Connecticut Voices for Children released a new report, “The State of Early Childhood: Equity of Access for Immigrant and Refugee Families."  Early Care and Education (ECE) is a critical service for children and families. Approximately one in 3.6 children was part of an immigrant family. The report, which examines the experiences of immigrant and refugee families in accessing ECE, outlines 12 policy recommendations to extend and expand access, increase funding, and reduce barriers to early care for both immigrant and refugee families.

Also available is the 2022 SOEC Just Facts summary.

Pledge to Advance Connecticut (PACT) was established by the legislature in 2019 to provide free tuition for students attending all twelve community colleges. PACT bridges the tuition gap students may have after receiving scholarships and other financial aid – and we allocated funds for this critical program in our new state budget.
 
To qualify for PACT, applicants must meet the following requirements:

• Be a graduate of a public or private Connecticut high school (GED and home-schooled students qualify).

• Be a first-time college student (those who participated in dual enrollment programs while in high school are not excluded).

• Complete the FAFSA and accept all awards.

• Attend community college full-time (12 or more credits per semester).

• Enroll in classes today for first come, first served consideration.

• Participate in a degree or credit-bearing certificate program.

• Once enrolled, remain in good academic standing.

• Students from all financial backgrounds are eligible.

To get started, click here.  Still have questions? Click here for the PACT Manual

NY Times article

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The more students fall behind in the pandemic, the less likely they are to feel that they can catch up.

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A major symptom of school disengagement is not turning in homework, a problem that can easily snowball. The further students fall behind, the more overwhelmed they often become and the less likely they are to feel that they can catch up.

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The good news is that finding out about missing homework is a first step to helping kids get back on track. You just need to keep a few considerations in mind.

Resources for Keeping Kids Safer Online:

• Protecting Your Kids Online 2.0

• NetSmartz PowerPoint Presentations -  free, multimedia internet safety presentations tailored for specific audiences — parents and communities, teens, tweens, and younger children

• Safety Pledge: https://safetypledge.org/

• SaferKid™ App Reviews

• FaceBook Parenting Tips

• Tip Sheet: You Sent a Sext Now What

Educational Advocacy Group Recommendations to the Connecticut State Department of Education in Response to Covid-19 Educational Crisis

• Underlying Principles

• Leadership Team/Governance and Advisory Structure

• Oversight and Accountability – Setting and Enforcing Expectations

• Engagement with Students and Families

• Addressing Students’ Basic Needs

• Child Wellbeing, Social Emotional Learning, and Child Safety

• Technology to Support Access to Remote Learning/Hybrid Education is a Civil Right

• Professional Development

• Recovery Services

• Transition Services

• Juvenile Justice

COVID-19: Engaging Connecticut’s At-Risk and Disconnected K-12 Students during Distance Learning - What’s at Stake: Opportunities, Challenges and Consequences, from the Village for Families & Children and Clifford Beers

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There are many unknowns in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic such as how to best keep people healthy or how long social distancing guidelines will be in place. There is, however, one thing that we know for certain: A staggering number of Connecticut students are being left behind in the wake of the rushed transition to online learning.

An analysis of state data by Connecticut Public Radio shows that students with emotional disturbances are four times more likely to be thrown out of class than the average student. During the 2017-18 school year, roughly one-third of these students were suspended or expelled -- more than any other disability by a wide margin.

Handout from CAC's In-Service with Scott Driscoll on the topic of internet safety concepts.

Additional information can be found on his website at www.InternetSafetyConcepts.com

Porn education is such new territory that no one knows the best practices, what material should be included and where to teach it. (Few people are optimistic that it will be taught anytime soon in public schools.) 

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Al Vernacchio, a nationally known sexuality educator who teaches progressive sex ed at a private Quaker school outside Philadelphia, believes the better solution is to make porn literacy part of the larger umbrella of comprehensive sex education. V

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Attorneys from the Center for Children's Advocacy addressed these rights with a webinar broadcast Nov 6.  

The webinar featured:

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• Stacey Violante Cote, JD, MSW; Access to Education pursuant to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act

• Edwin Colon, JD, MSW: Legal Rights of English Language Learners; Legal Options for Guardianship of Displaced Children

• Alice Rosenthal, JD: New Arrivals' Access to Healthcare

School discipline practices have shifted dramatically in recent years, following changes in school district and state policy. Data and research have illustrated the high rates of suspension and expulsion, the consequences of such discipline for students, and the disparities in discipline practice by race and disability. In response, many communities have worked to promote school safety and attendance by replacing exclusionary discipline methods with approaches that effectively prevent and address student misbehavior.

Now that the new school year has begun, parents should review their school's code of student conduct (or student handbook) to learn their school's plan to safeguard student safety and learning, keep students in school, and ensure that discipline is administered fairly and equitably.

This document ("Child Trends: 5 Questions Families Should Ask About School Discipline") includes five questions for which parents should know answers. If you can't find the answers, ask your school or, if needed, your school district. Click here for additional information.  You can also look up your school and school district's past use of school discipline, by student race, gender, and disability, using this tool from the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection.

WSJ article

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Mott Haven Academy is designed for children in foster care or at risk of entering it. 

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The Bronx charter is believed to be the first in the U.S. designed for children in foster care or at risk of entering it, often due to parental addiction, abuse or neglect. It tries to support them with counseling and trains teachers to be especially sensitive to their
needs.

NY Times article by Perri Klass, M.D.

Pediatricians routinely advise parents to talk as much as possible to their young children, to read to them and sing to them. Part of the point is to increase their language exposure, a major concern even for children growing up with only one language. And in order to foster language development, the exposure has to be person-to-person; screen time doesn't count for learning language in young children — even one language — though kids can learn content and vocabulary from educational screen time later on. "For bilingual development, the child will need exposure to both languages," Dr. Hoff said, "and that's really difficult in a monolingual environment, which is what the U.S. is."

NPR podcast and story

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"A kid who's been exposed to trauma ... that fight or flight response is much more developed and stronger," Carter says.

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"If I'm walking down the hallway and somebody bumps into me, and I don't have a significant trauma history, I'm gonna say 'Oh, sorry, excuse me,' " she explains. "Whereas a kid who's been exposed to trauma on an ongoing basis, if somebody bumps into them that might be a threat." From there, she says, the survival brain kicks in and reasoning and logic shut down.

"In our new report, we assess the quality of Connecticut's early childhood system." Every child deserves a strong start in life: children need to enter kindergarten healthy, happy, and eager to learn. That requires high-quality early care: research shows that early childhood represents a window of explosive learning that can set the course for a lifetime. Providing quality care for young children benefits parents, children, childcare workers, and the state economy. In the first issue brief in this series, we estimated that if all young children who need child care were in high-quality settings, the state would gain $13.4 billion in long-term returns. 

In this second brief, we delve deeper into the question of what is meant by "high-quality" settings. We review the literature analyzing the components of high-quality early care and education (ECE), assess the extent to which Connecticut's center-based early care programs meet those standards, and make recommendations for how Connecticut can continue expanding both quality and access."

The Education Commission of the States has released a 50 state  review of tuition assistance programs for youth pursuing postsecondary education.  To date, only 28 states  have some sort of financial aid programs specifically targeted for foster youth – 20 states with a tuition  waiver program and eight states with a scholarship or grant program.  Click here for the policy brief and here for an interactive data visualization which breaks this information down by state.