Chris Riback: Mayor Bronin, thanks so much for coming to the studio.

Mayor Luke Bronin: Thanks for having me.

Chris Riback: I saw, I believe it was yesterday that you posted your State of the City address, and I couldn’t help but notice that you appeared to be in a library when you were giving it. Why is that the location you chose?

Mayor Luke Bronin: Well for a whole bunch of reasons. First of all, the Hartford Public Library is, in my view, one of the most important institutions in our city. It’s a phenomenal library system. It’s branches are really oases in our neighborhood. They are about place where you can go access books, but they’re about a whole lot more than that too. It’s access to technology. It’s access to adult education. It’s a place where families can go. Kids can learn. Adults can search for jobs, on and on. The services provided at our libraries are really vital. That’s one answer. The other answer is it was a library that we had just built after the neighborhood had been asking for it for about three decades. It was on the site of a historic theater that had been demolished through neglect. Part of the theme was about perseverance and partnership and what we can do with those two things.

Chris Riback: Interesting. You pre-taped and released the State of the City address. Smart way to do it.

Mayor Luke Bronin: Well, it’s something we did last year because of COVID. We could have done it in person this year, but this was a nice way to be able to deliver the State of the City address and still be at the National League of Cities.

Chris Riback: You finally figured out what we all look for.

Mayor Luke Bronin: That’s right.

Chris Riback: How can we be two places at once?

Mayor Luke Bronin: Exactly.

Chris Riback: What is the state of early childhood learning in Hartford?

Mayor Luke Bronin: Hartford has been a real early leader when it comes to early childhood. I am grateful to my predecessors who really focused on this area for a while. We’ve got a great team that manifests itself in a lot of ways. One, we have a pretty extensive network of early learning centers throughout the city that the city operates or contracts out. We’ve also been working hard to try to identify best practices and bring them to Hartford. The Providence Talks program was a great example of an innovative way to use technology to help increase the number of words the kids were hearing from their caretakers and family. We adopted that, brought it to Hartford, and call it Hartford Talks. We’re not above stealing good stuff. We’re constantly looking for ways to do more in this space. The other thing that I would say is we’re really focused on infant and toddlers as well because number one, learning starts very early and number two, a lot of our families need that help.

Chris Riback: In terms of the government institutional support and yes, the history that Hartford has even here with the NLC is quite extensive. You have a Department of Families, Children, Youth, and Recreation.

Mayor Luke Bronin: We have a Department of Families, Children, Youth, and Recreation, and within that department, we have a division that is specifically focused on early child development.

Chris Riback: And did you inherit that or is it-

Mayor Luke Bronin: I did. I inherited the broader office of Families, Children, Youth, and Recreation. We’ve really built up that focus on early childhood.

Chris Riback: What inspired you to build that up?

Mayor Luke Bronin: Well, just the enormous amount of data that suggests how important and how powerful early learning is for lifelong learning and lifelong success. We want to set up our kids for success as best we can. It’s one of the most important interventions that we can make. Like I said, we like any community, have a long way to go and a lot more to do. But our team works awfully hard. And I think they’re one of the more innovative and certainly committed teams around.

Chris Riback: Any insights, lessons you can give around coordinating across private and public sector? To be doing what you are talking about, to have so many years in your city of commitment to early learning, business must be involved.

Mayor Luke Bronin: Yes. Our business community is involved, and they’re very supportive. But what I actually would say is where we’re really focused is building those partnerships with families. You cannot be effective in early learning space without working closely with families. And that means identifying the barriers and the needs that families may have, the things that they need to have a little help overcoming so that they can get their kids into the early learning programs. It also means trying to change the mindset about early learning so that it’s not seen as a form of childcare, but really seen as fundamental to a child’s education. That’s something that we really focus on and have really worked hard to communicate and build partnership with our family.

Chris Riback: It so much more than just childcare. What is the Hartford Unity grant?

