teaching kids to read.

Despite being made up of nearly – more than three quarters of whom are from low-income families –  kids in seven of the district’s eight elementary schools are reading at higher levels than expected, according to a data project focused on Bright Spot schools launched by ����Ӱ��.

The data analysis highlighted schools that were among the top 5% of their state in outscoring their expected reading proficiency based on the percentage of children who qualified for free or reduced priced lunch. 

Connecticut was home to 25 exceptional schools. And of the state’s top five Bright Spot schools – three were in Meriden, including its highest need campus, Pulaski Elementary School, which has a poverty rate of 87.7% and expected just 16.4% of students reading on grade level but instead had nearly 54%.

In the last seven years, the school system has reworked its master schedule and implemented a rigorously supervised accountability model from district and school leaders who are in classrooms daily. Staff across the district have meticulously tracked student progress and have improved collaboration to make data more accessible among one another. 

The district has also incorporated instructional coaches, who are assigned by grade and travel between campuses. Their role, beyond meeting with educators several times a week, is bearing the weight of lesson planning every unit by outlining curriculum and other resources. 

The initiatives are part of an underlying mission: Alignment. 

No matter the school building or the classroom, all third grade classes across the district are learning the same material on the same schedule – even if it looks a little different teacher by teacher. They’re meeting with the same coaches and district leadership. 

System alignment through relationship building

Whether it’s children who have lost a parent, are experiencing homelessness, learning English or have a disability, Meriden staff have successfully worked with many such students — including Enzo, a third grade student at Pulaski Elementary School.

He doesn’t know what he wants to be once he gets older, but he knows he enjoys math and science. Enzo knows all about the Fibonacci Sequence, he said, explaining how “one plus one is two, and two plus one is three, and three plus two is five, and five plus three is eight,” going all the way up to 13 plus eight.

He admitted he thought reading was boring, but he couldn’t sit still when he talked about a book he’s reading at home.

“It’s called ‘What Cats Want,’” said Enzo, 8. “I’m on page 102.”

He’s more than halfway through the book and he likes to read “two or four” pages before he goes to sleep. His favorite tidbit of information from the book is to be careful when you let your cat outside.

“Number one, they can get run over. Number two, they can get lost. And number three, a stranger cat can attack them,” Enzo said, holding up three green marker stained fingers. But, “I remember [everything] from page one.”

Earlier this school year, Enzo lost his father. But through services at his school, including an individualized schedule that allows him to work for 30 minutes, then take a two minute break, he’s been able to stay on track in the classroom.

But before a student like Enzo can be successful, the needs of educators must be met.

Before taking on his central office job in 2020, Crispino spent more than 20 years as a first grade teacher and as a principal at Barry for a handful of years. When he began working as a district administrator, and was asked to mirror his success at Barry across campuses, union relationships were among his top priorities.

“I would never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do or have done myself,” Crispino said. “You don’t want surprises. They’re your human resource. They’re delivering what you’re trying to put forth. If you don’t have their support, then it’s never gonna work.”

Time and expectations were the biggest concerns from educators, both in Meriden and across the country, with surveys showing staff often feel like they’re in a school day.

Step one, in Meriden, was overhauling its master schedule, which originally “was not, physically, mathematically, possible,” Crispino said. Teachers were being asked to start reading at 12:30, the same time recess was supposed to end, so everyone’s transitional time looked different and there was no uniformity when students were actually supposed to be back in the classroom and at work. 

“That had to go away,” Crispino said. 

Though it seemed simple, just taking the first step in building in five minute transitions made the schedule “viable, conducive and real,” Crispino said, which helped align schools and teachers on expectations. They also built in a reteach day at the end of every unit for concepts that had students struggling.

Next was making oversight a norm. 

Crispino and his building principals spend most of their time in classrooms, at least four times a day. It began as a practice that at first “wasn’t pretty,” Crispino said, with many complaints from union leaders who said administrators spent too much time in the classroom, but has since shifted to educators stopping them when they walk by to see if they want to check their recent data collection.

“We’re not there to get you, there’s a difference,” Crispino said. “For support and accountability, we’re going to be there.”

Coaches that changed, and streamlined, the game

With administrators who better understand what’s going on in the classroom, it means resources can be allocated better. In Meriden, Crispino has spearheaded bringing in instructional coaches who are assigned by grade levels and rotate among campuses.

“When I was a first year teacher, … I had to go home and write all my little lessons. I had no one to help me. I was on my own. Your admin would come in doing observations and you’d either have it or you don’t,” Crispino said, “and that’s different now.”

Veronica Germe recalled being a teacher in the state capital’s public school system. In Hartford, a district home to more than 15,000 students, she remembered how she only saw her principal in her kindergarten classroom once during the entire school year and how “visibility is the biggest difference” between the two districts.

Germe, now a K-3 grade English language arts and math coach in Meriden, is part of a team of about a dozen other elementary instructional coaches who are responsible for supporting both new and veteran teachers by managing lesson planning and acting as a resource for implementation.

“We’ve almost become a catch all in the district for all the questions K-5,” she said. 

In many districts, instructional coaches may be brushed off by educators, but in Meriden, the group has worked hard to develop a relationship where they’re “almost like a teammate,” Germe said. “We’re not evaluating them. We’re there in it with them. We’re helping and we want to get to know the students too. … Their scores are our scores.”

The coaches organize curriculum into bite-sized emails that are delivered before a unit. The emails give an overview of the lessons for that unit, with breakdowns of assessments, test questions to pay attention to, review slides, videos and pacing guides. The emails also explicitly outline state standards, which allows teachers to better target their instruction.

They meet with teachers every week for at least one planning session for upcoming lessons, and observe and offer advice during classroom time. The group of coaches are also able to provide pacing calendars and resources to help teachers differentiate instruction based on class needs.

Last year, Connecticut implemented a that limited the curricula elementary schools could use to teach reading. When the district fully shifted its K-3 curriculum, it was painless – “phenomenal”even – Crispino said, thanks to a rollout supported by union leaders and the instructional coaches that gave educators “everything they would need.”

Despite budget constraints, the district has committed to leaving their elementary instructional coaches untouched, and funded by Title I, a federal grant for schools with high-concentrations of low-income students.

Investing in these coaches for early grades gives all teachers and children “equal footing,” Crispino said, where everyone gets the same emails and meetings, then gets to decide what they’re doing with the resources. 

In mid-March, if you walked into Meriden’s Pulaski, Nathan Hale, or Thomas Hooker elementary schools during its rotational reading blocks, you would’ve seen almost the same snapshot in the three campuses.

While teachers have autonomy on the use of laptops, printed worksheets or using dry erase boards, the 60-minute period across a dozen classrooms generally looked the same.

During the reading rotation block, a small group of students, usually six or less, would be sitting in one corner of the room working on answering questions about a text with their teacher. In another corner, you’d see a paraeducator, tutor or reading coach with another small group.

Scattered across the classroom, students would be working alone with a loose leaf piece of paper, called “evidence paper” and taking notes and analyzing stories about komodragons, the galaxy or Harriet Tubman. Pairs also worked on poster boards or white boards figuring out vocabulary, grammar, main ideas or comparing and contrasting two texts.

After 20 minutes, it was time to rotate, and every student knew what to do without being asked twice.

The scenes were a direct mirror of how everyone’s “speaking the same language,” as Crispino would say, in every elementary building across the district. 

“The coaching, the admin, the feedback, the curriculum that’s easily accessible, these emails, … eliminated a lot of excuses, and when we did that, we created this high standard of excellence,” Crispino said. The alignment “built independence. It built accountability. It built engagement. It built a vibrant learning environment.”

Innovation and scalability

Last year, Angilleta, Timek and Silluzio came into a meeting with administrators rehearsed and prepared to propose a departmentalized approach to third grade, where every student would rotate among the three educators for different subjects, similar to a middle and high school model. 

The presentation wasn’t even needed, Crispino and the school’s principal Kimberly Goldbach said, laughing. It was an automatic yes.

“Part of me was like ‘You’d be an idiot to change what’s working,’ but then I said, ‘You’d be an idiot to not be innovative and creative enough to know when there’s a time to think outside the box,’” Crispino said. 

It’s paying off. Their third grade class “had the highest scores they ever had,” Crispino said. “I think our scores are going to get even better because we’re being creative and innovative at the elementary level with departmentalizing.”

Beyond the academic piece, Timek also said she’s hopeful the approach will give children, particularly those with high-needs, more resources.

“It gives these kids another chance to have a teacher that they’re not stuck with all day long. You might have a closer relationship with one kid versus the other, but the other kid can go to another class and be closer with that teacher,” she said. “They have more adults in their corner that they trust and they know that’s providing them a good education and that they can go to if they have a problem.”

The district is working to add nearly two dozen more educators into the departmentalized approach.

When asked about the scalability of Meriden’s success in other schools across the state and country, Crispino, the district superintendent Mark Benigni and various principals said it was possible, but with a few caveats.

“Can districts have a schedule like we do? Yes, but you have to make sure you’re consistent with it. Can you have instructional coaches do the work we’re doing? Yes. Should admin be in rooms? Yes. Should the central office support and understand the work happening in the trenches? Yes,” Crispino said. “You have to push [your staff and kids] to an uncomfortable place, … to challenge each other, have professional dialog and have high expectations, but then give them the resources to be successful.”

When Stamford High School students arrive at their personal finance class, they’re greeted by a stock ticker and a TV monitor showing the day’s business and financial news.

Printed below, on the yellow wall, is a collage of words like “independence,” “generational wealth” and “dream big.” “Your journey to financial freedom starts here,” another wall reads.

This is the school’s recently renovated financial literacy lab. As schools across Connecticut work to meet a new graduation requirement, Stamford — with help from the city’s well-established finance sector — is staying a few steps ahead.

The district already offered personal finance as an elective before the statewide requirement went into effect. Now, it’s upping its game, in part with the help of a $150,000 grant from Stamford-based financial services company Synchrony.

It’s part of $3 million in grants Synchrony has rolled out nationwide under its “Empowering Financial Futures” initiative over the last two years. And it comes as interest in K-12 financial literacy grows around the U.S. 

“Kids need to start to get focused on this, and they need to understand what true financial literacy is,” Sue Bishop, Synchrony’s chief corporate affairs officer, said at the lab’s grand opening last month. 

The company’s grant to Stamford’s public schools went toward purchasing a live stock ticker and two TV monitors, along with dozens of finance-related games, books and activities. The materials will support a now-mandatory personal finance class, which includes topics ranging from household budgeting to investment and loan planning. 

Connecticut Financial Scholars, part of a national organization seeking to bring financial literacy into K-12 education, helped Stamford design the course. Director of Program Support Elisa Oliver said it’s exciting to witness students picking up new skills.

“Seeing kids actually break down a loan amortization calculator,” Oliver marveled. “We’re seeing students having these conversations when they’re 15, 16 years old, which is awesome.”

Toward increasing economic mobility

Connecticut’s financial literacy requirement , with the state legislature voting overwhelmingly in favor. The mandate also received support from Gov. Ned Lamont and state Treasurer Erick Russell. 

“Personal financial management is one of the most important instructional tools that we can give young people to achieve economic independence and stability throughout their lives,” Lamont when the bill was signed into law. “Requiring it to graduate from high school is simply common sense.”

Under the requirement, starting in the fall of 2023, public high school students in the state had to take a half-credit personal finance course to graduate, starting with the class of 2027. The state is using curriculum developed by , a national organization that has developed the most-used personal finance curriculum in the country. 

In an interview with the Connecticut Mirror, Russell said the financial literacy requirement fits into broader wealth-building and financial security efforts supported by the state. He pointed to programs like , and the — the state’s 529 college savings program — as additional examples.

“Having that strong educational foundation and understanding of finances is also key,  so that people can take advantage of some of those opportunities,” he said. “We want to make sure, as we look at this investment from Synchrony and others like it, as we look at the financial education course requirement, that we’re setting people up for long term success in our state.”

In requiring personal finance coursework, Connecticut joined a growing national trend. According to , 39 states currently require students to take a personal finance course before high school graduation.

“As more states adopt these requirements, ensuring educators have the training, tools, and ongoing support to teach personal finance effectively is becoming increasingly important,” Steve Bumbaugh, the council’s CEO, said in a on Monday.

That sentiment is echoed by Connecticut Financial Scholars. In the years since the organization set up shop in the state, it has worked to promote financial literacy education, with a focus on Connecticut’s large cities and higher-need school districts.

The goal is to promote equity in access to financial knowledge in the state, said organization executive director Betsy McNeil.

“Without adequate financial education, students are more likely to struggle with debt or financial stress that really can impact them on a daily basis and can limit their economic mobility,” she said. “We’re looking to equip the students with the really essential financial skills, knowledge, awareness and confidence.”

Bishop, of Synchrony, said the need to teach financial literacy has grown as more and more young people, especially college students, get wrapped up in the world of sports gambling and prediction markets.

“You can get that same high by investing in the stock market or saving in a mutual fund — in a much safer and much more beneficial way,” Bishop said.

Connecticut Financial Scholars is active in a number of schools, using a four-part strategy of curriculum, teacher support, parent engagement and community involvement to further spread its message. 

After the Connecticut personal finance requirement was established, the organization on how to implement financial education curricula in their classrooms.

Efforts like the Stamford High School lab also help, McNeil said, by providing ways for community members and local institutions to support student learning. In the coming months she said she hopes more communities will benefit from this kind of investment.

“We continue to explore and listen for those opportunities in the other communities that we’re in as well,” she said, noting that Stamford is one of the state’s “alliance districts,” a group of under-resourced school districts in Connecticut. 

“This is needed in Stamford, and we recognize and understand it is needed in other communities across the state as well,” McNeil added.

Stamford ahead of the curve

Synchrony’s Bishop said she’s glad the personal finance course also devotes time to more mundane topics, such as building a good credit score. “You honestly cannot live in this country without credit,” she said.

When she graduated high school, Bishop said the extent of her financial literacy was knowing how to balance a checkbook. That didn’t change until her first job, which happened to be at a mutual fund company.

“I was like, ‘I’m not good at math. I’m a communications person. What am I doing?’” Bishop said. “I still say it was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I learned about investing.”

Courses like Stamford’s aim to put that kind of knowledge in the classroom where, in theory, every student will be exposed to it. Bishop said that also has an upside for banks themselves.

“We never want to loan money to someone who can’t pay us back,” she said. “We have a vested interest in developing young people to be responsible adults.”

Stamford High School personal finance teacher Doug Taylor said for the final assessment of the class, students face a “life scenario” in which they manage a household budget while handling unexpected problems like a car breaking down.

“In the end of that cycle, they must have had the budget balanced,” Taylor said.

Stamford senior Nick Sutin said he’s landed a job with a nearby finance company, and he said he gives some credit to the finance classes he’s taken. He said that expertise helped him make a strong impression.

“You already have the background to answer all these types of questions,” Sutin said.

Stamford students who want to study finance topics beyond the state requirement have plenty of opportunities. The high school boasts 12 business teachers, most of whom have business or financial work experience. Their classes include entrepreneurship, business communications and investing. Some students even build stock portfolios and take part in competitions with other high schools.

“This is not vocational. This is finance. This is investments. This is starting a business,” said Dorothea Mackey, the head of Stamford High School’s Career and Technical Education department.

Mackey, who previously worked as an analyst at Chrysler Capital, played a leading role in securing Synchrony’s support for the new financial literacy lab.

“This is just pushing this envelope a little bit forward to make sure that the business education is solidified,” she said.

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For Emily Knox and her wife, Forever Young Child Care Learning Center in Manchester was a dependable cornerstone of their daily routine for more than two years. But on March 5, her wife arrived to pick up their son and found the center’s staff in tears. It would be, they abruptly learned, the center’s final day, as staff members rushed about, packing up children’s art projects and medical paperwork to give to parents.

“It was surreal, honestly,” Knox said. She was aware of the pressures that the early childhood education industry faced in Connecticut, from a lack of available spots to an underpaid workforce, but watching her son’s own facility suddenly shutter, seemingly without warning, was “an eye-opening experience.” 

The closure of Forever Young hits as vanishing federal aid and runaway Medicaid costs threaten an ambitious new initiative to expand affordable child care.

The Early Childhood Education Endowment, as a vehicle to create thousands of new affordable child care program slots by the early 2030s, is projected to receive $30 million from the budget surplus after Connecticut’s fiscal year ends June 30 — less than a tenth of what lawmakers pledged last June.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration said Monday it’s unclear whether the fiscal bleeding has stopped.

“It is too early to speculate,” Lamont’s budget spokesman, Chris Collibee, said Monday, adding that while global economic instability is a concern, the administration remains committed to supporting affordable child care.

“Gov. Lamont has taken a leading role both locally and nationally to increase investment in early childhood education,” Collibee said. “He’s fully dedicated to making sure that we deliver on that vision and promise.”

“I think we are all committed to the vision that we’ve set forth, and we stand ready to take the action that we need to take based upon the funding that is available to us,” added Elena Trueworthy, commissioner of Office of Early Childhood Education.

The state already opened 1,000 Early Start program slots in January and has earmarked nearly  from the endowment for various expenditures, including grants for local school districts to expand their preschools, increasing the rate that providers are paid and a planned study that will assess the need for a health insurance subsidy for employees.

Eva Bermúdez Zimmerman, executive director of Child Care For CT, said that the Manchester closure reflects broader pressures eroding the existing care infrastructure.

“The system is interconnected,” and the network’s financial needs are greater than even the hoped-for deposit in the hundreds of millions, she said. “I really do hope that elected leaders understand that you can’t build up a system and ignore the pressure that’s gotten us to here.” 

CT still forecasting big surpluses – but not for child care

Lamont responded to the child care crisis with a big step 13 months ago, proposing that Connecticut dedicate a portion of the massive budget surplus it generates annually toward early childhood education.

But much of that surplus is already accounted for. Using a series of aggressive caps set in 2017, Connecticut has since left an average of $1.9 billion unspent each year, which represents 8% to 9% of the General Fund.

About three-quarters of that, roughly $1.4 billion, involves certain income and business tax receipts lawmakers cannot spend easily. These protected dollars are immediately stripped from the budget and used chiefly to whittle down Connecticut’s pension debt, a that ranks among the largest, per capita, in the nation.

The remaining tax and fee receipts, federal grants and other revenues flow into the budget, where additional spending controls typically force hundreds of millions in additional savings each year.

And — with an initial investment of $300 million — they and Lamont stipulated much of this second-tier savings would be dedicated to the child care initiative each year.

that would translate into a $309 million deposit in the summer of 2026 and almost $560 million 12 months after that.

Medicaid spending plagues CT finances for 3^rd year in a row

But while the program that saves funds to reduce pension debt continues to save big dollars, the second-tier savings effort is in jeopardy. And some of the problems that shrank this year’s estimated payment to the child care program could get much worse.

One big obstacle is Medicaid, a federal health care program run in partnership with states. Medicaid demand has remained greater than pre-pandemic levels, even though enhanced federal aid ordered in response to COVID expired in 2023.

the state Department of Social Services will overspend its $3.7 billion Medicaid line item by $85 million this fiscal year. The department overspent on Medicaid by  last year and almost  two fiscal years ago.

Congress last July ordered cuts to Medicaid and other programs worth more than $1 trillion by 2034 to help finance big federal tax cuts aimed chiefly at high-earning households.

The Lamont administration hasn’t projected yet what Connecticut could lose next fiscal year. But , a New Haven-based policy group, estimated in January that federal Medicaid grants and aid sent directly to households — such as health care-related tax credits — would be down about $579 million in the next state budget cycle.

That federal tax relief also has softened state tax revenues.

Connecticut links its corporate tax system to the federal code, as do several other states. So, when Congress extended federal corporate tax breaks set to expire, Connecticut lost hundreds of millions in expected revenues from big business.

CT has options to bolster child care services

But this doesn’t mean Connecticut lacks options to bolster funding for child care.

Analysts estimate the state program that forces lawmakers to save a portion of income and business tax receipts will have a banner year, grabbing to pay down pension debt.

Lamont already has proposed scaling back these savings rules — albeit just once — to return $500 million to 2.2 million Connecticut residents in the form of a $200-per-person state tax rebate.

The checks would be sent in late October, just days before the gubernatorial election, and some Republicans have charged the Democratic governor’s proposal is merely a political stunt to help him win reelection to a third term.

But many of Lamont’s fellow Democrats in the House and Senate majorities have said those savings rules should be rolled back somewhat to permit greater investments year after year in child care and other core services, including health care, education and municipal aid.

Legislators from both parties have advocated big ongoing tax cuts this year, which also would necessitate saving less to reduce the state’s pension debt.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, a proponent of the Early Childhood Education Endowment, has said a modest amount of tax relief could be considered, but said nothing should be allowed to jeopardize a program that could benefit thousands of children from low- and middle-income households.

“It’s a reminder we’re going to have to prioritize at some point,” he said. “I personally think that, before we start implementing new tax changes to the tax code, we ought to be very mindful of how important this child care endowment could be in the long term.”

But House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, who also supports greater state investment in affordable child care, said Lamont and the General Assembly aren’t doing enough to trim spending in other areas.

