Early Childhood in Southington 2018
On Tuesday morning, May 15, 2018 the ECCS presented their annual “State of Early Childhood in Southington” update to the community.
David Obedzinski, President of the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain discussed the CFGNB’s First Years First program which provides support to the ECCS and the impact it has had on the community. View his presentation here (PDF):.CFGNB-slides-for-May-2018-ECCS-meeting.
Joanne Kelleher, Director of the ECCS, gave an overview of the state of early childhood in Southington including birth rates, childcare slots, racial/ethnicity trends, the number of children who have had a pre-school experience and school enrollment along with upcoming ECCS activities. View her presentation here: ECCS-slides-for-May-2018-ECCS-meeting-2-up (PDF) or here: ECCS-State-of-Presentation-May-2018 (PowerPoint with notes).
There was a lively conversation about the increasing racial diversity within the Southington School system students. The statistics for that part of the conversation came from The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) which collected data about key education and civil rights issues from virtually every public school in the country through the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The ECCS presentation looked at the district enrollment over time, preschool enrollment and the kindergarten retention rate, but there are many other interesting access and equity statistics on the CRDC website related to middle and high school.
Joanne Kelleher shared information about a preschool bias study conducted by Dr. Walter Gilliam from the Yale Child Study Center, details are in this story on NPR: Bias Isn’t Just A Police Problem, It’s A Preschool Problem.