Mayor Luke Bronin: Hartford Unity grant is one of a number of initiatives that we are funding with our American Rescue Plan resources. It’s geared toward young people in our community and trying to make sure that they are getting connected to mentors, to coaches, to sports programs, to a whole lot of fun after everything they’ve been through over the last couple years. We’ve already given out about a million and a half dollars to 68 youth serving organizations around the City of Hartford. But we set aside seven and a half million dollars for this Unity grant program. We’re reviewing the newest applications now. That focus on young people, not specifically on early childhood, but on young people in general was one of the top priorities in our American Rescue Plan because young people have experienced this pandemic in profoundly dislocating ways. We need to make sure that we are focused in every way we can on helping them heal, recover, and reconnect after this.

Chris Riback:  I’m sure you already knew it, but can you believe how many organizations you have in Hartford and in the area who are focused on serving youth through that whole [inaudible]? I looked at the list of who have gotten the grants. It’s kind of an embarrassment of riches.

Mayor Luke Bronin: We’re blessed to have a tremendous number of organizations that are doing great work. One of the things that we really wanted to do with our Unity grants was make sure that we were providing support to organizations big and small. It wasn’t just the usual suspects. It wasn’t just the biggest players. It was in some cases, small neighborhood organizations that are doing great work on a small scale, and they don’t have the capacity to put together a big 100 page grant application, but they do awfully good work with the resources when they get them, and we want to make sure they got them.

Chris Riback: What’s next? What’s next for Hartford specifically around early learning?

Mayor Luke Bronin: Well, I think that a couple of things. First of all, we want to continue to focus on quality. It’s not just about getting young people into the classroom. It’s also about making sure that we are making that early learning experience as effective and educational experience as possible. We study closely the results that we have, and we’ve also partnered with the National League of Cities to look at the pipeline of early learning educators and look at compensation issues because there have been longstanding challenges in that area across the country. Compensation’s not high enough. Amounts budgeted are not big enough, that’s including in Hartford. The first thing was to look in the mirror and see what wasn’t working and then try to get better at building a system that attracts, recruits, and retains great talent to deliver quality education to our kids. I think it’s important that that be a national priority.

Chris Riback: No shortage of challenges or opportunities. Mayor Bronin, thank you. Thank you for joining us in the studio.

Mayor Luke Bronin:  Thanks for having me.

Chris Riback: Manica, welcome to the studio.

Manica Ramos: Thank you.

Chris Riback: I’d like to start with two terms that I keep hearing at this conference. One is equity, and the other is developmentally appropriate practice. These, I believe are central to a lot of the work that you do. Why are they so important today? Why are they so hard to attain?

Manica Ramos: The concept of equity is making sure that folks have equal access to opportunity. Developmentally appropriate practices, making sure that you’re taking in to mind the child’s development when you’re interacting with the child, so that the activity is appropriate for the child’s age.

Chris Riback: It’s got to be. You have to keep both in mind for the activity to, not only make sense, but to be able to have an impact and be meaningful for the child, I would assume.

Manica Ramos: Yes. As the adult when you’re interacting with the child, you want to scaffold them, right? So you want to understand where they are. And you want to help them to get a little bit further on their developmental path.

Chris Riback: Better to think like a child, than think like an adult.

Manica Ramos: Yes. Sometimes, yes.

Chris Riback: Sometimes, yes. So often in early childhood education we hear about the programs and the educators and the policy makers, and it feels like we don’t hear enough about the families. What is the difference between involving versus engaging families?

Manica Ramos: Sure, and before I answer that question, I want to start off by saying that oftentimes we forget that parents are the first and the primary teacher for the child. They’re with the child as soon as a child is born. They’re with the child through the programs and schooling, and they’re with the child afterwards. We need to make sure that we’re thinking about the role, the central role that parents are playing.

Chris Riback: Do you talk to parents about that? Do you, do talk to them about that part of the role of parenting is teaching?

Manica Ramos: Yes, absolutely. I do work with many different parent engagement programs, and a key part of that is helping the parent to feel self-assured in their role as a teacher for the child.

Chris Riback: It is a confidence question often, isn’t it?

Manica Ramos: Yeah, absolutely. And self-efficacy as well. Sometimes parents don’t realize how much they know. A parent can very easily change the direction of the child’s emotion. The parent can easily, very easily help a child transition to another activity, and they may not realize that they have that key skill that others, such as a teacher as me-

Chris Riback: And a child is always watching, isn’t she?

Manica Ramos: Yes, absolutely. So, one of the key roles of parents is to model for their children as well because the children are always watching.