Republican lawmakers have said Connecticut should look to tighten raises for state workers, cut Medicaid programs for undocumented residents and seek greater efficiencies at public colleges and universities.

“Democrats were more interested [last year] in a press release than creating a sustainable early childhood program,” Candelora said.

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“Out with the flu for a week.”

“He’s moving to Texas.” 

“When we said we would show up at her house, she started coming.”

 “I don’t know where to go with him. When all his teachers are here, he’s OK, but he takes advantage of subs.”

Assistant Principal Evan Byron runs the meeting; grade-level counselors go through every student in danger of being chronically absent, missing 10% of the school year. On this day, Jan. 13, near the halfway mark of the school year, the team ran through 25 seventh-grade students in about 10 minutes. 

While the pace is rapid, it can be detailed, as they observed one student’s absenteeism problem stemmed from the days she had French class. Since the class isn’t required, they hope to resolve this issue by moving her to another subject. 

Their data is up-to-the-minute: They know whether all the students notified yesterday are in the building today; they know how parents are likely to react to repeated warnings; and they can even take an educated guess that the upcoming travel basketball season might improve one student’s attendance. 

The school follows a strict regimen about absences: an email home if a student misses two days in a row, a letter home once a student misses six days, another letter at 12 days, and an email home each day a student is absent if they have missed more than 10 days. School officials can also schedule home visits, where they can show parents a student’s academic and attendance records while extolling the wide variety of classes and extra curriculars that may entice a student into attending. 

“It’s effective,” Byron said. “A lot of students magically show up” after these correspondences. For any student who reaches the level of chronically absent –18 absences out of 180 school days – the school sends a referral to the state Department of Children and Families. 

“That’s an absolute last resort,” said principal Damon Lewis. 

Chronic absenteeism has spiked in schools nationwide since 2020’s pandemic. Before then, the number of students who missed at least 10% of school was about three of every 20 students, or 15%, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. Data from 39 states and Washington, D.C., showed that number nearly doubled to 28.6% at its height, he said, although it has dropped back slightly under 23% in the last year. Malkus tracks school attendance nationwide at the website.

“The permission structure of when it’s OK to miss school loosened up” after schools were closed for the COVID-19 virus, Malkus said. If the new normal of students chronically absent is above 20%, “that’s not good.” 

At Ponus, a middle school in a small city north of New York City, Lewis and his team were not immune to this trend. The 637-student school’s chronically absent rate spiked to 31% after the pandemic; Lewis and his administrators were able to slice that number to under 10% in just one year. 

A lot of what Ponus officials do is the hard work of paying close attention to students and their patterns. Lewis mentions attendance in every weekly email he sends to all parents; homeroom teachers keep close tabs on their students; and the biweekly attendance meetings aim to make sure no student slips between the cracks. 

During the January meeting, seventh grade counselor Kaitlin Douglas points out a student who nearly did just that. “She wasn’t missing consecutive days, so she was flying under our radar,” Douglas said, noting that the student popped up on her list because of the total days missed. 

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck initiative,” Principal Lewis said. “We drew a line in the sand and said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore.’ ”

While all this effort is put into attendance, Lewis and his team have revamped the school to make children want to attend. “We try to entice the student back to school” through high-interest courses such as robotics, 3D printing, music technology, he said. The school has also beefed up its afterschool clubs; it currently offers 17 options ranging from weightlifting and rock band to crochet and jewelry making. 

Norwalk has become a choice district, meaning any student inside the city’s 23 square miles can attend any of the city’s five middle schools. (The Concord Magnet school is a K-8 school on the same campus as Ponus Ridge.) For the first time, the school has a waiting list this year, Lewis said proudly. 

Francesco and Brayden Christopher – who enjoy pointing out that they are in grades 6-7, hand motion included – attend the school from across town because their parents like the teachers and the people. “My dad texts with [principal Lewis] every day,” Brayden said. 

Eighth grader Olivia Hempstead agreed that her family was impressed with the frequent communication when her older brother attended the school. She said she has a “true relationship” with principal Lewis and that he cares about students without trying to be their friend. “I’ve never heard him yell,” she added. 

Lewis, who has been principal at Ponus Ridge for 11 years, works to include the entire community in the school. He features Walk-Through Wednesdays where anyone can visit the school once a month, a Hispanic parent group and an in-school food pantry for families. When ICE raids began in the city, he brought immigration attorneys to the school for a night-time event so parents could learn their rights. “I want to meet people where they are, and they are hungry for resources,” he said. 

Three of every four Ponus Ridge students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and 90% are students of color. 

Lewis was named the Middle Level National Principal of the Year by the this year. Lewis “demonstrates how visionary leadership can transform school communities,” said association CEO Ronn Nozoe. 

The attendance increase has had other benefits for Ponus Ridge students. Even though the school’s overall accountability index from the state is a mediocre 61.9 on a scale to 100, Lewis said his students’ Preliminary SAT scores have outpaced the district, the state and the nation. The school also outperforms its district and the state for ninth grade students on track to graduation. This measure looks at former Ponus Ridge students after their first year of high school; 91.5% are on track to graduate within four years, slightly ahead of the city’s 89.3%. 

But the area Ponus Ridge really stands out in is attendance. Of the city’s 21 schools, Ponus has by far the lowest rate of students chronically absent, with 9.1% in 2024-25 compared to Norwalk’s overall 17.2% rate. AEI’s Malkus points out that the increase in student absences has consequences even for students who aren’t chronically absentAchievement on standardized tests is pretty linear, he said, meaning the more days students miss, the worse they tend to achieve. “The long-term challenge is to change people’s behavior,” he added. 

Lewis and other administrators understand how difficult that can be. Sometimes parents complain about all the school’s correspondence, but the school remains committed to following its plan. “We’re not afraid to put our heads in the lion’s mouth,” Lewis said about dealing with criticism. 

“When people say to me, ‘Stop sending emails,’ I say, ‘Send your son to school and I will,’ ” Lewis said. “I try to tell them, this is bigger than Ponus. This is a life lesson.”

But not all parents resist the emails, the principal added. In one recent case, a father had to leave home for work before his child left for school. When he saw an email mid-morning that his son wasn’t at school, the father called the school and said he was leaving work to go home. “He’ll be there within the hour,” he told Lewis. 

When Rachel Marshall was growing up in Virginia, her parents kept a magnet on the refrigerator from a national homeschooling advocacy group, with a phone number to call if local school officials tried to interfere with their decision to educate their children at home.

“You tell [the organization] the state’s after you, and they will come in with their lawyers and defend your right to homeschool and do what you want with your kids,” said Marshall, now a licensed counselor in Utah. “The state should be hands-off, that was their goal.”

Marshall wishes the state had been more hands-on. When she was a child, she said, her education and her safety were at the mercy of her parents, who struggled with mental illness and addiction.

“It was an ugly situation,” Marshall told Stateline. “But I think had there been some sort of regulation, some expectations from the state, I would not have been exposed to that as much.”

As homeschool enrollment has risen in recent years, so have concerns about oversight.

Recent high-profile child abuse deaths in several states have led to renewed calls from lawmakers for stronger regulations. They warn that some abusers claim they are homeschooling their kids when they pull them out of school, but really want to hide their crimes from teachers and other so-called mandatory reporters in public schools. Mandatory reporters are legally obligated to speak up about abuse if they suspect it.

But the push has inflamed a broader debate over parental rights and galvanized hundreds of homeschool groups to rally at statehouses around the country.

In every state, parents or guardians can withdraw their children from public or private school to be homeschooled. States allow this even if the caregiver has been the subject of , according to the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an advocacy group. Nearly every state allows parents to withdraw children in the middle of an active investigation, and most states don’t prevent  from homeschooling their kids.

Lawmakers in states such as ,  and  have attempted to pass additional reporting requirements to guard against child abuse in homeschool settings.

They’re running up against parents’ rights groups and homeschooling advocates who argue that such regulations treat all homeschooling parents as potential criminals and aren’t necessary because many children in such situations are already on the radar of social service agencies. They say the additional requirements don’t address problems inside child protection agencies that allow such abuse to go unaddressed.

“When bad things happen, people feel compelled to do something, whether it makes a difference or not,” said Connecticut state Rep. Anne Dauphinais, a Republican who opposes homeschool regulation. “It’s often overreach of government, just because [lawmakers] want to feel good about doing something.”

In West Virginia, Democratic state Del. Shawn Fluharty said in an interview that he’d lost track of how many times he’s tried to get a bill passed that would prevent a parent from pulling a child out of public school to homeschool if social services is investigating the parent for possible child abuse or neglect. According to Stateline’s sister publication, West Virginia Watch, this year will mark .

Fluharty calls his bill “Raylee’s Law,” after an 8-year-old girl who died from severe abuse and neglect in 2018. Before her death, her abusers had pulled her out of public school after .

“At this point, I’m just pissed off,” Fluharty told Stateline. “We’ve had at least two other circumstances very similar to Raylee’s situation since I’ve been pushing this legislation.”

Fluharty said he’s considering revising the law’s name to also memorialize Kyneddi Miller, a West Virginia 14-year-old who . Her mother had pulled her from public school in 2021 to homeschool her.

The bill passed the House twice in recent years, with bipartisan support, but died in a Senate committee each time. It faces opposition from homeschooling advocates in the legislature, he said, as well as lobbying efforts from national homeschool groups.

“It’s not a complex situation,” said Fluharty. “It’s a glaring loophole that needs to be closed. The longer it stays open, the more vulnerable children are in West Virginia.”

Homeschool explosion

But interest is . In recent years, the 30 states that publicly report homeschool participation have seen those numbers grow. More than a third of those states recorded their  in the 2024-2025 school year, even exceeding pandemic-era peaks, according to a study published in November.

Homeschooling has increasingly been framed as a political and cultural choice, particularly in conservative circles where it’s promoted as a way to exercise control over children’s education amid anger over how schools address racial equity, gender identity and sexuality, school violence and vaccine requirements. Homeschool supporters praise its flexibility and safety. Others warn that minimal regulation can leave some children isolated from the visibility and protections built into public school systems.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, homeschool participation hovered around 2-3% of K-12 students. It exploded during the pandemic to a high of 11% of families, as learning outside of traditional schools became normalized. Now  in the United States are homeschooled, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The issue doesn’t always fall neatly along party lines. In Georgia,  prompted a  that prohibits caregivers from withdrawing a child from school for the purpose of evading detection of child abuse and neglect. It became law in 2019.

In Hawaii, Republican state Sen. Kurt Fevella filed a resolution in 2024 calling for the state to conduct a wellness visit for any child removed from school to be homeschooled. He was motivated by  in Hawaii who had been taken out of school for homeschooling. It died in committee.

Last year, Rachel Marshall gave testimony before Utah legislators who were considering a controversial bill that would remove part of a 2023 law requiring parents to attest they’ve never been convicted of child abuse before they’re allowed to homeschool their children.

Marshall opposed the bill, worried the state was erasing one more safeguard protecting the small subset of homeschooled children who are at risk of abuse or neglect. But as she sat listening to the homeschooling parents speaking in favor of it, their words sounded familiar.

“I could hear the fear and rage that someone would take away your rights,” she said. “But I think if you are being investigated by [child protective services], you should not be allowed to withdraw your children from daily mandated reporters like schoolteachers.”

The bill’s chief sponsor, Republican state Rep. Nicholeen Peck, said her goal was to remove a portion of state homeschooling law that was ineffective, had created confusion for school districts, and unfairly stigmatized homeschooling families.

The Utah legislature passed the bill and it was signed into law last spring.

Statehouse rallies

Studies are mixed on whether children who are homeschooled are more likely to be victims of abuse.

A  of homeschooled and conventionally schooled adults found homeschooled children aren’t necessarily more likely to report experiencing abuse or neglect.

But among abuse victims, isolation from mandated reporters — like school teachers — is a common thread. A  found that nearly half of child torture victims had been pulled from school to be homeschooled to evade suspicions of abuse. Withdrawal from school to homeschool under suspicious circumstances is  and is associated with higher risk factors for abuse, according to a report from the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.

More than 1 in 5 children withdrawn from school for homeschooling in Connecticut lived in families with at least one substantiated report from the state’s child services agency, according to a report released last year from Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate. The office based its findings on a sample of more than 700 children aged 7-11 who were withdrawn from school for homeschooling between July 2021 and June 2024.

For homeschooling families who’ve been providing their children with a high-quality education without oversight, “I can understand why they might feel they don’t need to be regulated,” said Christina Ghio, Connecticut’s child advocate.

“But as a state, we have an obligation to all children,” she told Stateline. “We know there are children whose parents say they’re homeschooling who are not. The challenge is, there’s one set of rules that has to apply to everybody.”

Her office’s report recommended state lawmakers create requirements for annual assessments of homeschoolers.

The report was issued in the wake of a high-profile abuse case: A Connecticut man was rescued in February 2025 after authorities say he’d been  for two decades. His stepmother had pulled him from public school in fourth grade after  with concerns he was being abused.

But when lawmakers gathered for hearings on homeschooling regulation last May, after Ghio’s report, , most of them homeschool families, flooded the state’s Legislative Office Building to protest, according to the CT Mirror.

In Illinois, Democratic lawmakers introduced a sweeping homeschool regulation bill last year that, among other things, would have banned those convicted of sexual abuse crimes from homeschooling. It was  by an  from Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica into the state’s nearly nonexistent homeschool regulation.

But while the bill cleared its committee,  and supporters packed the Illinois State Capitol to oppose it. It never made it to a full vote in the House.

Despite pushback, Connecticut House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Democrat, has signaled his interest in revisiting some kind of oversight during this legislative session.

“I don’t think this is a fight about homeschooling,” he said during  earlier this month, citing cases like the highly publicized death of 11-year-old Jacqueline “Mimi” Torres-Garcia.

In October, the girl’s remains were found on an abandoned property in Connecticut. The family had  with the state’s social services, but her mother emailed school officials in July 2024 to tell them she planned to homeschool her daughter. Authorities say that less than two months later, the girl was dead. An autopsy confirmed her death was caused by .

Dauphinais, the Connecticut Republican, told Stateline she doesn’t believe any of the proposed homeschool requirements she’s heard from her Democratic colleagues would have saved children like Mimi Torres-Garcia.

“If you want to abuse your child, you’re going to abuse your child and you are never going to show up for any kind of annual evaluation,” she said. “They will game the system. We’re not talking about the 99.9% of homeschoolers doing it genuinely. We’re talking about people doing evil things.”

Ritter said families that have been investigated by child protective services or law enforcement need more follow-up. But he was candid about the long road that regulation might face: “That might get really ugly, Republican versus Democrat. I think it depends on how it gets drafted.”

National advocacy

In Utah, some of the speakers supporting removing reporting requirements from state law included representatives from the same organization that was on Marshall’s family’s refrigerator magnet: the Home School Legal Defense Association.

It’s one of the most visible homeschooling organizations in statehouses around the nation, fighting homeschool regulation of all kinds.

The group argues that the intent behind such regulation is good, but misplaced, and that such regulations unfairly burden homeschooling families without meaningfully overhauling the systems — like social services agencies — that are tasked with protecting kids from abuse.

Homeschool families struggle with “being treated as though they were being lumped in with felons, being lumped in with kidnappers, being lumped in with people who had harmed their children,” said Peter Kamakawiwoole, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, during a Utah House committee  last January.

Also tracking such legislation are groups like the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which was founded by former homeschoolers and advocates for oversight and accountability in homeschooling. The group drafted  it calls the Make Homeschool Safe Act that proposes certain state reporting requirements for homeschooling families. The Home School Legal Defense Association .

Fluharty, the West Virginia lawmaker, said that when he’s accused of “going after homeschoolers,” he encourages them to read the bill. He believes the national homeschooling lobbyists are lying to families about what his legislation really does.

The goal of such regulation isn’t to take away homeschoolers’ rights, said Marshall. It’s not even necessarily for the kids whose cases wind up in front of child protective services. Instead, she said, it’s for the kids that no one can see.

“These kids are invisible,” she said. “Homeschooling is inherently isolating. Other kids are going to school and have teachers in their lives, a bus driver in their life.”

But for homeschooled kids, “If you are being abused or your education is being neglected, your parents aren’t telling others that. Nobody knows. It feels like the state doesn’t care.”

Auditors raised concerns on Wednesday that some private special education schools in Connecticut are failing to give students all the services they need, hiring staff without background checks and relying on substitutes who lack certification.

State auditors looked at records from five special education schools across the state — The High Road School of Wallingford, Adelbrook Academy in Cromwell, the Grace S. Webb School in Hartford, University School JPE in Bridgeport and the American School for the Deaf. In each case, the auditors reviewed services rendered for one fifth of the students at the school.

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found that the High Road School of Wallingford, for example, provided to its students less than a third of the individual services for fine motor skills that were required in their students Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs — documents created by school districts that outline exactly what services a student should be receiving each year. The school also provided less than half of the individual and group counseling services that its students’ educational plans demanded.

The Grace S. Webb School in Hartford, part of Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living, provided about half of the group counseling services that its students’ plans demanded and 68% of individual counseling services required in those plans.

In their responses to the audit, the schools argued that chronic absenteeism prevented them from being able to offer all the services that their students were required to receive.

“We serve students who struggle with chronic truancy, as defined by the State,” the Grace S. Webb School responded in a statement to the audit, adding that they offer specialized programs that attempt to reduce student absenteeism that can be driven by psychiatric or emotional problems. “Given the population of the students who struggle to maintain consistent attendance at school, we often deliver services in non-traditional settings as students can tolerate, which may not have always been captured fully in documentation.”

The High Road School of Wallingford gave a similar response.

“Chronic absenteeism and other attendance challenges are common among our referred student population and can significantly limit our ability to deliver scheduled services,” they wrote, adding that they have added in a new monitoring system meant to help the school reach out quickly if a child is not attending or engaging.

A spokesperson for the High Road Schools told CT Mirror that most of the school’s students come in mid-year with intensive needs and high levels of absenteeism.

“One of our main priorities is creating a safe, welcoming and positive school culture that encourages attendance and drives students’ willingness to learn,” she wrote. She said they are in “close communication” with the local school districts and review the services that students receive each month.

The Adelbrook Academy in Cromwell, which serves 80 students, mainly with autism spectrum disorder, appears to have done better than the others, providing more than 85% of services for motor skills and language and communication skills. But the auditors noted that the academy did not provide any record of the counseling services that were being offered through the school.

Alyssa Goduti, president and CEO of Adelbrook, said that they don’t bill counseling services separately, since they consider them part of services every child receives. She said their data has since been updated.

In response to the audit report, the State Department of Education said they were “concerned” about the allegations but said it was the responsibility of the local school districts to make sure special education students were getting the appropriate services.

The High Road School of Wallingford is one of four High Roads schools across the state. Last March, the four schools were from the Office of the Child Advocate and Disability Rights CT that revealed more than 1,200 reports of students being placed in restraints and seclusion within one year. Nearly half of those took place at the High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle School.

The report found that the students at High Roads were “grossly underserved both in terms of educational planning and service delivery.”

“The investigation revealed widespread student disengagement and chronic absenteeism across High Road locations, failure to adequately assess and support students’ educational needs through individualized service delivery and, perhaps most alarmingly, gross deficiencies in the number of certified special education teachers and other credentialed educational staff working with children and systemic failure to ensure and/or document that staff had undergone employment checks and criminal and child welfare background checks,” the report stated.

In September 2024, the Office of the Child Advocate and Disability Rights CT with the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs claiming that the state Department of Education had failed to properly monitor what was happening in private special education schools.

The Department of Education had said it  “vigorously disagree[d] with the conclusions” of the report and said they had not received any complaints about the school during the time period the report took place. The High Roads Schools said the report did “not accurately reflect the academic and behavioral supports at our schools” and that they had outlined their plans for improvements.

Sarah Eagan, executive director of the Connecticut Children’s Advocacy Center and the former Child Advocate, said she was concerned that the High Road’s report was a “canary in the coal mine” that indicated widespread problems of accountability within the industry.

“You can’t have services and a system of care for highly vulnerable people that nobody oversees without bad things happening. And we do not learn that lesson despite being taught that over and over and over and over again,” Eagan said.

Eagan said that while the local school district was responsible for making sure that a student was getting the special education services they were required to have by law, it was the state’s responsibility to oversee the districts.

Matt Cerrone, director of communications for the state Department of Education, said the agency was reviewing the audit to determine next steps. In July, the state of an outside firm to review the agency’s system around special education and how it responds to complaints.

Another concern Eagan raised was that certain schools were not conducting required background checks or hiring qualified teachers. She said one of the issues they found in the High Road report was a lack of credentialed staff and long-term uses of temporary substitutes. The High Roads spokesperson told CT Mirror that the school does background checks on hiring and that they have a department dedicated to hiring documentation.

The audit found that one school in particular, University School JPE in Bridgeport, did not show any evidence of background checks being done for any of the nine teachers that the auditors reviewed.

The school responded that they had purchased the school from another company shortly before the 2023-24 school year commenced and that they kept the employees from the previous school. They said they had been unable to get anyone to conduct fingerprinting on their employees but that they had all been submitted to background checks in April 2024.

