A community Plan to Ensure All Griswold’s Children Are Healthy, Prepared and Successful Lifetime Learners Letter from the Superintendent

A Community Plan to Ensure

All Griswold’s Children Are

Healthy, Prepared and Successful Lifetime Learners








Letter from the Superintendent

On behalf of the Griswold Public Schools, I am excited to endorse the Community Plan put forth by Children First Griswold.  The school’s partnership with this dynamic group is essential to the success of the children of our school community and the community-at-large.  The commitment of this group ensures the success of our youngest children as they get ready to enter school and as they continue through the most formative years of their early schooling.

 

The Griswold Public Schools not only endorses the work of this group, we rely on it.  With Children First’s strong commitment to healthy, prepared, and successful lifetime learners they are key in making sure that every child in Griswold benefits from educational programming and community programming that meets the very important and diverse needs of early learners and their families.

 

The partnership with Children First Griswold is essential to our children, their parents, and our community.  I commend their support and am proud that this program, an exemplar in our region, recognizes and supports the critical needs of our future – the youth of Griswold.

 

Paul K. Smith

Superintendent of Schools
Letter from First Selectman

Acknowledgements

Children First Griswold would like to thank:

(to be confirmed)

The William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund

The Connecticut State Department of Education

Town of Griswold

CT Data Collaborative/Charter Oak Group

Other State-wide partners (CT Alliance for Children, etc.)

Catherine Bradshaw

Children First Griswold Early Childhood Collaborative Members


Ashley Zelinsky

Preschool Teacher

Griswold Elementary School
Beth Ware

Chair/Parent

Cindy Arpin

RN, MSN

Uncas Health District

Claudia Zatorski

Owner/Director

Little Log Schoolhouse

Donna Rossi

Reading Specialist

Griswold Elementary
Dana Gluck

Co-Owner

Love 2 Learn
Dawn Ellsworth

Preschool Teacher

Griswold Elementary School
Debbi Poirier

Director, TVCCA

Little Learners Early Education
Deborah Monahan

Executive Director

TVCCA
Dolores Walsh

Teacher

Griswold High School

Greta Silva

Parent
Heather MacTaggart

Teacher/Parent

Griswold Elementary
Joy Smith

Coordinator

Children First Griswold
Julie Hall

Team Lead/Physical Therapist

Birth to Three
Karen Lortie

Co-Owner

Love 2 Learn Childcare
Kathy Iovino

Social Worker

Griswold Elementary School
Lori Kurasz

School Readiness Coordinator

Madeline Illinger

Director of Special Education

Griswold Public Schools
Mary Strout

Teacher

Griswold Elementary
Melissa Blondet

Parent/Substitute Teacher

Missy Moore

Physical Education Teacher

Griswold Public Schools

Nancy Cowser

Vice President, Planning

UCFS

Nancy Gentes

Executive Director

Madonna Place
Natalie Kramarewicz

Preschool Teacher

Griswold Elementary School
Patrick McCormack

Director

Uncas Health District
Paul Smith

Superintendent

Griswold Public Schools
Paula Turck

Parent
Phil Anthony

First Selectman

Town of Griswold

Ryan Aubin

Director

Griswold Youth and Family Services
Susan Morton

LCSW
Tiffany Valentine

Parent
Val King

Parent/Substitute Teacher

CONTENTS

Executive Summary..............................................................................................p.
Our Planning Journey...........................................................................................p.
Griswold – Our Community..............................................................................p.
Results Based Accountability.................................................................................p.

OUR PLAN
Our Population Result……………………………………………………………………p.
Our Indicators……………………………………………………………………………..p.


EDUCATION

The Earliest Years

What we know..........................................................................................p.
The School Years

What we know..........................................................................................p.
What we’ll work on – Key Indicators..................................................................p.
Story Behind the Data..........................................................................................p.
Our Strategies – turning the curve for positive change....................................p.
HEALTH
What We Know....................................................................................................p.
What we’ll work on – Key Indicators..................................................................p.
Story Behind the Data..........................................................................................p.
Our Strategies – turning the curve for positive change....................................p.
Appendix
Results Based Accountability Overview

