Education and Children's Issues

August 9, 2019

This summer has been very productive and I continue to attend meetings, workshops and conferences that are being held by agencies throughout the state. This is a great way for legislators to see firsthand how the laws we have in place are impacting the residents of the state, both those receiving the services and the professionals executing the work.  

At the beginning of session, I was tapped to serve as co-chair of the CT Kid’s Report Card Leadership Committee, a group of diverse key stakeholders charged with providing the legislature’s Children’s Committee with input that promotes the well-being of our state’s children. We recently held an organizational meeting to layout our framework going forward. 

 

In forming our work, we will take into account long term trends in child and family welfare as well as valuable input from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT ™ DATA BOOK that published a 30 year retrospective on how we are doing in CT. I had the pleasure of sharing my remarks at a press conference in Hartford with the CT Association for Human Services and others. Please click here for a related news story.

The good news is CT ranks 3rd in the nation in children’s education and 1st in preschool participation, yet it also shows we are failing our families when it comes to economic stability of families with secure employment and more children are living in poverty - especially within race and ethnicity disparities. We hope to bring meaningful insight to the Children’s Committee, as we move forward championing the best possible policies for our kids. 

Other highlights and events:

Presenting a State Citation to Terence Elton on his retirement of 16 years of service as Special Projects Manager/Economic Development at Town Hall.

 

Connecticut Education Association (CEA) invited us to their Summer Conference on effective citizen advocacy. Here with my colleague Sen. Winfield, D. Palladino and Jonathan Harris.

 

Finally, I”ll be hosting a Community Conversation with Senator Christine Cohen on Tuesday, Sept 17 at the Branford Fire House - 45 N Main Street -  starting at 6:30PM. I hope to see you there!

 

I look forward to seeing you about town in the waning days of summer.

 

- Robin