“At the time of the audit, USJPE had been in operation for less than one year and had not had the opportunity to conduct recurrent background checks. Background checks are completed upon hire and recurrent background checks will occur April 1st for anyone employed for one or more years,” the school said.

The auditors also raised concerns around the American School for the Deaf and the Grace S. Webb School for a lack of policies and internal controls around background checks for their employees. According to the auditors, four of six American School for the Deaf staff who were hired before July 2019 did not have a records of a national criminal history records check, and one of seven staff at the Grace S. Webb school hired before that date lacked the same record.

The American School for the Deaf said its current policy requires background checks for new employees and for any promotions. The Grace S. Webb School said they plan to implement a process to ensure that periodic background checks are conducted.

“The Grace Webb School has long been a place of healing and learning for students who need specialized psychiatric support,” said Tina Varona, spokesperson for the Grace Webb School. “The students who attend the school face unique challenges that make it difficult to integrate into mainstream classrooms and are often unable to attend a traditional school.”

Jeff Bravin, the executive director of the American School for the Deaf, told CT Mirror that the school was using a new tracking system to make sure students were getting all their services and that they had created stricter protocols, including a new tracking system, that would confirm that “every staff member has undergone the necessary checks and verifications before beginning their work with students.”

“The safety and well-being of our students are the highest priorities at the American School for the Deaf. We take the audit’s findings very seriously and want to assure our community that we have already taken appropriate steps to address all issues raised,” Bravin told CT Mirror.

The schools, with the exception of Adelbrook. were also found to have various degrees of non-compliance with the requirement for employment history verification, and all the schools except the High Road school had multiple staff members without prior work references in their files.

The auditors warned that a lack of background checks put students’ safety at risk and noted that not having employment verification history would increase the risk that one of their staff members might have been fired from or left a previous job, or had their credentials suspended because of “an allegation or substantiation of abuse, neglect, or sexual misconduct.”

Goduti said that although Adelbrook was compliant with all background checks, they were implementing ways to conduct recurring background checks to maximize safety.

“Ultimately, kids need to feel safe. Families need to feel safe when they’re sending their students to us. So that is something that we prioritize,” she said.

In a review of teaching certifications, four of the eight teaching staff that the auditors reviewed at Wallingford’s High Road School were long-term substitutes not certified to teach special education. Two of the four teachers the auditors reviewed at the University School JPE did not have evidence of a certificate in education, and the school principal did not have a state certification in either education or administration.

The High Road School responded that they followed state requirements around hiring, and that people hired temporarily without certification were given mentorship and professional development. The school noted that they continued to try and recruit for positions, but said a nationwide teacher shortage required them to have “flexibility.”

The University School JPE said the two teachers without a certification had bachelors degrees in their respective fields, and that the principal had a master’s degree from Fordham, had taught at Sacred Heart and Fairfield University and had worked for the prior owners of the school since 1984.

Data from the State Department of Education shows that staffing vacancies at approved private special education programs have decreased by about 400 over the last two years, but that there are still 2,500 vacancies at programs across the state.

Goduti said that while Adelbrook wasn’t facing staffing challenges, she was well aware of the shortage of special education teachers. She said her school does internship programs and they travel to high schools and universities to promote special education as a choice for young people.

“We need to figure out how to get more incredibly talented young people to want to go into special education as a career. It’s a hugely rewarding career. So we’ve been thinking creatively about how we can incentivize and really encourage folks to work in this field,” she said.

Goduti said Adelbrook appreciated the auditors’ work and that they were always trying to improve. But she said the report also didn’t show the dedication of their teachers or their students’ successes.

“ We serve kids that really have had a lot of doors close on them in their lives. We try to meet them with compassion and commitment and rebuild the sense of trust and help them to think about what are their dreams and how do they get there,” she said. “All those beautiful parts of our service system, which we gladly showed the auditors when they came to visit, it just doesn’t come out in an auditor’s report that only identifies deficiencies but not successes or best practices that maybe could be shared or highlighted.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Attorneys for the Hartford Board of Education, a Hartford special education teacher and the City of Hartford argued before a Superior Court judge on Monday that claims by a former student that she was bullied and harassed by staff in the school district, including by her special education case manager, should be dismissed.

The student, Aleysha Ortiz, graduated from Hartford Public Schools last year despite never learning to read or write. Last summer, she spoke to The Connecticut Mirror about her , which she entered when she was 6 years old.

Shortly after her story went public, Ortiz filed her lawsuit. The , however, doesn’t seek damages related to her educational attainment. Rather, it focuses on the emotional harm that was allegedly done to Ortiz during her years in the Hartford school district, including by case manager Tilda Santiago.

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The complaint alleges that Santiago belittled, stalked and harassed Ortiz in front of other students and teachers. Ortiz went to other teachers in tears and emotional distress as a result, according to the complaint, which also states that Ortiz reported Santiago’s conduct to the principal and assistant principal.

The courtroom arguments on Monday before Superior Court Judge Matthew Gordon focused on two questions: whether the allegations in Ortiz’s complaint were significant enough to prove negligent infliction of emotional distress, and whether the actions of school employees were “ministerial,” meaning the parties were required by law to follow certain procedures but failed to do so. Attorneys representing the city, school board and Santiago argued that their decisions were not ministerial but rather discretionary, meaning they were not legally required to act in a certain way but were rather making decisions based on personal judgment.

Ortiz’s attorney, Anthony Spinella, argued that employees in the district were required by law to follow certain procedures, like reporting bullying to a school administrator, and failed to do so.

“Any school employee who gets a report of bullying has to notify the administrator, full stop. No evaluation, no discretion. They have to file a written report. The policy has to require this safe school climate specialist to investigate or supervise investigation of
all reports of bullying,” Spinella said. “We believe that immunity does not apply because we allege violation of ministerialities.”

Gordon did not make a decision on the motion on Monday. If Gordon rules in favor of attorneys representing Hartford, the school district and Santiago, Spinella said he would appeal the decision.

Ortiz is seeking in damages. Last month, Spinella offered to settle the lawsuit for that amount with the school district and the city.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

While the intentions behind the bans are understandable, are schools unknowingly holding back students in the long run? 

At Meriden Public Schools in Connecticut, we were frustrated by our students’ growing dependency on their cellphones and the potential misuse of AI and other tech tools. But Meriden is also a district that pioneers innovation by embracing new technology and teaching methods. 

The reality is, technology isn’t going away — it’s only going to become more prominent in students’ everyday lives. According to the , AI and technology are  expected to transform 86% of businesses in the next five years, making digital literacy a must-have skill for tomorrow’s workforce. As district administrators, we held the responsibility to foster responsible, productive digital citizens in our hands. We just had to find the right balance between traditional and tech-reliant learning.

The district’s acceptable-use policy provides a solid framework that encourages the responsible use of all technologies while allowing administrators the flexibility to pilot new tools. To help teachers and staff navigate the ever-changing AI landscape, our school leaders and instructional technology team created a library of documents and guidelines, including AI FAQs and an academic honesty and integrity checklist to use with students.

In addition, ensuring the effective use of technology has meant expanding our digital citizenship curriculum. All Meriden students complete grade-appropriate lessons each year, which cover topics including online safety, cyberbullying and how to build a positive online profile. While younger pupils participate in offline simulations to learn about the responsible use of social media in the future, older students can take classes in digital photography, video production and other tech-related topics.

Refining our technology guidelines required us to revisit our cellphone usage rules. With, Meriden chose to take the opposite approach. School leaders realized that it’s not the device that matters, but quick and easy access to high-quality digital content. Meriden students have always been able to access digital curriculum through their Chromebooks in the classroom, but they prefer the convenience and familiarity of their smartphones.

So rather than sitting in a pouch all day, cellphones are now being used as learning tools. Meriden students use their phones to create photos, audio recordings and videos to demonstrate learning, monitor assignments and grades in , and regularly communicate with teachers, counselors and coaches through . They also rely on their phones to access critical AI learning tools, including , which generates personalized study guides and practice questions, and the that teaches ethical digital practices and allows them to conduct research in a controlled environment.

To promote the effective use of AI, cellphones and social media, the district provides educators  with training on integrating technology into learning and student data privacy. While teachers can request that  phones be “off-and-away” during class time, many have made them a part of their lessons. For instance, in math classes, students are encouraged to take photos of the examples and use them as guides when solving complex problems. In dual-enrollment public speaking classes, students record their speeches, which helps them work on timing, pacing and delivery.  Similarly, in physical education classes, students use their phones to demonstrate proper form and receive feedback on personalized workouts.

Embracing technology allows educators the flexibility to facilitate small-group instruction during class time. While one group of students learns alongside the teacher, their classmates work on digital content at their own pace and grade level with a virtual tutor such as and .

Tools like have also helped educators automate daily tasks, such as generating rubrics and creating learning materials, while streamlines the grading process, alerts teachers when students are copying and pasting text rather than doing original writing and helps ensure that they receive targeted, personalized instruction. Now, teachers can spend more time interacting with students and less on administrative duties.

As new tools and policies are implemented, the district has continued to keep parents in the loop with information sessions and regular communication. That open dialogue has prevented the pushback many districts have received. Most parents have been receptive to our “off-and-away” cell phone policy, not just from a safety aspect, but an educational one as well.

AI is already reshaping tomorrow’s workplace, and for the sake of students’ success, schools have to take the fear out of technology. Administrators should feel empowered to try different tools, show educators how AI can assist them in their daily operations and design curriculum that thoughtfully incorporates new technology. 

School leaders must do more than equip students with digital literacy skills — they need to teach them how to use digital tools appropriately and responsibly, to be good stewards of technology. There’s power in those cellphones sitting in students’ pockets and backpacks. It’s up to educators to get them to use it the right way.

After landing a spot in a nationally-competitive fellowship program for high school students run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last summer, Keila Silva got to work investigating a local ice cream plant in Suffield.

The plant, operated by dairy company HP Hood, had over its handling of potentially-hazardous ammonia chemicals — just down the road from one of Suffield’s only federally-assisted housing developments.

Silva, a 17-year-old senior at Suffield High School, wanted to know what impact the plant was having on her community, so she spent this school year combing through a trove of online records dating back to the 1990s.

She was putting the final touches on a report summarizing her findings last month when she got an email from a fellowship supervisor inviting her to an “emergency” meeting on Feb. 18. The purpose of that meeting, Silva soon learned, was to discuss the Trump administration’s related to “diversity, equity and inclusion” — a term broadly used to describe policies aimed at combating discrimination and civil rights violations and promoting diversity.

The message of the meeting was blunt: The federal government would no longer be supporting the projects she and her peers had spent months working on.

“It was heartbreaking to hear,” Silva said in a recent interview. “I had a feeling that it was going to happen, and I had personally been preparing myself for that reality, only because just seeing the news, it seemed like it was going to be inevitable, and unfortunately that ended up being true.”

While much of the focus on President Donald Trump’s massive revamping of the federal government has been on its impact to thousands of government workers, Silva’s story and others show how even high school students are getting caught up in the tumult. Last week, WSHU reported that a New Haven charter school was from a “green jobs” workforce development program after its federal funding was cut off.

In a statement Friday, Conservation Law Foundation staff attorney Rachel Briggs condemned the administration’s treatment of young people working on federally-backed climate and environmental policy programs. (Briggs is one of several local environmental advocates who have signed a letter of support for Silva’s work.)

“President Trump is dismantling vital agencies like NOAA and the [Environmental Protection Agency], laying off dedicated public servants and eliminating opportunities for young people committed to making their neighborhoods safer and healthier,” Briggs said. “We should be encouraging these young people who are driven to make a difference in the world and ensure that every community has clean water to drink and clean air to breathe. They are a model for all of us, particularly for those in the highest levels of our federal government.”

The Young Changemakers Fellowship began in 2023 as a joint effort between NOAA and the North American Association for Environmental Education, “dedicated to collaborating with and empowering the next generation of ocean and environmental leaders,” according announcing the program’s continuation last year. The NAAEE, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., provided operational support for the program in cooperation with the federal agency.

Silva was part of the second cohort of fellows, which she said included students from ten other states, as well as Guam and American Samoa.

A notice now posted atop the states that fellowship will not run in the upcoming school year, but it doesn’t give an explanation.

The president’s , which preceded the fellowship’s discontinuation called on officials to “coordinate the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”

A spokesman for NOAA declined to comment on any changes made to the program as a result of Trump’s executive orders, citing a “long-standing practice” of not discussing internal personnel or management matters.

“NOAA remains dedicated to its mission, providing timely information, research, and resources that serve the American public and ensure our nation’s environmental and economic resilience,” the spokesman, Scott Smullen, said in an email.

Stacie Pierpoint, a spokeswoman for NAAEE, said the decision to discontinue the program was made by federal authorities, and she declined to speculate on whether it might resume.

“We hope it comes back in the future,” Pierpoint said in an email. “We need more programs that build leadership and civic engagement skills and help protect people and the planet.”

Silva said she first became interested in environmental justice after participating in a for teenagers at the University of Connecticut during her sophomore year of high school. In that program, Silva said she used an EPA database to compare how people living in low-income and minority neighborhoods were being disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change.

“I have always been more of a social justice person” Silva said. “I didn’t go into environmental work really liking the science-y part of it.”

But as she dug into the data, Silva said she began to see connections between environmental conditions and social movements she’d previously expressed an interest in. Then one day when perusing the , she noticed the Hood ice cream plant near her home had been identified as a hazardous waste site.

“Being one of the people who do live within this one-mile radius of the facility, it made me concerned, because I had no idea this was happening,” Silva said. “I had asked my family about that, because we lived in our home for about 40 years, and they had no idea about it.”

After she was accepted into the Young Changemakers Fellowship last year, Silva said she and her peers were told to explore questions of equity as part of the projects they’d be working on throughout the year. Because Suffield — a relatively affluent and mostly white town — has few places that are affordable for low-income residents, Silva said she decided to make the plant the subject of her project.

Silva focused on the plant’s proximity to a local housing development, Brook Hill Village, which town officials identified as one of the only developments utilizing government assistance for affordable family housing in a . Residents of the census tract containing the development, she also noted, are more likely to be racial or ethnic minorities than in other areas of town.

Through her research, Silva identified 24 instances in which the Hood plant reported spills or chemical releases to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Those incidents involved ammonia, diesel fuel, wastewater and, , 2,000 gallons of chocolate ice cream mix that that seeped out of a container into the plant.

While Silva’s report did not identify any specific instances in which Brook Hill Village residents suffered harmful health effects from the plants’ releases, she argued that its operations contributed to the area’s “moderate-high” environmental burden — a designation laid out in the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s .

(The database was one of several federal public health websites that a judge in February after the Trump administration sought to pull them offline, citing to other outlets that the data did not conform with presidential executive orders related to diversity and gender identity. A notice now posted atop the ATSDR states, “This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”)

Before she could publish her findings, however, Silva said she and her peers were told by a fellowship supervisor at NOAA that if they chose continue with their projects they would have to remove any mention of their affiliation with the agency, its fellowship or the NAAEE, the nonprofit association supporting the fellowship.

Fortunately, Silva had already completed most of the work on her project and was able to quickly pivot to getting support from the Conservation Law Foundation as well as the Sierra Club and the Nonprofit Accountability Group, an advocacy organization based in Hartford. Representatives from each of those groups agreed to sign a cover letter endorsing Silva’s project, which she said lent credence to findings after it lost backing from NOAA.

Silva said that some of her peers in the program have found it more difficult to continue their work, particularly those whose projects relied on government-licensed GIS mapping software.

“They’re just devastated, but also angry,” Silva said. “We have our own group chat and everyone was blowing up like, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t expect this.'”

Ultimately, Silva published her findings earlier this month in a report that was sent to local officials in Suffield as well as Hood. She included a list of several recommendations for the company, including the installation of new chemical sensors to monitor releases, distributing fact sheets and engaging in community outreach with residents of the surrounding area.

Hood did not respond to requests for comment about Silva’s findings.

“Keila has done amazing research in her community to address an important pollution issue,” said Samantha Dynowski, the Connecticut state director for the Sierra Club. “The arbitrary decision of the Trump administration to cut off resources for this kind of work was unneeded and shouldn’t have been done.”

Since the meeting on Feb. 18, Silva said she and her peers have received emails from federal staffers working with the fellowship soliciting ideas for future meetings between now and the program’s end date in June. In addition, she said they’ve offered to provide advice for professional development and future careers, which for Silva means becoming an environmental justice attorney.

Silva said she’s planning to put the $750 honorarium she received as part of the fellowship towards college, and is waiting to hear back on applications to “around 20” schools where she is considering studying anthropology, sociology or public policy starting in the fall.

“It’s just kind of matter of making things fit, and adapting,” she said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Students, educators and advocates gathered at a library in Meriden Tuesday to call on state and local leaders to expand protections for immigrant students, as well as those in the LGBTQ+ community, and to fully fund Connecticut’s public schools.

The call to action came just two weeks into Donald J. Trump’s second presidential term, during which he has signed a slew of executive orders that have revoked previous limits on at schools and other sensitive locations, for transgender youth and pledged to  for “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”

“We will not tolerate these unprecedented attacks on public schools, which are the foundation of our democracy, and we will not tolerate these attacks on our students, who are the leaders who will sustain our democracy in the future,” said Leslie Blatteau, the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers.

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Speaking at a press conference at Meriden Public Library, Blatteau was joined by a half dozen other community advocates who are part of Connecticut For All, a statewide coalition that says its goal is to “reduce and eliminate systemic racial, economic, and gender inequities in Connecticut.” The group called for Gov. Ned Lamont and state lawmakers to commit to protecting students’ safety, providing support and ensuring “they’re able to succeed in their learning environment.”

One proposal put forth Tuesday was to strengthen the state’s , a 2013 law that limits state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We call on state leaders and community members to work together in ensuring that all students, regardless of their background, receive the education they deserve — that ICE does not rip their families apart, and that they honor sensitive locations,” said Tabitha Sookdeo, the executive director for Connecticut Students For A Dream.

“Education is a right. Safety is the right. Dignity is a right,” Sookdeo went on. “The classroom should be a place of learning and growth, not a place of fear and uncertainty. Ensuring protections and resources for these students allows them to focus on their education, just like any other kid, and contribute to their communities.”

Last week, state education officials on how local district leaders should respond to “immigration activities,” including in cases where federal immigration officers request student information or come onto school property.

The  addressed common questions the Education Department has received from school districts about changes in U.S. Homeland Security policy guidance, and it stressed that both state and federal law “protect a student’s right to attend public schools, regardless of their immigration status.”

Sookdeo said the memo was “good start,” but it fell “short of giving guidance to teachers if a school district does not put appropriate protocols into place.”

“What happens if a school allows an ICE officer to come in and take a student? What’s the protocol for that?” Sookdeo said.

Another growing concern is with students who identify as transgender or part of the LGBTQ+ community. One of Trump’s executive orders signed last Tuesday would, if enacted, withhold federal funding from institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, that provide gender-affirming care to youth under the age of 19. The directive also seeks to restrict coverage of those services from federally-run insurance programs, like Medicaid.

Connecticut Children’s CEO Jim Shmerling raised concerns about a cut to gender-affirming services last week, saying that he expects a “significant rise in suicide ideation and potential attempts in suicide.”

Advocates at the news conference echoed Shemerling’s concerns.

“We cannot expect a student to give 100% to their studies if they cannot be 100% of who they are,” said Tony Ferraiolo, of Healthcare Advocates International & Equality Now. “We are setting them up for failure when we take away a child’s ability to be seen,” Ferraiolo said. “What we’re telling them is that they don’t belong.”

Last year, Connecticut reaffirmed Title IX protections after the Biden administration issued new rules expanding protections for transgender students and a to block the rules. The Connecticut Department of Education directing Connecticut schools to recognize and respect a student’s preferences. Refusing to use a student’s preferred pronouns or call the student by a particular name may “constitute gender-based discrimination” and be “deemed discriminatory under Title IX,” the guidance stated.

The state also defined gender dysphoria and said it could qualify students for specialized instruction. It allowed school boards to develop policies regarding what information may be shared with parents. And it permitted districts to provide single-sex bathrooms and access to facilities that correspond with a students’ gender identity, granting “equal opportunity” in participation of both curricular and extracurricular activities.

The Biden administration’s 2024 guidance was  by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights which stated it will only enforce Title IX provisions from 2020, which were written under Trump in his first presidency.

“No portion of the 2024 Title IX Rule is now in effect in any jurisdiction,” wrote Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights for the federal Department of Education. Trainor also wrote that under one of Trump’s recent executive orders, which called for the acknowledgment of just two genders, that the education department “must enforce Title IX consistent with President Trump’s Order.”

Trump has also threatened that federal funding could be rescinded “,” from schools that provide direct or indirect support toward the social transition of a transgender student.”

A spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Education said the agency planned to review its Guidance on Civil Rights Protections and Supports for Transgender or Gender-Diverse Students “to determine whether revisions are required in light of” the Trump administration’s reinstatement of 2020 regulations.