Chris Riback: I’m sorry. I threw you off. Involving versus engaging.

Manica Ramos: Absolutely. The idea of involving is very activity-focused, and this is an idea on, I’ll use a preschool center as an example. The preschool center setting activities for parents to engage in, and then inviting the parents to be involved in those activities. While that’s important and necessary, one thing that we know from the research is that you really need to engage parents. Engagement is more focused on a goal or positive goal- oriented relationship. Rather than being activity focused, you’re really focused on building a relationship with the parent, so that you can set goals for the benefit of the child.

Chris Riback: So, it’s not just, Mrs. Jones come over here and help us with the block building today. But it’s Mrs. Jones, let’s talk about the goals for your child. Here are the things that he or she can achieve, and let’s talk about different paths where you can help your child get there.

Manica Ramos: Absolutely. That sense of shared goal-setting and power-sharing is really central to the idea of authentic parent engagement. Really being a partner with the parent, and engaging the parent in a way that’s meaningful for them.

Chris Riback: You focus on the Latino community. And you’ve examined how Latino cultural values and beliefs shape Latino behaviors related to parental engagement in their young children in the learning and development. What have you researched in that area? What have you found?

Manica Ramos: I can tell you a little bit about my dissertation, and for my dissertation I focus exclusively on recent Latina immigrants. I looked at what research says is the definition of parent engagement, any support that the child provides to their parents. Then, I’ll compare that to what surveys we use to measure parent engagement. Then, I also talked with the parents in open-ended way and asked them, based on this definition of parent engagement, how are you engaged? What I found is that Latina parents were engaging in activities that were not captured on surveys of parent engagement, and that those activities really directly backed to cultural values and beliefs. So it is, it’s explaining this is why the parent is doing this. They have these culture values and beliefs, and they’re acting on those beliefs.

Chris Riback: We have a whole category of actions, I assume positive actions in terms of-

Manica Ramos: Absolutely.

Chris Riback: That weren’t even being considered, captured or anything.

Manica Ramos: Yes, and I think that that highlights the importance of moving from these activity basis, to really focusing on the relationship because when you’re focusing on the activities, they’re conceptualized within the culture. There’s some assumptions about what parents should be doing. However, when you focus on relationships, you’re just focusing on building that trust and positive two-way communication.

Chris Riback: Speaking of communication, you do your research in English and in Spanish. How does that help your work? Why does it make a difference?

Manica Ramos: Well, because some parents are don’t speak English and we still value-

Chris Riback: You ask a dumb question, you get an obvious answer.

Manica Ramos: No, I think it’s a really important question because there are not enough researchers who are doing their research in English and in Spanish. Where there’s an entire group of people whose voice who really want to understand and uplift. In order to do that you have to do it literally and figuratively in a way that they can understand. Speak their language.

Chris Riback: Speak their language. I would assume there’s obviously, particularly when you think about the cultural effects that you were just mentioning, if you’re not speaking the language, you’re missing a lot.

Manica Ramos: Absolutely.

Chris Riback: Speaking of culture, speaking of language, and speaking of families, which you touched on earlier, the importance of valuing learning, valuing education at home and the opportunity that can come by finding even simple ways. There’s a lot of talk about equity, and there’s a lot of talk about the very, very real challenges of poverty in various communities. Yet, having that positive engagement at home can really matter. That’s something that’s happened to you in your life.

Manica Ramos: Yeah, absolutely. I will share that. The reason why I became interested in parent involvement and family engagement is because when I look at the literature, I realize that the experiences that I was having, the things that my mother was doing, was just not reflected in the literature.

Chris Riback: What was she doing?

Manica Ramos: Communicating the importance of education. Even though she could not sit down and help me with my homework, she was making space for me to do my homework. She was making it a priority for as soon as I come home from school, I sit down and I do my homework because education is really important. That very communication of the importance of education, and helping the child to develop some grit or some goals around education is family engagement.

Chris Riback: Now she’s got a PhD daughter. I’m sure she’s not proud.

Manica Ramos: Yes, yes. My mom is very proud.

Chris Riback: I’m sure. Manica, thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you for coming by the studio.

Manica Ramos: Thank you so much.