While the Trump administration has threatened funding cuts to K-12 schools, it has also reaffirmed its commitment to through federal funding. School choice — the ability to seek education outside of an assigned, traditional public school — has been a . Proponents say it gives families autonomy to find the education model that works best for their kids, and opponents say it takes funding away from traditional public schools, segregates children and privatizes education.

“Every single child deserves to go to a public school that prepares them for life beyond the classroom, no matter where they live or the economic conditions they face,” Chad Cardillo, a Meriden City Council member, high school teacher and union vice president, said at Tuesday’s event. “Make no mistake that providing taxpayer dollars to private entities under the guise of choice provides one true choice — that of those private entities to exclude students who do not fit their mold.”

Unlike other areas of the country, Connecticut has not seen a serious push to expand school choice through voucher programs, to send their children to private or religious schools. But the approval of charter schools .

Five charter schools received by the state Board of Education and must now go before the state legislature for a final step in the process before they can open their doors and begin enrolling students. At that meeting, Elizabeth Sked, a union member part of the Connecticut Education Association objected to the opening of the schools, saying they “result in inequity, diminished diversity and concentrations of students with the greatest resource needs,” and that the state should instead focus on “sufficiently funding its existing public schools before expanding a parallel system of charter schools.”

Similar sentiments were also shared Tuesday, as Blatteau said “new charter schools and proposed voucher programs undermine the tenets of true public education.”

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Teacher unions across the state are using votes of no confidence in their superintendents — both formal and informal — to demonstrate growing dissatisfaction with leadership they argue is becoming more uncommunicative, inexperienced or out of touch with staff.

Since March, votes have taken place in four school districts — Waterbury, Stamford, Bridgeport and the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System. The Salem Teachers Federation, which issued its own vote of no confidence in May 2023, also has an ongoing conflict with its administration.

The uptick in votes of no confidence is “not normal,” said Fran Rabinowitz, who previously served as superintendent in Bridgeport and Hamden and now is executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. She said it’s becoming a across the country.

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“I think it’s become more common nationally to have votes of no confidence,” Rabinowitz said. “There’s a lot of emotional unrest right now… I see opposing views and an inability, many times, to come to the middle, to come to consensus, to really understand the other person’s perspective moving forward with something. And I think it affects all of our relationships. You just see it nationally. You see it in government, and I think now we’re seeing it in education.”

Educators have consistently referred to public education as reaching a “,” with an increasing frustration in classroom conditions issues like safety, workload, class sizes, limited support personnel and curriculum changes.

A released recently by the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, shows that 63% of educators in the state are dissatisfied with school conditions and 62% are planning to leave the profession earlier than expected.

Still, CEA President Kate Dias said that votes of no confidence show “an incredible amount of investment.” She said educators who could have walked away are instead “insisting on better.”

“We are going to hold you accountable for doing what we know you should be doing,” Dias said. “The invested parties are standing up and making demands of leadership, and that means that we’re really focusing on improvement. We’re focusing on how do we do this work better and treat our communities and students better.”

Despite the unique district circumstances that led to the votes of no confidence, interviews with union presidents show similar underlying issues — ranging from severe disconnects in communication, concerns about transparency when it comes to district changes (like scheduling or curriculum), growing fears of retaliation and a general feeling that their concerns have gone unheard.

Even some unions across the state that did not issue votes of no confidence in their superintendents have conducted or organized other efforts to showcase their continued dissatisfaction.

“If you look at sort of the consistent theme of where these situations emerge, it’s often where there’s a breakdown of communication and respect between staff and administration — particularly the superintendent,” Dias said, adding that though a consistent call to action to improve the teaching profession has been rooted in salary increases, “there’s no amount of money that overcomes rampant disrespect.

“It takes time to change and move salaries. It does not take time to improve the working conditions,” Dias said. “You can decide tomorrow, ‘I really need to listen to my staff. How am I going to do that in a way that they can see it, feel it and know that I’m respecting them?'”

Rabinowitz also stressed the importance of relationship building and balancing teacher involvement.

“Sometimes superintendents see what is lacking and they see it very clearly … and they just want to take care of that really quickly,” Rabinowitz said. “What they don’t realize is, you can’t just plow ahead without getting buy-in from the pioneers — the teachers and the administrators who are going to carry out what you want to carry out. You’ve got to sit down with them and listen to their perspective and figure out whether the direction you’re taking is the right direction.”

One proposal some educators and union leaders think could make a difference is changing the minimum requirements for becoming a school administrator, in particular the number of years of experience in a classroom setting. It’s a measure they plan to bring up during the legislative session that begins next month.

Departures

In some districts, conversations between superintendents and staff either did not take place or were not fruitful enough to make a difference before the superintendents were either replaced or took a leave of absence.

In Waterbury, CTECS and Bridgeport, the unions’ votes have been followed by changes to the district leadership.

Back in March, the Waterbury Teachers Association conducted a survey with over 700 participants that mainly focused on safety concerns in the classroom. The majority of the survey’s respondents said Superintendent Verna Ruffin did not effectively address safety-related issues (80%), did not foster an environment for staff to handle discipline issues in an effective manner (86%) and did not prioritize teacher and student safety (85%).

“We just felt that Dr. Ruffin had really lost touch with the teacher corps in the city of Waterbury, and had really, really lost touch with the types of things that teachers were experiencing in the classroom,” said local union president Kevin Egan. “Those types of things ranged from a lack of support, which was the big one, especially in types of discipline issues and addressing negative behaviors in the classroom, where teachers were really starting to feel afraid and nervous to go to work.”

There were over 960 individual student-based arrests in Connecticut in 2021-22, the last reported data from the state’s education department that was broken down by district. Of that number, about 220 occurred in Waterbury Public Schools.

The unions’ concerns “arguably ended up” as a vote of no confidence, though it was not “officially designated,” as one, Egan said.

“What you’re seeing across the state is a byproduct of lack of respect and just the idea that they’re not valuing their teachers and teachers are feeling it,” Egan said. “When you’re trying to get responses from the superintendent, and teachers are throwing their hands up in the end and screaming for help, and nobody’s coming to the aid, … that is the definition of a breaking point.”

Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski ultimately vetoed Ruffin’s contract extension despite an initial approval from the local board of education.

Ruffin did not respond to a request for comment on the local union’s dissatisfaction, but provided The Connecticut Mirror her final email to the local board of education. In her correspondence, she highlighted wins in her district including the opening of a , reopening of classrooms after the COVID-19 pandemic and investments into extracurricular programs.

“As I move to my next chapter, I wanted to express my profound gratitude to you Commissioners individually, and collectively as you continue to do what’s best for all children,” Ruffin wrote on July 11. “Your confidence in me is deeply appreciated and I will forever be grateful to you to the teachers, the principals and administrators as well as the central office team, the parents, students and community. I will especially miss the students and wish them continued success as they dare to dream big and never lose sight of their goals.”

Several months later, in October, the State Vocational Federation of Teachers, the union representing certified teachers at the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, issued its own vote of no confidence in executive director Ellen Solek after concerns over transparency.

Solek oversaw the superintendent position, which has had several personnel changes in recent years as the CTEC system has branched off the jurisdiction of the state Department of Education and instead operates as a state agency.

Makenzi Hurtado, vice president of the SVFT union, said Solek was responsible for the system’s finances, legislative proposals and industry partnerships. Union members felt the needs were not being met in those three areas and this ultimately “trickled down into the classrooms.”

“We would hear that all the time we’re in a ‘soft [hiring] freeze,’ … but no one really understood why we were in a soft freeze, where the monies were going and when we would ask for clarification or insight or transparency, we would not get any answers,” Hurtado said. “In terms of the legislation, there’s a lot of things that we have to advocate for. … There’s a lot of different bills and things that affect us, and we weren’t finding out about it until after they were going into effect.”

Hurtado said the CTECS had a large number of staffing vacancies, which overwhelmed the existing workload of hired staff and made them more prone to burnout.

“Every single subject we had, they were missing things that they needed. Science labs didn’t have the materials that they needed. English classrooms didn’t have the books. It was everywhere,” Hurtado said.

“It got to a point where people were feeling like they could not give kids the education that they deserved, and they didn’t have the resources to give the education to kids that they deserved, and that was really the breaking point for us,” Hurtado added. “I think a lot of the concerns that we have in our district are very similar to concerns that teachers and other districts have. Teachers are extremely passionate about what they do, but … they’re very rarely listened to as experts in what they do.”

Solek, who was the district’s first executive director and took over the role in June 2023, announced on Halloween.

Solek declined a request for comment.

Gov. Ned Lamont announced Alice Pritchard, who most recently served as the director of workforce development and strategic initiatives for the Connecticut Department of Administrative Services and previously served as the chief of staff and chief strategy officer for the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, as Solek’s replacement on Nov. 27.

In a statement to the CT Mirror, Pritchard said she looked forward to working with stakeholders to “help the system reach its full potential.”

“My priority is to listen to our community, promote open communication, and ensure transparency and collaboration with all stakeholders. I recognize that while there is important work to do, we have the people and passion to achieve great things on behalf of CTECS students,” Pritchard said.

The CTEC is also by the state Department of Education after a leaked email from then-interim superintendent Justin Lowe described a process that was apparently meant to deny admission to students with disabilities.

Lamont appointed Freeman Burr, a former superintendent in Shelton and former Hartford educator, as the new interim superintendent on Dec. 5.

Still at odds

Bridgeport was the most recent of the three no-confidence votes, with Superintendent Carmela Levy-David in early November shortly after a revealed 93% of respondents felt Levy-David was unprofessional in dealings with teachers and staff, feared retaliation if they voiced concerns and that the superintendent was not open to differing points of view and 80% had considered leaving Bridgeport Public Schools.

Levy-David was hired in and committed to staying 10 years in the district to form a “.” She had announced a complete system overhaul earlier this year, beginning with right-sizing its organizational leadership, schools and classrooms.

Over the summer there was pushback on the superintendent’s six schools, and contention grew as educators say the district was changing its class and bus schedules, teacher assignments and curriculum “on the fly.”

“You had teachers doing everything in their power to try and create a sense of stability and security, but at the end of the day, if they don’t have the materials, they’re being reassigned, they are not sure what is being communicated — all those things put together just created this sense of heightened agitation at all times,” Dias said. “It was like this intense layer of stress that everyone was kind of experiencing, including the kids.”

Shortly after the survey’s results were released, the district issued a statement saying they were “disappointed that the CEA did not communicate those results to us first so we could have worked collaboratively,” and that they took the “concerns raised about teachers’ confidence in our leadership seriously.”

“We understand that feelings of fear and apprehension can significantly impact our staff’s willingness to communicate openly, but their feedback is essential to continue to make things better for them moving forward. We are committed to fostering a safe and supportive environment where educators feel empowered to express their thoughts and concerns without fear of retaliation,” Levy-David said in the statement.

Bridgeport’s local board of education has now that could end Levy-David’s employment in the district.

Stacy Graham-Hunt, the spokesperson for Bridgeport schools, said the district “remains committed to fostering a positive and collaborative work environment for all staff members,” through efforts to “streamline communications, enhance stability and address any operational challenges to ensure that schools run smoothly and effectively.”

“While the District acknowledges the concerns raised by the union, we are assessing areas for improvement and identifying strategies to address challenges. Ensuring a supportive environment for educators, administrators, and students is our top priority,” Graham-Hunt said. “We are currently reviewing internal processes to enhance clarity and coordination, and we are prioritizing efforts to ensure all stakeholders feel informed and supported.”

Stamford shared concerns similar to some of those raised in Bridgeport’s survey and vote of no confidence, though the district has kept its leadership.

Stamford educators have faced an regarding class scheduling at its middle and high schools.

Stamford Superintendent Tamu Lucero proposed a schedule change that would add an extra course to teachers’ existing class schedules and would increase workload. Local teachers argued that they’re already strained and issued a vote of no confidence in March.

“Who knows what’s going on in the classroom better than the teachers that work with those kids every day?” said local union president John Corcoran. “The further you are removed from the classroom, the less impact you have. There’s a superintendent, and there’s associate superintendents, but you’re making decisions three levels removed from the classroom. … [To make changes,] it’s about building relationships. It’s about maintaining relationships. It’s about trust. … We’re trying hard to build that relationship with the superintendent, but we run into quite a lot of hurdles in doing so.”

Stamford Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.

A legislative push

At the root of teachers feeling unheard is a sentiment that district administrators are inexperienced when it comes to what’s happening in a classroom setting.

Currently, requires school administrators to have at least 50 months of “appropriate teaching experience,” or about five years, a master’s degree and additional coursework in special education, school administration and other topics.

But several educators and union leaders across the state have advocated for several years to raise the minimum requirements, particularly in regard to the number of years in a classroom setting.

It’s a proposal they plan to fight for again in January.

“We believe 10 years would be a far better minimum, and I get that it puts that point of transition out a little bit, but let’s give our administrators a fighting chance. If they haven’t had enough experiences to convincingly lead, we’re setting them up for failure,” Dias said.

“We really believe that in order to lead a building, you have to have a credible amount of experience, and you have to have had the worst day, the most challenging student, a difficult parent conversation, a challenge with your colleague, to have led a classroom through difficult times, before you’re ever going to be able to lead a building credibly,” she said.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The launch of the , an initiative to help train school leaders in their efforts to develop more charter schools in the state, is the latest push for more school choice options in Connecticut.

The fellowship was created out of a partnership between education organization , or LEAD, which has been a strong proponent in an  to open a charter school in Danbury, and , an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that has opened over 50 charter schools in Indiana in the last 18 years.

“We need something that is transformational and disruptive,” said Jose Lucas Pimentel, the CEO of LEAD, who noted that students of color, particularly Black and Latino students,  their white peers in almost all academic metrics.

“We realized that 30 years have gone by. Three decades waiting for things, and changes, and conversations, and forums, and speaking and nothing has happened and things have gotten worse,” Pimentel said. “We believe, unless somebody suggests some other way, that a charter school … can be a very creative way to empower leaders, like ourselves, to create a model tailored to our communities.”

The creation of more school choice options has , with advocates arguing that existing public schools aren’t serving all students’ needs and opponents countering that charter schools take away funding from the public school system, which is already stressed with limited resources.

Under the fellowship, four people — with a preference for Connecticut residents — will receive a full salary with benefits for up to two years as they undergo “personalized coaching and support from a network of educational and executive leaders,” collaborate with a cohort, travel and engage with other charter schools across the country.

The group will also have access to “expertise and feedback on the school development, Connecticut charter approval, launch and local community engagement processes,” according to the North Star website. Applications opened in late October and fellows are anticipated to be chosen in the spring.

“I think that every community has different needs and we want to encourage everybody from all demographics to apply,” Pimentel said. “What we’re looking at in the fellowship are innovative schools that are not just traditional college prep — almost the same additional school — but things that prepare kids right out of high school to have life-changing jobs, that can really transform communities, because we have just seen a stagnation, especially in the Latino community.”

The initiative may face challenges, as Connecticut is the only state in the country that requires legislative approval in the creation of charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Despite an initial approval from the state Board of Education, some charter schools can get delayed or stuck in the legislative process if lawmakers decide not to fund them.

This has been the case for over a handful of years in Danbury, and recently in Middletown, after both schools were  of the state’s two-year budget during the 2023 legislative session after hours of debate and some lawmakers . A new budget approval process begins in January for the next biennium.

In the past, Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, and leadership from the Connecticut Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, had been vocal opponents of charter school expansion in Connecticut. 

Kushner and CEA officials did not respond to recent requests for comment.

But during the 2023 legislative session, Kushner said she believed funding was the biggest barrier for traditional public schools and that a charter school would not be a solution for districts facing overcrowding or large populations of high needs students.

“There are people like myself and others within the community that have decided the best approach would be to resolve those issues of overcrowding and underfunding by working on improved funding for our traditional public schools,” Kushner told The Connecticut Mirror in a March 2023 interview. “That has been the focus of a lot of [our] opposition. We should invest in really finding good solutions for the whole student population, as opposed to a charter school solution, which would really only address a very small percentage of the student population.”

In 2023  for a proposed bill that would have removed the legislature from the charter school approval process, the Connecticut Education Association also argued charter school funding has outpaced that which is provided to traditional public schools and “for some [charter schools] cannibalizing the public school systems in urban districts (and beyond) is the goal.”

The , which made it out of two committees but ultimately failed, was opposed by Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, who had a proposed charter school in his district in 2023. His opposition to the Capital Preparatory Middletown Charter School garnered from members of the local community, including from NAACP membership.

Lesser, in an interview last week with the CT Mirror said he didn’t “consider himself a charter opponent,” but that “there are different dynamics around the state.”

“I think there have been places where charters are what community is looking for, and they may work, but wherever you’re looking to change the environment, you should be fundamentally listening to the community in their wants and needs,” Lesser said, adding that there needs to be continued efforts to strengthen traditional public schools and “make sure that everyone is entitled to a world class education.”

Lesser also said he didn’t know much about the launch of the North Star Fellowship, but did express reservations about a partnership with an out-of-state organization.

“The fact they’re looking to bring in out-of-state activists sort of seems like just one more effort to impose a top down solution on Connecticut’s educational system,” Lesser said.

But, Pimentel said the Indianapolis organization was “invited by an organization that is on the ground and that has deep roots in Connecticut.”

“Most of us were raised here. Some of us were born here, lived our entire lives here,” Pimentel said of his team. “They didn’t come to us, … we went to them and convinced them to come because what they had that we didn’t is the expertise in running fellowships that work. We have the communities. We have the leaders that want to be trained. … [The fellowship] is the most homegrown you can possibly get.” 

Pimentel said he hopes the fellowship begins “to spread a conversation that needs to be had,” where charter schools aren’t “pitted against traditional schools the way they are now,” and that instead it offers an avenue that promotes innovative curriculum. 

“I’m not a proponent of all charter schools and some of the legacy ones that been there from the beginning,” Pimentel said.

“We are a proponent of new kinds of charter schools that are transformational. … I believe that the gap is going to widen and our people are going to be left behind, and instead of kind of just sitting there and always asking someone else to do something about it, we wanted to pilot a kind of school that will really meet the need of this population,” Pimentel added, referring to the state’s growing number of multilingual and other high needs students.

Pimentel also said, despite challenges in Danbury and Middletown, that not all charter schools are controversial, pointing to the 2023  of Edmonds Cofield Preparatory Academy for Young Men in New Haven and  in Norwalk.

“I think that what the fellowship tries to do more is not try to get bogged down into the Danbury issue, because the Danbury issue has not been replicated everywhere else. Most of the state does not have issues with charter schools,” Pimentel said. “We sometimes focus so much on the place that it’s not being accepted, but we see schools doing amazingly well and getting along really well with the ecosystem of schools in their districts, and that’s what we want.”

This was originally published on .

Playful activities like these are an essential daily part of early learning, as children develop problem-solving, motor and social-emotional skills while making discoveries. Choosing activities based on their interests can also help build their sense of autonomy and identity.

The nation’s leaders are catching on to what early childhood educators have long known – kids learn best through hands-on exploration and play. With a from developmental and neuroscience researchers demonstrating the effectiveness of play-based learning for young learners, my home state of Connecticut recently became the second in the nation to . Starting this year, preschool and kindergarten teachers across the state are integrating play into their curriculum, embracing a new approach to teaching that fosters creativity, collaboration and critical thinking.

Children are not only born ready to discover and explore the world, they also learn this way. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Early Head Start is especially beneficial to childhood development, as it supports healthy brain function and allows infants and toddlers to build relationships and learn social skills. Research the importance of play to the of children of all ages.

Early educators — including providers who run licensed, small child care programs in their homes and have collaborated with over the past 25 years — often work with groups of children ages 0 to 5 and create learning environments that reflect their interests and curiosities. In one program, a 2-year-old helped set the table for lunch while another child watered the plants. In another program, a teacher led her children on a journey through the stars, encouraging them to create planets out of clay and transform their sleeping area into “space” with black paper and glow-in-the-dark stars as they searched for the sun and the moon in the sky.

Across the country, elementary school teachers are this child-centered, active educational . A recent of 26 studies from 18 countries found that learning through play bolstered children’s language, literacy and social emotional skills, making it an effective strategy for reducing achievement gaps between youngsters from different socioeconomic groups. Observing children at play reveals so much about their learning styles and needs, and can inform decisions about how to support students as they learn new skills or concepts.

While free play at recess has long children through their elementary school years, educators have now introduced guided play in the classroom. These teacher-led can improve math skills, shape recognition and vocabulary for describing locations and movements. Because play can look different across cultures, there is also a need for activities children’s unique identities and values.  

To be sure, this style of teaching is a departure from schooling that has on standardized testing and emphasized academic expectations, even among the lower grades and amid a growing mental health crisis among children. 

Requiring play would provide with an education that is both enriching and rigorous, but legislative action is needed to make that a reality. In New Hampshire, the to pass legislation requiring play-based learning, kindergarten teachers now have coaching and training to make play a fundamental component of their instruction. have also adopted policies to help educators integrate this approach into their teaching. 

A mandate for play-based learning in every school — combined with the necessary funding and training for teachers to implement it — would transform early childhood and elementary education by establishing systems and policies that support young students’ academic growth. State and federal leaders should follow New Hampshire and Connecticut’s lead and take this critical step forward, while also encouraging parents to choose child care programs that prioritize play. In doing so, the country’s educational system would ensure a brighter, more equitable future for the next generation. 

Less than half of Connecticut parents are satisfied with their child’s school, its mental health support system and college preparation efforts, according to newly released survey results from , a Hartford-based educational advocacy organization.

The survey, conducted this summer with the participation of over 400 parents across the state, focused on five pillars including: school quality and opportunity; out-of-school activities; information and engagement; college and career readiness; and tutoring, summer and mental health.

Produced in partnership with 50CAN and Edge Research, the survey was part of a nationwide effort and the Connecticut results aligned closely with the responses of over 20,000 parents across all 50 states.

On average, less than half of Connecticut respondents (43%) reported satisfaction with their child’s school and even less said they were satisfied with how schools support mental health needs (37%). Most Connecticut parents, around 66%, also voiced concerns about their confidence in their child’s preparation to enter the workforce or higher education.

“Parents are telling us that they are uncertain about their own children’s futures,” said Steven Hernández, the executive director of ConnCAN. “It’s not unique to Connecticut, but I think we have really been unable to move the needle when it comes to the opportunity gaps in the state, and we see that in our education outcomes.”

In August, the state Department of Education , which showed that Connecticut students’ math and science scores improved last year and the number of students labeled chronically absent continued to drop from a pandemic high.

Scores still remained below pre-pandemic levels and the results showed smaller gains for high-need students, including those who are classified with a disability, qualify for free or reduced lunch or are multilingual learners.

According to ConnCAN’s survey, dissatisfaction can correlate with a lack of engagement in the school system for some parents.

Just over 1 in 4 Connecticut respondents said they had attended some type of parent organization meeting and less than 20% said they were familiar with how budget decisions were made at their child’s school, according to the survey.

“Parents — and, specifically or importantly for Connecticut’s context, parents of color — really trust the institutions that are teaching their children. … With that trust comes the responsibility of schools to meet families where they are,” Hernández said. “When I see disengaged families, I don’t see that as a family problem. I see it as an engagement problem in the very institutions that should be bringing in parents more intentionally and saying, ‘Here’s how we can work together on your children’s educational outcomes. Here’s what you can do at home. Here’s how we can partner over the summer.’ If parents felt that their schools wanted them to be part of their kids educational success, parents would be more engaged.”

Fran Rabinowitz, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents and a former superintendent in Bridgeport and Hamden, said she’s noticed that districts have begun investing more heavily in communication methods, but there’s “a lot more work to do in our schools to reach out to families, especially to low-income families.”

Parents want to be engaged, Rabinowitz said, adding that the work can begin with making long and complicated documents, like a school budget, more digestible.

“Budgets are your roadmap for what you believe are priorities in your school,” Rabinowitz said. “I remember being in Bridgeport and saying ‘There’s one thing I want to be sure of — the parents may not need to have the 500-page document that gives every line item, but they need to really understand that budget on a macro level.’ I remember traveling to different parts of the city with a PowerPoint.”

Districts experiencing and resource challenges can better engage families by beginning those conversations in early childhood, Hernández said.

“Start early with families. Build a culture of parent engagement that is actually modeled by the school itself and parents will follow,” Hernández said. “Parents will follow the educational career because parents want more than anything for their children to be more successful than they were.”

Despite a low percentage of children in tutoring programs, at 19% both statewide and nationally, other extracurricular programs are working to engage students, with a higher percentage of students in Connecticut attending an after-school program (30%), summer program (51%) or participating in organized sports (65%) or arts (54%) programs compared to the national average.

Across the country just about 26% of respondents said their child was in enrolled in an after-school program, 41% in a summer program, 58% in sports and 51% in the arts.

Growing these extracurricular opportunities is also a chance to continue developing stronger mental health support at schools, Rabinowitz said.

“I do believe any activity — after school, summer school — where kids are interacting with each other — sports — where they have that interaction, that team, feeling that they are not isolated or alone, I think is incredibly important,” she said.

When 19-year-old Aleysha Ortiz told Hartford City Council members in May that the public school system stole her education, she had to memorize her speech.

Ortiz, who was a senior at Hartford Public High School at the time, wrote the speech using the talk-to-text function on her phone. She listened to it repeatedly to memorize it.

That’s because she was never taught to read or write — despite attending schools in Hartford since she was 6.

Ortiz, who came to Hartford from Puerto Rico with her family when she was young, struggled with language and other challenges along the way. But a confluence of circumstances, apparent apathy and institutional inertia pushed her haphazardly through the school system, according to Ortiz, her attorney and district officials.

Those officials, in statements that her attorney says display “shocking” educational neglect, have acknowledged that Ortiz never received instruction in reading.

Despite this, she received her diploma this spring after improving her grades in high school — with help from the speech-to-text function — and getting on the honor roll. She began her studies at the University of Connecticut this summer.

Ortiz can’t read even most one-syllable words. The words she can read were memorized during karaoke or from subtitles at the bottom of TV screens and associating the words she saw with what she heard, she said.

“I was pushed through. I was moved from class to class not being taught anything,” Ortiz told The Connecticut Mirror during a series of interviews. “They stole something from me … I wanted to do more, and I didn’t have the chance to do that.”

Ortiz was diagnosed with a speech impediment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in early childhood and has been classified as a student with a disability for “as long as I can remember,” she said.

Ortiz also wasn’t taught how to tell time or how to count money. She can barely hold a pencil because of unaddressed issues with hand fatigue and disputes about school-based occupational therapy, she and her attorney said. She learned basic math, like addition, but has no other math skills.

Accommodations in her Individualized Education Plan, which spell out what services students will receive that school year, allowed her to audio-record classes and meetings with school leadership because of her inability to read or write in high school.

In recordings shared with the CT Mirror, made from March through June of this year, district officials acknowledged that in 12 years, Ortiz never received reading instruction or intervention. The CT Mirror also reviewed Ortiz’s educational records, including her recent IEPs and other documents.

“In my review of Aleysha’s IEP, she was never provided reading instruction,” Noreen Trenchard, a special education administrator for the district, said at a May 29 Planning and Placement Team (PPT) meeting. “What is most concerning to me, honestly, at this time, is … with all of that information prior to today, no direct reading instruction was provided for her, and no PPT was requested to add that to an IEP. … That’s very concerning, very, very concerning.”

Trenchard did not respond to a request for comment.

Ortiz said her mother’s ability to advocate for her was limited because of language barriers, insufficient translation services, and because the family didn’t know their legal rights to challenge district decisions.

Ortiz filed for “due process” against the district in late June, which is a legal procedure in special education that’s triggered when families feel their rights were violated.

Ortiz’s lawyer, , said the young woman’s story may be one of the “most shocking cases” of educational neglect she has seen in 24 years.

“It is really shocking, and it should never have happened and shouldn’t be happening,” Spencer said. “Her whole future is going to be impacted.”

Ortiz repeatedly described her special education experience with one word: traumatic.

She said she was unlawfully restrained, spent months in classrooms without a special education teacher or paraeducators, and was ridiculed by untrained staff who would laugh at her.

Her time in Hartford Public Schools was defined by feelings of isolation and loneliness as she sat in the back of classrooms for years and wished she would be able to do what the other kids were doing, she said.

While other students made friends and learned basic math and reading skills, Ortiz said she was stuck tracing letter worksheets on her own from first grade well into her middle school years.

Since first grade, she said, teachers, school leaders and district administrators failed her.

In a recording of a June 6 meeting with Trenchard, the district’s special education administrator, Ortiz can be heard saying she was denied the right to a fair education when teachers didn’t teach her how to write, when disability testing wasn’t done accurately and when she felt shamed by educators after she brought up how her IEP wasn’t being followed correctly.

“People didn’t forget about me — no — people chose not to [educate me]. People chose not to [change] my IEP. People chose not to do this and that and this and that,” Ortiz said at the meeting. “I’m the one paying the consequences, while those people are still getting their checks.”

Ortiz tried to teach herself and make up for the areas her formal education lacked, but through those efforts, the 19-year-old said, she also lost the chance to just be a kid.

“Basically [in high school], I would go to class. I would record and try to memorize everything the teacher said and what I wanted to write. Then, when I went home, I would stay and hear the recordings. I basically went to school two times in one day,” Ortiz said.

“I wanted to join clubs, but I couldn’t do that because I didn’t have the time. … To this day, I’ve never been out to the movie theater with friends, ever,” Ortiz said. “I didn’t have time to have fun. It was either enjoy myself or fail my classes, and maybe if I was more ahead in reading or writing, I would’ve had time [to make friends].”

Ortiz’s story can’t be defined as a student who fell through the cracks — several people knew how her education was being neglected and did nothing, Spencer said.

“She’s had so many teachers. I don’t know how everybody failed her,” Spencer said. “I don’t know how the district could have passed her through. I don’t understand how this happened. It’s negligence, in my opinion.”

The district declined to “speak specifically to student matters,” because of “state and federal legal obligations,” after requests for comment by the CT Mirror, particularly in regards to why it took so long to find a problem with Ortiz’s academic progress and whether officials were aware of similar situations happening with other students in Hartford.

But in a meeting on June 6, Trenchard acknowledged that educators may have violated Ortiz’s IEP, which is a legally binding document under the  and outlines the services and accommodations that will make a student with a disability successful in a classroom.

“And truthfully, from what I’ve seen, I see that you didn’t even have an appropriate IEP,” Trenchard said.

“People got to you too late, which has been the story of your life here,” a Hartford Public High School administrator can be heard telling Ortiz in the recording from the meeting on June 6, despite Ortiz saying she had raised concerns for several years and they were never formally addressed.

Ortiz was able to graduate because she had met all her credit requirements, but she says she was only able to “survive” high school through the use of speech-to-text applications and a calculator.

And though limited, the accommodations helped Ortiz become an honor-roll student and led to her acceptance to several colleges, including the University of Connecticut-Hartford, which she began attending part-time in August.

Ortiz’s success may be unique, but her challenges in the district are not, several current and former staff members from the school district told the CT Mirror.

“I think this happens a lot through Hartford schools,” said a Hartford paraeducator who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “I don’t think a lot of kids in Hartford get their services. She’s not the only one. … Any school [in the district], you’ll find kids, even that are not in special ed, that don’t even know how to read and write — they just pass them over.”

“Unfortunately, the way the district runs, it’s short-staffed. It’s fast-paced,” said a social worker who worked with Ortiz in high school and also requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “While Aleysha is a very sad and touching story, it is one of many in the district that get overlooked.”

Ortiz and her attorney think so too.

“One of the reasons I didn’t drop out was from anger — and knowing that I might not be the only one, but you don’t hear it around,” Ortiz said. “With me, people knew about it and didn’t want to do their job, and knowing this — it must be happening in other places.”

“It’s happening all the time, and it’s not just Hartford,” Spencer said.

Aleysha’s story

At the age of 32, Carmen Cruz decided to migrate from Puerto Rico to the South End of Hartford with three of her four children, including Ortiz, who was 5 at the time, the second-youngest.

Ortiz’s mother declined interview requests, but Ortiz said her family came to the United States because services for students with disabilities were limited in Puerto Rico.

“We heard Connecticut had the best education and things like that, which is one of the reasons we came to Hartford,” Ortiz said. “We came to get better opportunities.”

In testimony to state lawmakers for more school funding earlier this year, Ortiz described preparing for her first day of first grade at Burr School, when the school educated grades K-8. That day was full of nerves but also tinges of excitement.

Ortiz only spoke Spanish, and learning English with a speech disability would be challenging. But Ortiz said her mother thought she would get the proper services and support to make sure she was successful.

“The first day of school, I was holding my mom’s hand and didn’t want to let go,” she said in the testimony. “I finally did, and I believe it was the biggest mistake of my life. … From the first day, I struggled so much.”

Despite bringing a signed document from the Puerto Rico Department of Education outlining the need for occupational therapy, the service was never provided to Ortiz in Hartford Public Schools, according to her IEP and audio recordings.

For many of her primary school years, Ortiz admits, she struggled with behavioral issues, including throwing things in a classroom, screaming and running away. As she’s grown older, Ortiz said, she realized those behaviors were rooted in anger that manifested from an inability to communicate.

Throughout elementary school, Ortiz was often isolated from classmates and engaged in activities that didn’t pertain to learning, including organizing books, sweeping, resting her head on the desk and drawing pictures in the back of the room, she said. Through fifth grade, the only school work she was assigned was tracing letters on worksheets.

“Instead of teaching me, they would tell me ‘Here, you go play games over there.’ And I’d see the other kids and would get angry,” Ortiz said. “I would just look and stare at the other kids doing their work. … It got to a point where I was the bad kid, and it felt good … because even though I was not like the other kids, at least I was something. And that, for me, was what mattered. I was something to someone [even if it meant getting in trouble].”

Ortiz described several instances where she was removed by security guards by force, including a prone restraint practice where she would be forced onto her stomach and a knee was put on her back to the point that, she said, she couldn’t breathe.

Harford Public Schools did not comment on Ortiz’s allegations, but said, in general, “physical intervention and seclusion are only used as a last resort and emergency intervention, by certified personnel, for students, after other verbal and nonverbal strategies have been attempted and only when the student presents immediate or imminent injury to the student or to others.”

Ortiz said that wasn’t her experience.

“Instead of the security guards trying to have a conversation with me, they would literally just remove me by force,” Ortiz said. “I remember the principal came in, and she was like, ‘That’s not how you do it! That’s not how you do it! Check if she has marks.’ … I was traumatized. … and I was [thinking] ‘Wow, this is how America is?’”

When Ortiz began to learn more English skills in third grade, she said, she developed a relationship with a homeroom teacher, but her communication efforts were shut down after hearing educators discuss how they couldn’t understand her.

When another teacher asked the homeroom teacher if they knew what Ortiz was saying, the homeroom teacher responded, ‘Oh, I don’t understand what she’s saying, I just say yes to whatever she says,’ Ortiz said.

“Just because I’m a special education student doesn’t mean I’m deaf … it’s why I stopped talking,” Ortiz said. “Those things made me feel trapped, insecure and everything. I thought I could talk to someone, then that happened.”

In fifth grade, intervention efforts were short-lived because there wasn’t enough extra staff support, Ortiz said, adding that she didn’t receive her first paraeducator until sixth grade and, even then, she spent most of her middle school career without a special education teacher.

By seventh grade, Ortiz recalled that principals said they “shared custody” of her because she spent more time in the front office than a classroom.

“Instead of sending her to class, the principal had her with her all the time,” the paraeducator told the CT Mirror.

That year, Ortiz was in a classroom “not a lot, maybe four times,” she said.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit at the end of Ortiz’s eighth-grade year.

Throughout the summer, preparing for high school, Ortiz went to local libraries and tried to use picture books to teach herself how to read. When she wasn’t successful, she got through online learning during her freshman year with Google Translate, which can scan a photo and read the text out loud.

“The way I did assignments was very difficult. When I was given something to read or write, I would use Google,” Ortiz said. “If the teacher said ‘Aleysha, can you read this aloud?’ … I would turn my computer off and pretend like it died, so I didn’t have to read it. … Or with the camera off, I would repeat [what the translate app said]. That’s literally how I survived ninth grade.”

Sophomore year changed everything.

It was Ortiz’s “first time doing the same work as everybody else,” she said.

“I love learning because I never had the opportunity to learn. People be like, ‘Aleysha, why do you like to go to school all the time?’ And it’s because it’s something new — the amount of times I did the same thing over and over, it’s crazy,” Ortiz said. “Sometimes I do complain, because we learn something new every day and it’s hard to get it, but it’s better than doing the same thing every day.”

Small wins in the classroom built her confidence enough that it allowed her to open up to trusted adults in positions she once felt betrayed by in elementary school. As more people learned her story, a team of staff members gathered behind her and pushed for more services, intervention and support her junior and senior year.

But by then, she was always told any intervention was “too late.”

“Since [my junior year], I told my case manager, I want to learn how to write, and she’d tell me, ‘In college, they don’t do that. They go in there, record and leave, they do the same thing you do,’” Ortiz said. “I’d say ‘Yeah, but I still want to know how to write. It’s my right. I wanted to learn,’ but [I was told] there wasn’t time, and there weren’t teachers to sit down and teach me.”

“There’s a lot of students, and unfortunately, there’s situations like Aleysha, where she has a village behind her, advocating, pushing — and [proper services] still [were] not happening,” the social worker said.

A district’s failure

Ortiz has recorded more than 700 audio files on her phone.

In her last four months in the public school system, more than a dozen of those audio recordings were either PPT meetings, requests for disability testing or administrators reviewing the results of Ortiz’s academic progress with her.

The conversations were often riddled with , with several instances of people speaking over one another or Ortiz leaving the room in tears.

“There was a lot of pushback stating that [the district doesn’t] provide that at the high school level, that they would need to get creative in how they could provide these services to her, and there was always kind of a lingering talk of something would be done, but there was never anything proactive being done,” the social worker said.

Meetings particularly ramped up as Ortiz got closer to graduation and as she was trying to navigate her transition into higher education.

But it always felt like there wasn’t enough time for intervention.

“I feel like right now people are like, ‘Well, she’s graduating,’ and they just move on. They just forget about [what’s happening to me],” Ortiz said in a PPT meeting on May 29. “I’ve been asking, I’ve been doing everything for years and years. I sat here for 12 years. And right now it’s like ‘Well … we should have done this … but we didn’t.’”

One point of contention centered around school-based occupational therapy.

For years, Ortiz had complained of pain in her hand and an inability to hold a pencil for longer than a few minutes. In March, Ortiz’s case manager agreed to consult with an occupational therapist to see what recommendations they had.

But by May 29, district officials declined to have a formal occupational therapy evaluation.

In an emailed statement to the CT Mirror, a spokesperson from Hartford Public Schools said, “If there is no relevant data to support a request for an evaluation, a PPT can determine that a particular type of evaluation is not appropriate at that time.”

“The purpose is to be able to function in a school environment, which Aleysha has been able to do,” a district official said at the May 29 PPT, despite protests from teachers and school staff that Ortiz is only able to perform in a school environment with “incredible difficulty.”

At the meeting, district officials recommended that Ortiz type assignments on a computer going forward.

“People expect me to use a computer for the rest of my life,” Ortiz said.

The underlying concern in all the meetings, in addition to her inability to write, was also the lack of progress in her reading ability.

Ortiz and other staff members repeatedly requested dyslexia testing with the notion that, if she couldn’t receive intervention, then at least having the diagnosis could open the door to more resources after high school.

Those requests were declined by administrators, who instead reviewed previous data, then completed a series of comprehensive testing to “know exactly where we’re at in instruction,” Trenchard said at a meeting on June 13.

In May, Trenchard, the district’s special education administrator, began to review Ortiz’s case. When she went over reading results that were conducted earlier in the school year, she called them “surprising.”

“[The scores] are low low, like they were surprising to me. It would make sense that reading is hard for you, but it looks like things pretty much across the board are hard,” Trenchard said at a meeting on May 20. “You don’t know how to [read, write or do math] because nobody ever taught you. … I wish we met each other earlier … because it bothers me to hear about it and to just see that for years what was missing.”

Trenchard, at a meeting on May 29, said Ortiz’s difficulties in , which are the processes of using letter/sound knowledge to write and read words in a text, could be “symptomatic of dyslexia” but could also be “symptomatic of not having received instruction.”

“And in my review of Aleysha’s IEPs, she was never provided reading instruction,” Trenchard said, adding that she didn’t believe Ortiz was dyslexic because “there are many missing pieces toward even leaning toward that diagnosis.”

Spencer, however, argues that the district violated its legal obligation to provide dyslexia testing because there was a reasonable belief that it could have been an issue.

“If she was showing no reading issues, and all the testing showed she was fine, and she was on grade level, and she just wanted to get the testing — then they could have an argument,” Spencer said. “But, when it’s a suspected area, it must be tested. … There’s no way a reasonable person would have overlooked this.”

Ortiz received a comprehensive reading evaluation on June 6 and scored “very poor” in every category. Ortiz needed to be taught every reading and spelling skill, according to the test results.

And beyond failing to provide basic education, the district may have also failed to provide an appropriate IEP, and with the limited accommodations that were written, they were not consistently implemented or provided, Trenchard said in one of the recordings.

At Ortiz’s last PPT meeting on June 14, just two days before graduation, district officials recommended that she defer her diploma and take 100 hours of reading intervention over the summer at the district’s central office.

Without speaking to Ortiz’s case, Hartford Public Schools told the CT Mirror that recommendations are made “on an individualized basis by the student’s PPT,” and that a student’s exit criteria could be reviewed or revised “up to and including the day of graduation if necessary.”

Ortiz and several of her teachers shared a hesitancy about the deferment plan, especially in regards to uncertainty from the district about who would provide direct instruction to Ortiz if she stayed back amid millions of dollars of budget cuts in the upcoming school year.

“The bigger question is who is doing this? … As of right now, we are working with very minimal staffing, and our special ed staff is doing everything they can, but there’s no one here,” a teacher at the PPT meeting said.

“You can’t require me not to take my diploma and expect me to go along with whatever you say, knowing damn well we don’t have the people here,” Ortiz said at the meeting. “You’re saying we have the teachers training, we have the people here — where are they? If they are here, and they are training, where are they?”

Ortiz was also set to begin a mandatory transition to college program at UConn that ran from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. throughout the summer. The district did not provide any further accommodations or compromise for reading intervention, according to the audio recording of the meeting.

Ortiz ultimately decided to accept her diploma. By the time she had graduated from Hartford Public Schools, she hadn’t been tested for dyslexia and had never received reading intervention.

Systemic shortfalls

At the same time that Ortiz, her advocates and district leaders met about additional accommodations and intervention services, the district also announced a looming  for the upcoming school year.

 200 special education teachers, 360 paraeducators and 150 counselors, social workers and school psychologists were employed across the district’s schools in 2022-23.

At Hartford Public High School, which Ortiz attended, there were 21 special education teachers, 19 paras and about 15 social workers, counselors and school psychologists in . With over 109 students with disabilities enrolled at the school, social workers could be assigned dozens of cases.

“At the end of the 2022-23 school year, we were short-staffed multiple social workers in the building. Myself, alone, was required to service 50 or more students,” said Ortiz’s former social worker, who added that she ultimately left the district because of the workload.

“[A big part of why I left] comes down to not being able to fully provide children with what they need, and becoming a part of the failure,” she said. “I was part of that team of service providers who didn’t always meet Aleysha where she needed perfectly every month. … There were times I wouldn’t see her for two weeks. … It wasn’t fair to her, but due to the system of the school and the district, we did the best we could, but that’s not the answer we should be giving, especially for students like Aleysha.”

Ortiz was assigned a handful of different social workers during her time at Hartford Public High School because of staffing turnover, the social worker said.

“There’s plenty of students who are kind of slipping through the cracks,” she added.

When asked about student-teacher ratios in special education, Hartford Public Schools said “caseloads are specific to each school,” and depends on “each PPT according to each student’s individualized needs.”

With the expiration of federal COVID-19 relief funds in September, the district cut school staff by 8% by eliminating 229 roles, a majority of which were temporary or non-certified employees like social workers, paraeducators, resource teachers, student engagement specialists and family community school support providers who were hired during the pandemic.

Hartford Public Schools, after its final budget passed in July, lost a total of about 30 counselors, psychologists and social workers.

A spokesperson from the district said that paraeducator staffing has increased from 457 in 2023-24 to 460 in 2024-25, with an increase of 44 special education para positions and a decrease of 41 in all other para positions.

Despite the increase, school staff and education stakeholders say they still anticipate drawbacks in the classroom, including a growing difficulty to provide individualized services and larger classroom sizes for already struggling teachers.

Staffing levels at schools are “disconcerting,” Spencer said.

“They were bad before COVID, but they are really bad right now,” Spencer said. “Schools are not implementing IEPs, are not identifying children, they’re not providing the staff that are required, and it is a real crisis.”

A spokesperson from Hartford Public Schools said that “staff turnover for any position causes a ripple effect for schools, not just special education.”

“Hartford Public Schools is actively working to fill special education vacancies via targeted approaches such as building partnerships with universities, cultivating internal pathways for paraeducators interested in becoming teachers, utilizing social media and attending job fairs,” the spokesperson said.

A  from the state Department of Education showed the problem is not just in Hartford but that school staffing shortages are occurring across the state.

Ortiz was front and center in funding advocacy her senior year through letters to the city council, , state Department of Education and a senior capstone project titled “Special Education: A systemic failure.”

“I should have had the help of a special education teacher, a paraprofessional, lessons designed to meet me where I was and challenge me, speech therapy, and occupational therapy. I felt like [no one] cared about my future, because I didn’t receive those supports. I now realize that this was due to a lack of funding and the inability to keep good teachers and staff,” Ortiz wrote to state legislators.

Ortiz told the CT Mirror that she shared her story so her experience doesn’t repeat in other children.

“It’s knowing that more kids are falling through the cracks of the system, and we are still making it seem like everything’s great, that we’re doing better for the next generation, and I always ask ‘When?’” Ortiz said. “The amount of times I would try to look for stories that can relate to me, so I could be like ‘OK, I’m not the only one.’ I would try to do that, I would Google people that went to college and did not know how to read. I couldn’t find anyone. … So maybe if I am the first, and I know I’m not, maybe people can be like, ‘That person made it.’ ”

A few years ago, Dr. Steven Rogers, a physician in the emergency department at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, started a new initiative. He wanted to screen every child age 10 and up who passed through the department for suicide risk. That’s around 15,000 kids a year. 

“There’s lots of stigma around this question,” Rogers said. “I’d rather be able to identify kids who are low risk and need help versus when they’re an imminent risk or have already made an attempt.”  

In Connecticut, 11 children have died by suicide so far this year, nine of those in the past few months. To put that in perspective, just six children 17 and younger died by suicide in all of 2023. 

“I hope this isn’t a canary in the coal mine,” said Gov. Ned Lamont in late August at a roundtable event on youth suicide. 

There were no clusters of deaths, according to the Office of the Child Advocate, and deaths were distributed across the state, as well as among races and genders. The children were between the ages of 13 and 17. 

“We have a problem,” Sarah Eagan, Connecticut’s child advocate, said during the roundtable. She said most children who die by suicide in Connecticut die by asphyxiation, and in recent years, the age of those children is skewing younger. 

“We have work to do,” Eagan said, “and that work is not done until no child is bereft and alone, not knowing where to call, and there is no parent who … can’t sleep not knowing if they’re doing the right thing for their child.” 

For Rogers, the summer’s high numbers were especially hard to take in.

“It feels like a failure, especially for somebody who has committed a good part of their career to identifying kids at risk,” he said. 

Connecticut Children’s effort is just one example of a broadened push to respond to the youth mental health crisis in the state, one that has become increasingly urgent since the COVID pandemic. But even before the pandemic, Rogers was adamant that the screening tool was needed. Suicide is the No. 2 cause of death in children 10 and older, trailing unintentional injuries. 

And so, since August 2019, clinicians have been screening children 10 and older in the emergency department at Connecticut Children’s in Hartford, asking them a series of questions to assess their suicide risk, after their parent or caregiver is asked to leave the room. The process takes less than a minute, Rogers said. 

“Once you screen a kid positive that you didn’t suspect would be positive … I don’t want to be too dramatic and say it’s life-changing, but it is an eye-opener.”

Kids who do screen positive are directed toward appropriate mental health services. For some high-risk children, that might be an inpatient program. For others who are not in immediate danger of self harm, a counseling session or further evaluation might be scheduled in the comfort of their home. 

Of the 75,000 children that the hospital has screened in the past five years, 18% were positive for risk of suicide. That’s nearly 1 in 5 children. Most of those children came to the emergency department for a behavioral health issue in the first place. But an extraordinary number — around 6,000 children — initially came in for a medical issue like an asthma attack or a broken bone and ended up screening positive for suicide risk.

Rogers says he is fighting a perception that simply discussing suicide with children might plant a seed of suicidal ideation. But according to Rogers, this is a misnomer.

“It plants the seeds of hope,” he said.

In fact, he said, the screening tool can at the very least inform children that there is a place they can go that will ask them if they are considering suicide, a place where they can also get help. Because, he said, all too often, caregivers never have these conversations with children at all.

Rogers often thinks about the story of an 11-year-old girl who came to the hospital for a medical issue. To the clinician’s surprise, and to her mother’s, she screened positive for suicide risk. The mom asked her daughter — weren’t they best friends? They were, the girl told her mother. But, the mother said, didn’t best friends tell each other everything? “And she turned to her mother and just said, ‘Well, you never asked.’ “

Christian Sherrill was trying to corral the attention of 150 students wrapping up a classroom activity and chatting with each other about their results. A handful were getting water refills, others were checking their phones.

“If you can hear my voice, clap once,” Sherrill’s voice boomed. A few people clapped, the room quieted slightly. “If you can hear my voice, clap twice.” More eyes turned toward the presentation screen. Most — not all — of the conversations subsided.

The activity was a personal budgeting exercise, and Sherrill’s lively pupils were all teachers themselves, from middle schools and high schools around Connecticut. They’d gathered in a New Haven conference center on a sunny summer day to try out lesson plans, ask questions and gain the confidence they’d need to teach a newly required course to their students: personal financial management and financial literacy.

Gov. Ned Lamont signed  requiring the half-credit course in order to graduate from the state’s public schools. At the time, he called it “one of the most important instructional tools that we can give young people to achieve economic independence and stability throughout their lives.”

In testimony supporting the bill,  noted that many high schools in the state already offered a personal finance course as an elective, and the state Board of Education had  for the program. But none of the schools with courses already on the books were in Connecticut’s largest cities, Russell pointed out, “which only serves to exacerbate gaps in achievement and wealth.”

In the year since the legislation passed, those districts have been working to catch up. 

They’ve received support from nonprofit groups like California-based Next Gen Personal Finance, which offers  and professional development seminars for teachers — like the one in New Haven last week. The organization held 15 such workshops, dubbed “FinCamp,” around the country this summer; Connecticut’s was the largest.

Roughly 60 teachers in attendance received a $500 stipend to be there, funded by a separate nonprofit, Connecticut Financial Scholars. That organization, which started in Philadelphia, recently set up shop in Connecticut, where it’s working to  offerings beyond the semester-long requirement — including things like summer enrichment and entrepreneurship training for students, as well as financial empowerment workshops for parents. The group targets its efforts in lower-income, .

“You have big school districts who have to teach this, and their teachers have never taught this before. That’s a huge access and equity issue,” Nancy Kail, program director for CT Financial Scholars, said. Her organization aims to fill that gap. Kail was on site at the Next Gen Personal Finance “FinCamp” last week to observe and offer teacher support. 

The personal budgeting exercise, a lesson NGPF calls “Budget Frenzy,” kicked off the day’s proceedings.

Each student was told to imagine themself at 22, living with a roommate (some teachers groaned audibly). They were given a personal budget, somewhat arbitrarily, and instructed to decide whether they’d spend that money on a series of 30 items that appeared one after the other on the presentation screen. 

The items ranged from going out to lunch with friends to buying a new smartphone to getting an oil change. And some of them, like the oil change, had more expensive consequences later on in the game if the player had chosen not to spend money on them. 

“Budgeting decisions have consequences,” Sherrill sing-songed as he clicked to the next slide.

After the activity, Sherrill passed the mic around to a few teachers who had ideas about how to customize the game for their students — adding things like streaming subscriptions or going to the nail salon. He showed the teachers where to find materials for the lesson plan on NGPF’s website, along with other lessons in the budgeting module.

Cynthia Lisinicchia, a math teacher at Bridgeport Military Academy, said she was “really interested” in the financial literacy curriculum because she doesn’t want her students to start off on the wrong foot — like she feels she did. Lisinicchia said she signed up for a credit card when she was in college not knowing much about how they worked, and she bought a brand new sports car after graduating without negotiating on the price. 

“All the things I did not know, oh my gosh!” Lisinicchia said. “So I’m always telling my students the key isn’t how much money you make, it’s what you do with the money that you have. You’ve got to start out not making mistakes.”

Lisinicchia and her fellow teachers had the chance to try out another lesson, focused specifically on how credit cards work, later that morning.

NGPF instructor Amanda Volz told the teachers to put themselves in the mindset of one of their students and think of “a big-ticket item” they might want to buy with a credit card, then search the internet to figure out what that item generally costs. Next, using a , they were told to enter the price, the credit card interest rate (Volz suggested 19.9%) and a minimum monthly payment (either 3% of the purchase price or $25, whichever was higher). The tool calculated how much it would cost to pay off that purchase, as well as the difference between that total and the item’s original pricetag.

In the case of the $900 iPhone Volz used as an example, the interest added up to $421. “I hear some reactions to that,” she said, smiling. “And hopefully, maybe your students would have some reactions to that.” Volz then adjusted the monthly payment to $50 and interest dropped to $177. “A little aha moment,” she said. 

Gwen Rice, a math teacher at West Haven High School, chose a pair of $350 Beats by Dre headphones — which she said are popular with her students — and ran the numbers. They would take 17 months to pay off, with $51 in additional interest.

Rice said she has used the tool in her classes before. She’s now developing an “Intro to Investing” course and she’s exploring additional curriculum to integrate into that program.

At a reception following the FinCamp seminar, Treasurer Erick Russell made an appearance and thanked the teachers for their work. He said, for him, the new state requirement was “personal.”

“There are a lot of things I look back on and wish I knew a little earlier. I wish I had courses like this when I was in high school so I didn’t make some of the silly mistakes that many people do. I wish I knew that about compounding interest. I wish I knew about different ways to finance my future education,” he said. 

“There’s a lot that you learn about in school that you kind of finish your class and you’ll never think about it again,” he said. “The tools that you learn around financial education are things that we all use and build on every single day.”

The state Board of Education unanimously approved  Wednesday for how local districts should handle personal technology in schools.

The recommendations suggest heavy restrictions on the use of cellphones at the elementary and middle school levels, with more flexibility for high school students.

“Technology, when used purposefully, can enhance learning and connection, but we must also protect our students from the potential negative impacts of excessive and unrestricted use,” said Erin Benham, acting chair of the state Board of Education. “This policy can help schools strike that balance, supporting students in a way that prepares them for success in learning and in life.”

Elementary schools should “focus on removing cell phones from the classroom to maximize academic, social and emotional development,” with the possibility of “specific procedures for collecting and isolating cell phones upon arrival at school,” according to the guidance.

Similarly, the guidance says the policy for middle schools should also focus on removing cellphones throughout the school day because the age group is “particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of excessive personal technology use and has a difficult time controlling their impulses,” but does not explicitly recommend the collection of cellphones.

“Possession of cell phones in this age group is likely to be viewed as a rite of passage into adulthood, so communication and application of policies that restrict use must be developed in consideration of the specific challenges of middle school students,” the guidance said.

At the high school level, the guidance also recommends restrictive cellphone use, but says students should be able to keep their technology and that it instead should just be turned off and kept out of sight.

“By removing the distraction caused by smartphone use during the school day and fostering a healthy balance with the positive use of technology, we create schools and classrooms that maximize peer-to-peer and student-to-educator interaction, develop social skills in interpersonal communication, and positively impact academic growth and success, all while supporting student mental health,” said state Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker.

The state recommendations come on the heels of months of debate around the country about how to tackle technology in the classroom,  unrestricted phone usage can lead to mental health issues in youth and have a negative impact on brain development.

It’s a distraction issue in the classroom as well, as 33% of K-12  in a Pew Research Center study in fall 2023 said cellphones were a major problem in the classroom.

“Teachers are increasingly competing with cellphones for attention from their students and are seeing more students experiencing mental health crises triggered by their interaction with social media,” said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union. 

Some states like Florida and Indiana have , as others like Washington, Utah, Kansas, Maine and even Connecticut have considered legislation to limit or ban the use of personal technology in classrooms.

Toward the end of his annual State of the State address in February, Gov. Ned Lamont  that kids lock away their smartphones during the school day. The sentiment later prompted the passage of , which required the state Department of Education to develop a model policy on the use of cellphones in schools.

“All too often, our young people find themselves too distracted by their smartphones and disconnected from the reality of what is happening around them, including while in their classrooms, and it’s having negative impacts on their learning and mental well-being. It is crucial that we adopt stronger policies to address this issue head-on,” Lamont said in a news release Wednesday morning. “The state’s guidance provides a clear framework, but it is up to each school district to shape their own policies that meet the needs of their students and communities.”

Districts across the state have already gotten a head start on their policies, with some adopting more conservative measures than others. 

In Torrington, all students are allowed to bring technology into their schools, but at the middle and high school levels it will be locked in district-issued cellphone pouches throughout the entire school day. Elementary school students can keep their phones, but it must “remain completely out of view.”

In Lisbon, meanwhile, cellphones will not be allowed on school grounds for pre-K through fourth grade students. For students in fifth through eighth grades, they’ll be able to store their cellphones and smartwatches in their lockers.

The Connecticut Association of Boards of Education has also expanded an ongoing  document for districts to use and tweak as they develop technology policies that fit their needs.

State board members said at the meeting Wednesday that they expect some pushback from parents and students, but they’re hopeful that the guidance is a framework for ongoing conversations with all stakeholders.

This was originally published on .

When the Dalio Foundation released a report last October about  it said it was just the start of the work to come.

Months later, the , a 15-person group made up mainly of town mayors tasked with coming up with strategies to tackle the problem, is still developing a strategy — and doesn’t have a cost estimate for its efforts.

Still, the group says its “North Star” goal is to get 60,000 at-risk and disconnected youth back on track within the next 10 years.

The first step was bringing awareness to the issue of the growing number of Connecticut youth, from ages 14 to 26, who were judged to be disconnected or at risk of being disconnected from school or employment, based on factors such as chronic absenteeism, behavioral issues, and leaving school without a degree or other path to employment.

The 119K Commission said it plans to release a detailed strategy in October but did not provide further details at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

“This is a process that you have to really get your arms around the scope to make sure that the strategy that you put out will truly move the needle and answer that question of, ‘What would it look like to reduce this population by 60,000?’” Joe DeLong, a commission co-chair and executive director and CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, told The Connecticut Mirror. “It’s such an important measure because there are probably going to be a series of things that we would really like to happen to this strategy that ultimately may not make the cut because, as you put it through those filters, it doesn’t meet that goal.”

DeLong said some initiatives — such as partnerships to work on curriculum changes to keep students better engaged, more community centers for extracurricular programs or more organizations offering wraparound services for struggling students — are being analyzed, but there wasn’t anything set in stone yet.

“The one concept I think that the whole commission has coalesced around from the beginning is that we have to create this young-person, student-centered model in terms of their needs,” DeLong said.

That effort has begun with a listening tour with months of roundtables with youth from Waterbury, Stamford and Bridgeport so far.

Two more meetings are planned in Stratford and Hartford, which would total 200 youth involved in “representing a mix of young people from at risk, to modernly disconnected, to severely disconnected, different ages, genders and race,” and their perspectives, said Josh Brown, a co-chairperson from , a Stamford-based nonprofit that works with disconnected and disengaged youth.

“There are many insights, but there’s six big lessons that we have learned from our young people. One [is that] these young people have dreams, just like all young people. Some of them want to be doctors, real estate professionals, lawyers, entrepreneurs, photographers, police officers and even educators,” Brown said. “Two [is that] charting a path to achieve their goals and dreams is often based on Google. If they’re lucky enough, they’ll have a family friend or somebody that also has experience and go to them as well, but with that being said, in most cases, these young people have to be very self sufficient.”

Students also said youth programs and resources are hard to navigate and that high school can feel like an obstacle when they can’t find transportation to campus, may have to take care of siblings or curriculum may not fit their interests.

“One thing is clear and common: we all heard they’re bored,” Brown said.

Young people lack a sense of community and “there’s scarce access to recreation,” Brown added. “They have cited a wide range of wishes, ranging from questions on how to access nature walks, going to the library on the weekend, or common comments that are limited opportunities — either because they don’t have the money, or … they just don’t know about it,” including weekend activities or sport leagues.

The insight from the community so far has led to four “emerging strategic pillars”: coalition, coordination, conditions and capacity, said Andrew Ferguson, a co-chairperson for Dalio Education, a grant foundation that engages with public school communities and provides funding to several nonprofits.

“These four things are building on some existing efforts in Connecticut, but they’re also helping to build out a lot that doesn’t exist yet,” Ferguson said.

DeLong said more “really deep dives” are needed in the next three months as they finalize their strategic plan.

“There’s areas that we all think are really, really important, but they they need to wait to be explored at a later time, because they won’t be part of this initial strategy that meets the mission,” DeLong said. “[There’s] such a wide and important variety of areas [youth need help in] that go from housing and homelessness to food insecurity to trauma. … We need something that defines actions going forward.”

Editor’s Note: The CT Mirror is a grantee of the Dalio Foundation.

U.S. Sen Chris Murphy visited  Friday to announce newly proposed federal legislation that would invest billions of dollars into free summer programs for kids across the country.

The Hartford camp, which bills itself as the largest and oldest free summer day camp in the country, serves hundreds of children each year. It would be among those that could benefit should the  were to become law.

The measure proposes the creation of two grant programs that would be funded by $4 billion of federal money over the course of four years.

Murphy said that if passed, Connecticut could see about $10 million in funding each year from the legislation. 

“The bill will have two different grant programs, one that will go directly to camps and camps can apply directly to the federal government for dollars to help expand the slots that they have for low-income families,” Murphy said. “The second grant would go directly to states … which they could use in any way they saw fit.”

Murphy called the proposed bill “absolutely critical,” especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic where schools saw high levels of , mental health  and disruptions to socialization.

“Outside experiences, adventure experiences, summer experiences, where you get to improve and enhance your socialization skills, where you get to have your mind opened to new possibilities, new hobbies, new interests — it’s necessary. It’s life changing and often it’s life saving,” Murphy said. “It’s a tough time to be a kid. It’s a tough time to be a parent. So, we have to make sure that when our kids leave school for the summer, they don’t lose access to learning and socialization.”

Murphy was joined by Gov. Ned Lamont at the news conference, who gathered a group of Camp Courant children and asked if they loved their camp and whether “camps like this should be available to everyone.”

The children erupted in screams and nodded their heads.

“What I love about Senator Murphy is that he takes the very best ideas from Connecticut — what we’ve done on gun safety, what we’re doing in our summer learning camps — and makes sure it’s available across this state and hopefully across this country,” Lamont said.

This was originally published in .

However, what would it look like to create a partnership across state lines that is grounded in a community’s history and needs while also incorporating knowledge and support from another region?

That partnership now exists between two organizations – one based in Connecticut and the other in Indiana – to drive an important goal: growing the number of high-quality public charter schools for Connecticut students and families. 

This goal isn’t new for Connecticut. In fact, the state’s charter school law is nearly three decades old, and there are a number of dedicated advocates and organizations who work hard to grow and strengthen public school options for Connecticut families. 

This new partnership, between Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity (LEAD) from Connecticut and The Mind Trust from Indianapolis, was created to add to the growing coalition of community members and leaders who want to see more high-quality public school options in the Constitution State.

LEAD’s work is focused on programs that empower the community, like English as a Second Language classes, youth services, health and financial literacy programs, and more. Its team is passionate about meeting families where they are to give them the resources they need to create a bright future, and LEAD was founded in part to support grassroots advocacy efforts in expanding charter school options — something its leaders continue to hear is needed from the families they work with. 

There is no time to waste in moving the needle on expanding access to high-quality schools. According to a report from the Connecticut Charter Schools Association, during the 2023-2024 school year, more than 5,000 Connecticut students were waiting to enroll in a charter school. Additionally, in the 2022-2023 school year, 95% of all charter schools out-performed schools that serve the same student population in English Language Arts (ELA) and math on the SBAC, Connecticut’s annual state standardized assessment. 

The need and desire for change is growing each year. When LEAD looked at how other states have expanded access, its leaders saw how innovation and strategic investment in proven models and leaders could work. That led the organization to Indiana and The Mind Trust. 

The Mind Trust believes there are three essential elements to a great school: autonomy, accountability, and a leader with the talent to bring a vision of educational excellence to life. Since 2006, the organization has supported the launch of 15 education nonprofit organizations and more than 50 public charter and innovation network schools in Indianapolis that will serve more than 21,000 students when they are at full scale. 

When it first started its charter school growth work in Indianapolis, The Mind Trust set out with the belief that to increase the number of public charter schools in the city it should both build up existing local talent and attract new talent to the city from other regions. Over the years, the resulting initiatives have received over 4,000 applications from education entrepreneurs across 48 states and 36 countries. 

Indianapolis is now proudly home to locally grown networks that have been founded by some of the most qualified and effective school leaders in the country. As a result, researchers from Stanford University, the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Washington have all found that Indianapolis charter schools lead their students to significantly more academic progress than local traditional public schools.

In 2022, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that Indianapolis charter school students achieved 64 more days of learning in reading and 116 days in math, compared to their district school peers. Black students at Indianapolis charter schools had even more significant gains, with 86 more days of learning reading and 144 days in math relative to their district peers. 

In 2023, the University of Arkansas found that Indianapolis, by far, is home to the most cost-effective charter sector in the country for both reading and math. Indianapolis’ charter sector has the largest ROI advantage out of any city in the study. For every dollar invested in Indy charter students’ education, they can expect to earn an average of $4.75 more than their traditional public school peers throughout their lifetime.

Through the new partnership, LEAD and The Mind Trust will work together to create a new locally designed fellowship that will give experienced school leaders the time and resources needed to launch new public charter schools in Connecticut. 

The development of this fellowship must be done alongside families, educators, advocates and community members who have a shared vision for better public education in Connecticut. Leaders at both organizations are committed to listening to and working closely with the community to design this initiative, select fellows, and ensure its outcomes are in line with what is best for Connecticut students and families. 

LEAD and The Mind Trust look forward to collaborating with the vibrant education community in Connecticut. Working together, we can all reimagine what is possible through partnership, innovation, and an unstoppable drive to do what is best for students and families. 

Brandon Brown is CEO of The Mind Trust, an education nonprofit focused on transforming K-12 education in Indianapolis and beyond. 

Lucas Pimentel is the CEO of Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity (LEAD), a nonprofit that works to expand educational options and civic engagement in the state of Connecticut. 

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

The administrators of the Hartford Public Schools system have a problem.

Left with a nearly $37 million budget hole despite pleas for more local and state funding to plug holes left by the expiration of federal pandemic aid, they will, in the coming weeks, sort out the details of eliminating close to 400 positions and decide which programs to cut back this fall.

The Bridgeport school district, on the other hand, will avoid massive layoffs this year — despite the loss of its federal funding — by using most of its roughly $36 million in reserves to help close its own deficits, leaving the district in a precarious position next spring.

New Haven’s school system also will avoid staff cuts this year — although with an expected $12 million deficit, the district will have to make some tough choices in the coming weeks to balance the budget that goes into effect July 1.

Waterbury’s school district, meanwhile, is looking to hire more staff and has sidestepped the problems plaguing the state’s other large urban school districts, mostly by not hiring permanent staff with the millions in federal pandemic aid schools have received over the last several years.

Yet the district conceded it will still have to pull back at some point on COVID-funded programming, as most school districts will, once the money dries up later this year.

Whether it’s the loss of a favorite teacher, cuts to services like tutoring or mental health support, or even the complete shutdown of their school, almost every public school student in Connecticut will feel some type of impact from the expiration of federal pandemic relief funding.

For several years, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, known as ESSER,  to school districts across the country. Beyond investing in academic recovery efforts, schools have also used the funds for innovative teaching programs, school upgrades and temporary contracts to fill staff vacancies. The expiration of the funding on Sept. 30 is  that are expected to lose between hundreds of thousands up to tens of millions of dollars.

In Connecticut, urban hubs have already been , and now they’re also most likely to bear the brunt of a painful transition period with budget deficits that may climb upward of $40 million in upcoming academic years.

“This and next year are going to be particularly hard. There’s not enough funding coming in from either the state or local level to make up the difference of expiring federal aid, so as a result you’re going to see either staffing cuts or programmatic cuts,” said Michael Morton, the deputy executive director for communications and operations at the , a nonprofit policy organization. “You’re going to see that in [all] districts, but the hit’s particularly hard in urban districts that .”

Hartford public schools received over  and are facing a $36.8 million budget deficit this fall as the money runs out. That equates to the potential elimination of nearly 400 positions, the possibility of nine school consolidations and program reductions to things like initiatives that targeted getting chronically absent students back into the classroom.

Problems on top of problems

The expiration of ESSER funds is another hit to Connecticut urban school districts that have already faced decades of funding woes.

“When we look at the problems that districts are facing for budgets, yes, a big part of that is the expiration of ESSER funds. A big part of that [also] is higher student needs where there’s more students who are coming to school living in poverty. There’s more students who are multilingual learners and need additional supports. There are more students who need special education services — that all adds up,” Morton said. “But what the root problem is, is the systemic inequities that have gone on for generations and generations and generations.”

Local municipalities account for  of their public school funding, so the underfunding of city districts was inevitable after being plagued with limited taxable property in addition to the concentration of low-income households.

In 2019, the state government created a  in which, on top of a flat block grant, districts could receive additional state aid based on student need, including extra support for low-income and multilingual learners.

In recent years, education has become a top priority for “,” Education Committee co-chair Rep. Jeff Currey told The Connecticut Mirror earlier this year.

This prioritization led to legislation that  of the Education Cost Sharing , which is how the state distributes funding to school districts. Other legislation also  how much a public school district has to pay in tuition expenses to magnet schools when a student enrolls. The magnet school tuition cap is expected to save local districts millions of dollars.

The efforts are expected to increase overall revenue in most Connecticut school districts and allow those with high enrollment numbers in magnet schools to net savings.

In Waterbury, the district won’t have any cuts into the upcoming school year, thanks to savings they’re anticipating from the magnet tuition cap and a $19.2 million increase of state grant money, Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski told the CT Mirror.

Despite existing efforts, superintendents and city leadership from Waterbury, Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, state lawmakers and other education stakeholders all agree that the conversation and recent investments toward making Connecticut schools more equitable is just beginning.

Next year, several stakeholders plan to push for the state to fully fund choice schools rather than leaving the burden to fall on public school districts. There’s also advocacy for including special education as a weight in the school funding formula and the expansion of the  because cities disproportionately have tax-exempt properties, and property taxes pay for schools.

But before looking to the 2025 legislative session, districts have to focus on their budgets now.

The CT Mirror spoke with education leaders in the state’s four biggest districts about how they plan to move their schools forward with already historic underfunding, in addition to navigating a major cut in revenue.

Hartford: Nearly $37M deficit will mean hundreds of staffing cuts

Hartford public schools may be the worst off district in the state, making  for a $36.8 million deficit and the possible elimination of 384 positions in the budget that goes into effect July 1.

Of those roles, over 230 were temporary contracts funded by federal relief dollars. 

Temporary positions included social workers, paraeducators, resource teachers, student engagement specialists and family community school support providers.

The district also plans to remove 84 job vacancies and is planning for dozens of layoffs of both non-certified and certified staff, but the situation remains fluid as the numbers haven’t accounted for retirement and resignation notices yet.

Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez says she’s aware of the criticism over how the one-time funds were spent on staffing, but she said it was the right move for the district and its needs.

“What else was I going to invest in?” Torres-Rodriguez told the CT Mirror. “We had investments in HVAC systems, and curriculum, and things that are going to be with us for the long term, but our students needed to get caught up — to recover academically, emotionally. Our educators needed support. We needed to leverage the resources that way.

“If I had the money and the money came tomorrow, and we had the need, I would do it all over again,” Torres-Rodriguez said.

The district’s central office is expected to decrease staffing by about 16.5%. Meanwhile, school staff reductions are estimated at about 11.2%.

Despite a massive staffing overhaul and program reductions, Torres-Rodriguez said “art, music and athletics will be guaranteed at our schools,” and that there aren’t any plans to reduce success centers at the district’s comprehensive high schools, which provide additional support to help students graduate.

“We’re seeing great progress in our students that were either disengaged, needed additional time or smaller settings of support,” Torres-Rodriguez said, hopeful that this June the district may see its highest ever graduation rate thanks to investments from the COVID-19 funding.

In a presentation to the state Board of Education’s accountability and support committee in mid-May, Torres-Rodriguez acknowledged that COVID-19 funding is a “present issue,” but “it is long-term fiscal challenges that necessitate significant change in how we operate.”

“This is a really complex layer after layer,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “There’s the flat stagnant funding [from the city], then you overlay the school choice ecosystem, then you overlay declining enrollment, then you overlay the higher concentration of need that exists in communities that have been under-resourced, then you overlay the fact [the increase of] our special education rates. … When you look at these things long enough, you begin to see patterns [of inequities] and the root causes of it.”

Since 2018, the city of Hartford’s contribution has remained around $95 million, despite increasing expenses for things like special education, declining populations in traditional public schools but higher enrollments in choice schools (which means a larger amount of the budget being paid into tuition) and inflation in general.

“Any revenue that we would have from students that come to us from other districts, we just funnel it right back out,” Torres-Rodriguez said, adding that she hopes the state considers a better reimbursement model for districts with large populations of high-need students and with high concentrations of choice schools.

For weeks, advocates have organized rallies, protests and groups to speak at public meetings to criticize an increased budget for law enforcement while the school system has received flat funding and continues to struggle.

The city’s budget, approved on May 21, increased funding for the police department by 3.4%. 

“It’s a sure sign of systemic racism that the city whose demographics are predominately Black and brown chooses to prioritize policing them rather than educating them,” said Adam Bulmash, a Hartford resident, social worker and member of the Hartford Jewish Organizing Collective at a city budget public hearing in May. “This is not how you improve our city. We know for a fact that these cuts are going to result in fewer teachers, overflowing classrooms, poor learning outcomes and inattentive care for our higher-need students.”

The efforts helped the district’s projected revenue increase from $429 million to $435 million after the state contributed an additional $5 million and the city absorbed a $1 million expense for crossing guards.

Future conversations within Hartford Public Schools about sustainability will start to shift and focus on school consolidation and program innovation.

The superintendent said the district needs to “take into consideration the entire ecosystem,” which means shifting resources to make sure schools are balanced — particularly looking at elementary and middle schools that have enrollments of 320 or fewer students and considering the closure of nine schools.

“There’s less economy of scale that way where with [a higher number of schools] we’re less able to offer more,” Torres-Rodriguez said, adding how  considered how schools within the district had significant disparities in the number of course offerings, after-school programs and other resources.

“Right-sizing [isn’t] just about what we could save, to put back into the budget and mitigate, it’s also about having to do right by all of our students. We have to have opportunities and conditions for all of our students to have access,” Torres-Rodriguez said.

Bridgeport: Draining its reserves to close a deficit

The Bridgeport Public Schools system has balanced a $309 million budget entering the 2024-25 school year after addressing a $41 million deficit with new revenue from additional state grants and the magnet school tuition cap, closing vacant positions and draining its reserves.

The question now becomes whether Bridgeport is prolonging what many believe is an inevitable fiscal cliff, which could mean an approximately 10% budget reduction in FY2026, according to Joseph Sokolovic, a longtime member of the Bridgeport Board of Education and former board finance chair.

“We’re going to exhaust our entire internal service fund this year, our internal savings and the fiscal cliff will hit in ’25-26,” Sokolovic said. “We got 12 to 15 years of escalating costs in the normal course of business, plus we got the ESSER funded positions that we’re keeping that we did not have prior to ESSER … so we’ll have approximately $39 million of need for next year with no savings to cover if all things remain equal … as far as increased funding.”

Sokolovic is anticipating more school closures and staff cuts in the 2025-26 school year.

Despite requesting an increase of $16 million, the district is receiving only $3 million more from the city than the previous year, bringing the city’s total contribution to $78.5 million in 2024-25. The district is also anticipating a $9.2 million increase from the state and $700,000 of savings from the magnet school tuition cap.

“Unfortunately, it’s not enough to prevent the upcoming fiscal cliff, which we expect to occur in fiscal year 2026,” said Patricia St. Louis, the district’s interim chief financial officer at a local board of education facilities and finance committee meeting on May 20.

The district is anticipating to close this fiscal year with a $6 million to $8 million shortfall and will use some of its roughly $36 million of reserves to balance its existing FY24 budget.

District leaders initially planned to withdraw another $12.8 million from the reserves fund if its municipality contributed the full $16 million request. However, with only $3 million of that request being allocated to the district, it plans to withdraw even more.

The district, between balancing the FY24 and FY25 budgets, plans to strip about $32 million out of its reserve fund.

“This will leave us with only $4.5 million in fiscal year ’26 to rely on,” St. Louis said, adding how that’s the required minimum amount to have in the account. “It is projected that that operating budget gap will reemerge due to historical underfunding in the Bridgeport operating budget.” 

Trying to get ahead of the deficit, Superintendent Carmela M. Levy-David said the district has “identified many areas when it comes to instructional resources where we can save a great deal of money” at a board of education meeting in late May.

It starts with her commitment to the school district, where she said she intends to stay for several years to come.

“I am the fifth superintendent in seven years. … School districts that have constant superintendent turnover will have higher rates of chronic absenteeism, higher rates of student failure, higher rates of financial insufficiency and higher rates of attrition with their staff,” Levy-David said. “We have to begin by right-sizing and stabilizing the way that we do organizational leadership in Bridgeport, the way we use the resources that we already have, the way that we use the funds that we are given differently so that we are not constantly in a spending and rescue mode that has been the culture of Bridgeport for the last 20 years.”

Equitable staffing is next.

“We don’t staff based on the needs of the school or based on the level of challenges and issues that are apparent in the school. Everybody gets the same no matter what, and that is not a formula for success. That is not the way that it has been done in the last 10 years in successful school districts,” Levy-David said. “Those are things that we now have to actualize and modernize in Bridgeport in order to stay with the trends that actually help to improve our retention of quality staff and also our ability to ensure that the systems that we build are scalable and sustainable.”

As for its funding woes, Levy-David said the district has recently hired a grant writer to capitalize on its high enrollment of multilingual and learners with special needs. 

“We qualify for everything, but we have simply not been competing for very substantial educational grants at the state and federal level,” Levy-David said, adding that the district also hopes to decrease its special education costs through more efficient transportation that could net savings in excess of $10 million.

“The systems that we’re putting in place are going to ensure that we can stabilize and actually lead this district to a completely new era of stability for the next 10 years. I have committed to being in this district for a decade,” Levy-David said. “I believe that this work is attainable. … We know the process of transforming school systems into being successful solvent school systems. We just need the opportunity to do the work.”

New Haven: Anticipates $12 million deficit, but no layoffs on the table

Unlike several of its urban counterparts, the New Haven Public Schools system hasn’t seen a history of flat-funding from its municipality — which plans to invest a total of about , a $5 million increase into the school system.

But the school district requested $77.6 million, or a $16.8 million increase, which is an amount some stakeholders say was simply to “keep the lights on” and maintain its current operations. The difference would leave the district with a $12 million deficit in its $345.5 million budget for the upcoming school year.

“It’s going to put us at a distinct disadvantage as we’re preparing for the upcoming school year and beyond. … We know that with increased need comes a need for an increased budget, and now is the time to ensure students have what they need. Now is not the time to fall backwards,” said Leslie Blatteau, union president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers. “[Our superintendent’s] proposed budget was going to keep the lights on. I suspect there are going to be hard decisions that are going to have to be made if we end up with the status quo of the mayor’s proposed $5 million.”

Blatteau, joined by several other educators and students, rallied on May 24 for the full funding of their school district to particularly target an increase of multilingual learners and student mental health needs as well as making upgrades to school facilities.

Even facing a multimillion-dollar deficit, Blatteau and Mayor Justin Elicker both told the CT Mirror that cuts to certified staff are not on the table.

The district didn’t allocate much of its federal relief funding to full-time staffing because “we anticipated this problem and didn’t want to face a cliff where all of a sudden we would lose funding and have to do layoffs,” Elicker said, adding there were some hires to part-time and supplemental staff. 

Other relief funds went to infrastructure improvement and the expansion of the district’s summer school and after-school programming, which will likely be reduced as the money runs out.

“We [funded things like] dropout prevention specialists that go out in the community and identify why students aren’t in school and try to get them in school,” Elicker said. “If we go in the wrong direction by cutting after school programs and other initiatives, … we’re gonna have even more problems. What we need to do is just the opposite — it’s to have more supports for our young people.”

Elicker acknowledged that “public school needs is well above” what the district is asking for in its budget but said that the tax base model makes it difficult for the city to invest further.

“We’re spending much less per child than many districts out there,” Elicker said. “With a tax base where effectively half of our properties in New Haven are non-taxable, we’re relying on people that are not wealthy to fund our schools. We struggle to collect taxes.”

In an effort to make up extra revenue, Elicker said, the city is raising taxes by 4%.

The district also is analyzing its transportation costs and working on the “right-sizing of our classrooms” by balancing school enrollment better with “slightly higher teacher-to-student ratios,” Elicker said.

District leadership also plans to “explore the potential of school consolidations” in 2025-26.

Waterbury: A balanced budget and looking to hire

Waterbury is entering the 2024-25 school year with a different problem than that shared by Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven.

“There’s no fiscal cliffs here,” Pernerewski, the city’s mayor, said.

Despite flat-funding from the city since 2017, the district has balanced a budget of around $295.5 million that’s being carried by increases in state funding, , which are the lowest-performing districts in the state.

“For FY25, the City expects to receive an ECS grant in the amount of $190.4 million based upon the State’s FY24-25 Adopted Biennial Budget,” . “This is $19.2 million more than the anticipated FY24 ECS grant. The non-restricted portion of the ECS money reflected in the General Fund is $113.6 million. This base amount has remained stable for many years. The Alliance portion of the grant, which is awarded directly to the Board of Education, is expected to be $76.7 million.”

The district isn’t considering any type of staff reduction or school consolidations but is rather looking to hire and expand.

“We need about 100 more teachers in Waterbury, and not that we’re hoping anybody faces fiscal problems, but I think there’s a part of us that thinks that if some school districts are laying off teachers, we may be able to benefit from that and that we can try to hire some of those teachers here,” Pernerewski said.

Waterbury’s ESSER funding was mainly spent on “larger capital projects,” like HVAC systems, school renovations and playground updates, Pernerewski said. 

“Waterbury has done a really good job of being very prudent with its ESSER dollars,” Pernerewski said. “What we did was avoided bonding in a lot of cases over the years from projects that needed to get done, and we’re able to use those dollars for that, which was the savings, because we don’t have the bonding costs moving forward.”

The district also used a “considerable amount” of its budget to focus on “academic acceleration” and tackling anticipated learning gaps from remote learning. These initiatives included access to 24/7 tutoring, Superintendent Verna Ruffin said.

The district has no plans to “eliminate” those programs either, though there may be some reductions in the 2025-26 school year to the tutoring program, socio-emotional support and other COVID-funded initiatives.

“We’re looking to see if [we] can get grants to sustain some of the programs that we started,” Ruffin said, adding that there will not be any type of reductions to special education, pre-K, kindergarten or bilingual programming services.

Advocacy efforts at the state level

There was no right way to use ESSER funding, Morton said.

“I think in everything that we’ve looked at, districts have spent the resources in a way that they thought was best to address the needs of the student population that they have — and that’s going to differ from district to district,” Morton said.

The conversation will soon shift back to lawmakers and what the state can do to continue pushing its historically underfunded districts forward.

For Rep. Maryam Khan, who represents parts of Hartford, Windsor and South Windsor and serves on the Education Committee, there are three funding priorities on her agenda that are “rooted in discrimination” and that she hopes to change.

Khan said much of urban schools’ budgets go toward paying tuition for sending students to choice schools, particularly magnet schools. She hopes initiatives this year will put those fiscal responsibilities on the state.

“The state has created these choice schools, and if the state has created them, the state should fund them and not put that burden on the town and cities to fund them,” Khan said. “We really, really have to start looking at that equitable distribution of resources.”

Khan and Rep. Ron Napoli, D-Waterbury, both touched on the cost of special education, which is one of the highest costs for school budgets, but receives limited or no reimbursement from the state.

There’s a push from advocates for the state to provide an extra weight for school districts so they can receive more funding when they have high enrollments of students with disabilities.

“[Special education] is something that we will always look at and try to find a way to get districts to a better place and making sure that school districts are reimbursed so our special needs students can really get the services they need,” Napoli said.

“Most states do have funds for special education and reimbursement. I think we’re one of the only two states that don’t have any room for special education costs,” Khan said. “This is going to be of the biggest things I know I’m going to be pushing for.”

Khan also mentioned expanding the PILOT program that sets payments for tax-exempt land owned by the state.

“That’s one thing that I really want to look at beyond just education. Our cities need more revenue, and they are losing revenue because so many things are non-taxable [like hospitals, schools and churches],” Khan said.

Education Committee members Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, and Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, did not respond to requests for comment about their districts’ funding struggles or initiatives for the upcoming legislative session.

In the 2022-23 school year, student expulsions in Connecticut increased by over 31% compared to the 2018-19 pre-pandemic year.

Out-of-school suspensions increased by 14.4% statewide in that same time frame. 

And on average, one in every 14 children received a suspension or expulsion — with that number being disproportionately higher for Black students (1 in 7) and Latino students (1 in 11) when it came to suspensions,  from the state Department of Education.

The department also says that suspension rates in middle schools are “substantially greater than pre-pandemic levels.”

The numbers may change on an annual basis, but the story isn’t new as some lawmakers, like Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, say the data shows a 30-year trend of “who’s being penalized … punished [and] who doesn’t have the resources to financially support a proper education.”

“The system is set up by the time these children end up in a public school system to the time they exit out. And many of them are exiting out by the third grade. They exit out mentally by third grade. They’re disconnected literally by the third grade,” McCrory said. “The reality is we want to fix this situation and put the tools in place for the educators and administrators to fix the situation — not to continue to put kids out at a very early age.”

, an act concerning school discipline, passed out of the Education Committee last week on a vote of 31-13 with proposals that would require services for the youngest children who receive out-of-school suspensions and continues work from last year  survey data.

Young learners

Existing legislation says that schools may impose out-of-school suspensions for third through 12th graders if the student poses a danger or “disruption of the educational process.” It also says administrators may suspend a child if there’s evidence of previous disciplinary problems and if other efforts to address the behavioral concerns are not working. Younger learners, from pre-school through second grade, may be suspended for conduct “of a violent or sexual nature.”

The proposed bill strips out the language describing some of the youngest learners as “violent” or “sexual in nature,” after several people in public testimonies questioned children’s understanding of that type of behavior, especially when they’re under the age of 8.

“The current state law says that children this young can be suspended if their behavior is violent or sexual in nature and I think that language is extremely problematic when we are describing the behavior of the very young. It may be out of control, it may even hurt someone, which is not OK, but we cannot have the laws of our state characterize the behavior of very young children in quasi-criminal terminology,” said Sarah Eagan, Connecticut’s child advocate. 

The bill substitutes that language for “behavior that causes serious physical harm,” and requires that these students receive services that are “trauma-informed and developmentally appropriate.” 

After concerns about defining what “serious physical harm,” would mean, Rep. Jeff Currey, the House co-chair of the Education Committee, said there’s room to “tighten language,” of the bill as it moves forward. 

The legislation would also limit out-of-school suspensions for pre-K through second grade students to two school days.

“It would be our strong recommendation that the state not permit suspension for children in pre-K through second grade for a number of reasons: it doesn’t teach them anything; too harmful; probably worsens the behaviors that folks are trying to address; it disrupts the trusting relationship between a very young child and school. We can’t change young children’s behavior through shame and ostracization,” Eagan said, adding that although the bill doesn’t ban suspensions for these students it “does further the roads toward limiting the use of suspension.” 

State data shows since 2018-19, the number of suspensions, both in-school and out-of-school, have declined for pre-K through second graders by 32.6%, but still about 800 students received sanctions in 2022-23. Of those 800 pre-K through second grade students, 304 were Latino, 212 were white and 182 were Black.

School climate

Last year, an  passed with bipartisan support that tackled a handful of issues including the creation of school climate standards based on , the creation of a bullying complaint form and of several new practices for local implementation. 

Legislators are building on those efforts this session, as SB 380 will require schools to develop standards for their school climate surveys that must include data on “diversity, equity and inclusion and for the reduction in disparities in data collection between school districts, develop a model school climate improvement plan and perform other functions concerning social and emotional learning and fostering positive school climates,” according to language in the bill.

“The bill … [will allow] the state to compare the information collected from school climate surveys, detect when schools are struggling to create safe and positive school climates, and assist schools in their efforts to work toward safe and positive school climates,” said Lauren Ruth, a research and policy director at  in  of the legislation. “Until there is greater uniformity across survey questions and collection methods, these surveys provide little meaning and are not useful for identifying and utilizing the best practices of schools that display high student and parent satisfaction.”

The legislation also includes provisions that would allow school climate specialists to incorporate improvement plans and will require the state Department of Education to appoint a director of school climate improvement and report “the number of acts of bullying based on a student’s membership in a ,” which could include things like race or national origin.

In the 2022-23 school year, there were over  of bullying across the state, an increase from approximately 800 the year prior, though the state said “students attended school in-person to varying degrees; some learned fully/mostly remotely for the entire school year,” because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

SB-380 also included provisions that revised district notification procedures when a student is arrested and updated school resource officer reporting requirements.

This was originally published on CT Mirror.

A bipartisan group of Connecticut lawmakers wants to use state money to seed and sustain a trust fund designated solely to cover early childhood education.

The proposal, , would direct an initial $50 million in bond funding and up to $50 million more from the state’s projected budget surplus this fiscal year into the Early Childhood Care and Education Fund. Private donations, local and federal grants and other public and private contributions could augment the fund, which would be overseen by an advisory commission of state officials, child care industry leaders and representatives from industry and philanthropic organizations, among others.

State Rep. Kate Farrar, D-West Hartford, said H.B. 5002 builds on the recommendations of a Blue Ribbon Panel convened by Gov. Ned Lamont last year, which produced a  for the state’s child care system.

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“It proposes to transform this work … with public and private investments and create a structure that ensures we have funding now and into the future,” Farrar said at a press conference at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford on Thursday.

But Beth Bye, commissioner of the state’s Office of Early Childhood, raised concerns about the bill — specifically a section calling on the trust fund’s advisory commission to develop a 10-year plan for child care spending and legislative changes to support the system.

“The Blue Ribbon five-year plan provides a vision for Connecticut’s child care infrastructure that will improve access to quality care for thousands of families through efforts aimed at affordability, stabilizing and expanding child care businesses, and improving the quality of programs,” Bye said in written testimony. “The plan was informed by thousands of providers, parents, businesses, and interested residents and evolved significantly. … A new planning process would simply be duplicative of this valuable work.”

Bye also pointed out that an Early Childhood Education Fund already exists, established by the legislature last year, and the fund is permitted to receive philanthropic donations to support early childhood education.

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon, whose office oversees the trust fund, said there is currently no money in that fund. He said he supports the proposal to seed the fund with public money and establish a commission to oversee it. (Scanlon would serve as co-chair of that commission.)

“Part of the rationale for doing this is that wealthy people and foundations don’t just give money to things that have no structure to them and no game plan,” Scanlon said. “The bill does put some seed money into this, but the goal is that both the legislature and private donations would bolster that fund to get to a sufficient point where we could actually do things in the governor’s Blue Ribbon plan that cost a lot of money.”

At the press conference, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said the trust fund won’t solve Connecticut’s child care crisis right away.

“You have to make down payments,” he said. “You have to make incremental progress by putting more money into that trust fund and growing it.”

Ritter suggested a few ways the state could contribute to the fund on an annual basis: by pledging the interest from the budget reserve fund each year; by designating a portion of any budget surplus; or by agreeing to match private donations up to a certain dollar amount each year.

“There are creative ways to do it, but it’s going to take a little bit of time to work it out,” he said. “We can’t just write a check for $2 trillion and fund it forever in perpetuity, but we can begin to make down payments on it.”

The advisory commission would be tasked with developing those creative solutions.

Later in the day Thursday, Jacob Vigil of New Mexico Voices for Children, a child advocacy and economic policy group, testified before the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee about his state’s early childhood trust fund, which was . The fund started with $300 million in seed money, and the state designated a portion of surplus oil and gas revenues to sustain the trust fund each year.

“Over the course of, really, a short period of time, the balance of the fund increased dramatically and was estimated by our state legislative economist to sit at over $5 billion dollars going into the 2024 legislative session,” Vigil said.

He called the program “nothing short of generational transformation.”

Committee Co-chair State Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, expressed wariness toward such a large investment of limited state dollars. “We have a tendency, if not a general belief, that by [adding] another program or money that we’re going to be able to address the same challenges,” Fonfara said. “I am not questioning the desire or the commitment but what it will really take to get these children, who need it the most, a shot in life.”

Georgia Goldburn, a former elementary school teacher who now runs child development center Hope for New Haven, stepped up to testify following Fonfara’s comments, and she offered an analogy. Goldburn said if someone was building a house, it wouldn’t be smart to spend only 10% on the construction and keep 90% to fix whatever breaks.

“That is what Connecticut has been doing. That’s why we cannot get the results that we need,” Goldburn said. “Instead of taking 10%, or a minimal amount of money, to build a brain at the most critical time for lifelong learning, we [would be] investing significantly more in these early learning years. So that the remediation that we have to do — in special education or the prison pipeline — all of those things will be deemed moot.

Hundreds of Connecticut special education students who have attended  have been subjected to restraints and seclusion, teachers without certification and improper services, according to a scathing report released Tuesday by the Office of the Child Advocate and Disability Rights Connecticut.

In one academic year, there were more than 1,200 reports of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools, the report states.

Connecticut Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said a two-year investigation of six schools in Hartford, New London, Wallingford and other towns found “an alarming lack of oversight, systemic failings and often flagrant disregard for statutory requirements and state standards that protect the educational rights and safety of children.”

“Practices routinely fall short of state laws, education regulations, best practices, or all three. Changes need to be put in place without delay,” Eagan said.

High Road is one of the Connecticut’s largest state-approved private special education providers, and it primarily serves children from low-income school districts and receives millions in public funds annually, according to the report. 

The 57-page report said the state Department of Education, along with the school districts that sent students to High Road schools, failed to visit the campuses regularly and did not ensure compliance with the federal . 

“Many of the students at High Road Schools were grossly underserved both in terms of educational planning and service delivery,” the report said. “The investigation revealed widespread student disengagement and chronic absenteeism across High Road locations, failure to adequately assess and support students’ educational needs through individualized service delivery and perhaps most alarmingly, gross deficiencies in the number of certified special education teachers and other credentialed educational staff working with children and systemic failure to ensure and/or document that staff had undergone employment checks and criminal and child welfare background checks.”

About 316 students were enrolled at six of eight High Road schools in Connecticut during the 2021-22 academic year, with the student body being made up of about 80% boys and 70% students of color from across 38 Connecticut school districts.

Eighty High Road students, or about 25%, were outsourced from Hartford Public Schools, making the capital city’s public school district the “largest district consumer of High Road services,” according to the report.

The state Department of Education said it “vigorously disagree[d] with the conclusions” of the report, adding that the department has been, and is, “attentive to concerns that are brought forth to the State’s attention and engages in off cycle monitoring reviews.”

“During the period of investigation, from 2022 through February 2024, the CSDE received no complaints from parents, from guardians, from students, from attorneys, from parent advocates, or from local or regional school districts regarding High Road schools,” a spokesperson from the department said. “Of note, the CSDE’s Special Education Division annually receives approximately 1,000 filings in the form of hearing requests, mediation requests, or compliance complaints, yet during the period of time covered in the OCA/DRCT Report, not one of those thousands of filings pertained to High Road schools.”

A spokesperson from High Road told The Connecticut Mirror in an emailed statement that the report did “not accurately reflect the academic and behavioral supports at our schools” and that “over the course of two years, High Road Schools provided comprehensive responses that outlined these inaccuracies, as well as highlighted the specific improvements we implemented as part of this process.”

OCA, , and DRCT, , investigated the following campuses: High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle, High Road School of Hartford High School, High Road B.E.S.T. Academy of Wallingford, High Road School of Fairfield County in Norwalk, High Road School of New London and High Road School of Windham County in Killingly from March 2022 to March 2024 through a series of reviews of educational files, classroom observations and interviews. 

DRCT also visited High Road School of Wallingford Primary School and High Road School of Wallingford High School but did not collect data or records, the report states.

Restraint and seclusion 

Connecticut leads the country in its placement of students with disabilities in “separate schools,” according to the report. 

Most are students of color.

In 2021-22, there were more than 1,200 reported incidents of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools. Nearly 550 of those incidents were reported from High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle School, the report states.

“It is concerning that students would be isolated in such a manner and with such frequency. Isolation without adequate and required efforts to address students’ needs also raise serious legal questions under the ADA,” the report said, adding that students were often taken out of classrooms into “time-out rooms” where they weren’t allowed to leave.

Jennifer Hoffman, assistant superintendent for special education and pupil services in Hartford, said  responding to the report that the district has worked OCA and DRCT to continue working toward becoming a “trauma-responsive system” and is in “collective acknowledgment that more works needs to be done, between external systems, to reduce the stressors for families that are sending students to school.”

Hoffman’s letter highlighted efforts to expand special education services and monitoring and oversight of students.

The district declined to provide further comment when contacted by the CT Mirror.

Staffing problems

The investigation found that almost half of the teachers employed at High Road did not have adequate teacher certification from the state of Connecticut or did not undergo proper background checks.

The report found that:

• “In the Windham County Program, 6 out of 8 educational staff had not had DCF background checks;
• In the New London Program, High Road failed to demonstrate that it had verified employment histories, including any concerns of prior student maltreatment, as required by state law;
• In the Fairfield County Program, High Road had not conducted a DCF or employee background check for approximately half of the staff;
• At Hartford-Primary, High Road had not conducted a DCF background check for approximately half of the staff;
• At Wallingford-BEST program, High Road conducted background checks for the majority, but not all of staff working with children.”

The report also said that the Department of Education had previously found that High Road “had not been consistent in conducting background checks” but never followed up.

“State records do not indicate further follow up by CSDE to ensure that corrective actions were implemented and sustained. OCA/DRCT’s investigation found that despite previous complaints, warnings, and directives and despite clear state law obligations and even contractual requirements … High Road failed to demonstrate that it consistently conducts background checks for employees working with children,” the report said.

The report added that school administrators “did not communicate staffing gaps to [local educational agencies]” and that data from both High Road and the state Department of Education “reflect a high vacancy rate for certified special education teachers and lack of adequate documentation for substitute teachers and individuals with ‘durational permits,’” including a “heavy reliance on long-term substitute teachers” who may not be “appropriately credentialed and approved” by the state.

There was also no documentation of physical education, art or music teachers at these schools. Nurses were not employed at all buildings, according to the report. 

Lack of individualized programming in the classroom

The report highlighted several deficiencies with student individualized education plans, or IEPs, and a lack of , which are used to determine the cause of certain behaviors and how to address them.

An analysis of 30 student records showed “little evidence … of individualized instruction, and general program descriptions refer only to a curriculum comprised of ‘four instructional rotations during which students are assessed academically, gain self-regulation skills, learn with district-aligned academic curriculums and utilize integrated technology,’” the report said.

“Records examined included inconsistent information, lacked evidence of comprehensive evaluations, individualized or personalized instructional or behavioral strategies, and did not indicate that progress or failure to progress were regularly reviewed within programs. Across sites there was an apparent lack of access to related services such as clinical/psychological consultation or service,” the report continued, adding that several campuses did not have occupational and speech language therapy “consistent with descriptions of students’ previous developmental, social/emotional, or educational histories.”

The investigation also found that “almost none of the students” received functional behavioral assessments (FBAs) or behavior intervention plans (BIPs) at several campuses. 

Nor did the schools have a board-certified behavior analyst on staff.

“High Road locations all employ school social workers and offer individual and/or group counseling. However, out of 30 student records reviewed by investigators, there were only two BIPs,” the report said. “Student data and individual student records also indicate frequent use of restraint and seclusion without adequate evaluation and response.”

The report illustrated several instances where students required behavioral help, but there was “little to no individualization.” It also illustrated when student behavioral needs were ignored and played out in the child’s academics later.

“Student A was placed at the Hartford Primary-Middle School program in Grade 3, at age 10, with a BIP created at his previous public school. Yet a program review later that year indicated he was performing below grade level due to a lack of access to education based on extended timeouts, raising questions about the degree to which his BIP was reflective of his current needs,” the report said. “In additional, Student A had multiple absences, slept for the whole day on multiple days waking only to eat lunch, and had significant academic delays. … Complex academic/behavioral/disengagement issues persisted from enrollment at High Road for 7 years without his needs being properly addressed.”

Other examples included a student who had 70 timeouts and seven restraints in her first year at High Road and a student with 69 restraints over a 15-month period and no BIP in his record. 

Disengaged students, unclear path forward

Almost 40% of students enrolled at High Road schools had 18 or more absences from school. Over 25% missed over 25 days of instruction, and 10% of all students missed over 50 days, according to the report.

But for students in the classroom, there were several instances where investigators “saw multiple students who were sleeping for prolonged periods during class and students who were completely disengaged from classroom activities.”

“Investigators consistently saw students who were left entirely to themselves during a 30-minute or even 45-minute class period, alone in a cubicle or at a computer, without any or only the briefest of interactions with a teacher or an aide,” the report said.

“During one observation, investigators observed a student sitting in a cubicle starting at the wall. The teacher approached him and spoke to him once during a 45-minute observation. He did not respond and no one else attempted to engage him during class,” the report added. “During an observation at the Fairfield High Road School, several students were observed sleeping, with investigators told that one of the students sleeps all the way up until the last period of the day to participate in science class.”

There were also several issues with progress monitoring and assessments, and inappropriate academic goals, the report said.

“Investigators were told [at the Windham County campus] that students’ progress is monitored daily, but the covering administrator (who was not certified as an administrator) told OCA that ‘students don’t have academic goals; they are here because of behavior,’” the report said.

Beyond academic trouble, the report said, the school did not provide transitional services for older students.

“For older students whose records were reviewed, access to special education until age 22 was terminated without clear transition plans or individualized programs that would provide options for post-secondary education or realistic development of vocational options and experiences, with appropriate social and mental health supports that could lead to successful transitions to adult life.”

Leadership failure and policy recommendations

OCA and DRCT criticized both the state Department of Education and local districts’ efforts to protect the students with disabilities enrolled in High Road schools.

The report said one district’s director of public services “had positive things to say about High Road schools and expressed no concerns” with High Road and that “other programs are worse.” He said there were no red flags around service hours.

However, investigators said that district had 13 students enrolled in High Road programs, and five students missed a combined 306 days of instruction without a BIP in place. 

“Although certain districts indicated they conducted site visits and records review following the letter, the incongruity between the districts’ stated satisfaction with the provision of services and OCA/DRCT investigative findings regarding staffing irregularities, lack of background checking, inadequate records, lack of related service delivery and individualized behavioral intervention plans, and chronic absenteeism is difficult to reconcile,” the report said.

The investigation found that many districts across the state did not conduct site visits and did not ask substantial questions about services or staffing.

“In response to questions about whether the districts conducted any observations of its students enrolled at the schools, only 3/18 districts responded affirmatively,” the report said. “Most districts were unable to provide the ‘names, positions, qualifications and/or any certification of all personnel providing instruction, including special education and related services, to the students while attending High Road.’ One district maintained that CSDE is responsible for ensuring that High Road schools have qualified staff employed.”

At a state level, the report said, the Department of Education had concerns about background checking and inadequate student records, but there were no findings of follow-ups or corrective action.

The report said the state Department of Education did not properly monitor and ensure compliance with federal and state law.

The final pages of the report recommended that state law be amended to “require strengthened CSDE oversight of state-approved private special education programs” and mandate transparency from the education department’s monitoring and enforcement of federal law.

This story was originally published on CT Mirror.