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Why is investing in Early Childhood Important?
The research on the importance of developing strong cognitive and social skills in the first five years of life is definitive. Nobel Prize winning economist J. Heckman points out “Intelligence and social skills are set at an early age – and both are essential for success”. (http://heckmanequation.org) It is also known that stressors such as poverty, abuse and neglect damage the developing architecture of the brain leading to lifelong problems with learning, behavior, and physical and mental health. (www.developingchild.harvard.edu).
Why is this plan important?
Griswold is home to approximately 1,500 children who are birth through age eight. Allowing our children to move through their early years without the support they deserve will undoubtedly have a detrimental impact on the life chances of those children and ultimately the health and vitality of our community.
Like many towns, the indicators of poverty in Griswold have drastically increased over the past six years. Since 2006, the unemployment rate in Griswold has climbed from 4.6% to 9.4% and the number of food stamp cases (per 1,000) has skyrocketed from 65 to 110.4 (ctdata.org). These statistics do not merely reflect the crises faced by many adults in our community, but the children for whom they strive to provide. From 2007 to 2011, the percentage of children ages 0-5 living in poverty climbed from 7% to 12%. While our indicators for poverty have steadily increased, our indicators for adequate prenatal care and student performance have decreased.
Although the number of total births decreased from 140 in 2006 to 121 in 2009, the level of mothers receiving nonadequate prenatal care rose from 6.4% to nearly 20%. We also know that, from 2009 to 2012, those children who scored below average on the Kindergarten Letter Naming Fluency benchmark increased from 8% to 14%. Those scoring at or above proficiency on the 3^rd grade CMTs in Math went down from 59.8 to 45.8 and our students’ performance 3^rd grade CMTs for Reading has fluctuated and at 54.8 in 2011-’12, it remains nearly 5 percentage points under the state average.
Through our community engagement initiatives, we have learned that residents have expressed a lack of quality, low-cost infant-toddler care options—only 18 slots for infants and toddlers(ages 0-3) in 2010 (confirm current data),—as well as a gathering spaces for youth and recreation. As an indicator of health, our obesity data also parallels that of the nation and Connecticut as a whole—approximately 1 in 4 of our children are entering Kindergarten overweight or obese. This condition is compounded by the fact that we are in what the USDA defines as a “food desert”, that is, for many of us, our income level and distance to a grocery store prevents us from accessing healthy, low-cost food. We explore food insecurity in depth on page (insert page) of this plan as childhood obesity has been chosen as one of our indictors.
Our town has many great supports for our kids and their families, but we know that we can create an environment that is even better. This Plan, which aligns the best of our town’s resources around a roadmap that better prepares our youngsters to succeed in school and in life, has been developed through strong partnership working and a shared knowledge of early childhood issues and development.
The creation of this Plan should not be viewed as the end of our planning process, however. It is, rather, the starting off point for focused attention on our youngest residents. We will continue to work in partnership to collect and analyze data, review and refresh our indicators and measure our progress toward a result that ALL GRISWOLD’S CHILDREN ARE HEALTHY, PREPARED and SUCCESSFUL LIFETIME LEARNERS. (Bennett suggested putting age parameters to indicate early childhood focus) We invite you to join us in this endeavor!


OUR PLANNING JOURNEY BACKGROUND

Since 2004, a group of concerned individuals has dedicated themselves to the development and implementation of activities aimed at enriching the lives of the young children of Griswold. This group of stakeholders, consisting of parents, educators, school administrators, service providers, public officials and business leaders, came to be known as the Children First Griswold Early Childhood Collaborative.

In June, 2010, Children First Griswold had the good fortune to be chosen by the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund (WCGMF) to take part in their Discovery Initiative-the mission of which is to create an early childhood system that ensures learning success of Connecticut children of all races and income levels. We were awarded a two-year grant of $25,000/year from the Graustein Memorial Fund to develop a comprehensive plan that would prepare Griswold’s youngest children, ages 0 – 8, for success in school and in life.

The requirements of the Discovery grant were that:

• 
  there be broad-based community engagement in the planning process;
  
• 
  the strategies and actions outlined in the plan be based on concrete data; and
  
• 
  the planning process follow the basic format and principles of Results Based Accountability, which has a focus on results, data and accountability.
  

Results Based Accountability proved to be a very useful planning framework as it begins with clearly defined and measurable ends and then works systematically backwards, using data to determine how to achieve those ends and measure progress. The core steps of RBA are outlined on the next page.

Charged with this mandate, Children First Griswold began by describing the result we want to see for Griswold’s youngest children:

ALL GRISWOLD’S CHILDREN ARE

HEALTHY, PREPARED AND SUCCESSFUL LIFETIME LEARNERS
This statement of result has provided a guidepost for the planning process and a rallying cry for the community. With this clear result in mind, CFG then launched a community-wide data collection effort to gather and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data that would illuminate the key issues and needs of young children and their families.

From the outset, community ownership of the Plan has been our top priority and ongoing community engagement has been the driving force behind the creation of the Plan. At the outset, we conducted a large-scale community-wide event during which we collected valuable data, which lead to the creation of an inventory of community assets– those things already in place that support the learning and development of young children (See full list in appendix X). We thought broadly about this to include things like senior groups and business supports, recognizing that these are strengths to build from in developing an early childhood plan. In March 2011, we organized a second community-wide consultation to identify need and examine our community conditions. This resulted in the adoption of indicators by which we will measure the success of our efforts

Throughout the process, we have conducted surveys, focus groups, and interviews to solicit broad-based input into its development, which conveyed some of the clearest and most direct understanding of need. We not only sought agreement that our indicators are on-target and that positive movement on those indicators would indeed lead us to the aforementioned result, but that our strategies and supporting actions are derived from a broad and deep examination of our community conditions which are reflective of the entire community.

In addition, we continually seek to develop an inclusive membership—inviting everyone to take part and removing any potential barriers to participation. We have also created ongoing feedback mechanisms through social media and the creation of a website (childrenfirstgriswold.org) as well as an email marketing presence, which have proven invaluable communication tools.

GRISWOLD – OUR COMMUNITY BACKGROUND

LOCATION

Griswold encompasses a 37 square mile area in New London County in Southeast Connecticut, located approximately 10 miles north of Norwich and approximately 50 miles east of Hartford. At Griswold’s center is the Borough of Jewett City, a one-mile square area comprising the Town Hall, Library, Post Office, shops and businesses and dense residential housing.
HISTORY

The area of Griswold was originally occupied by the Mohegan of the Pequot Tribe. Two rivers flow through the town, the Pachaug (an Indian name meaning “turning place”) and the Quinebaug (meaning “long pond”) and these streams were capable of producing waterpower that attracted agriculture, trade and industry.

Nestled between beautiful hills and small mountains, agriculture was the primary industry until the early 1800s when textile mills, namely cotton and wool, caused the population to balloon to 1,400 from 250 nearly one hundred years earlier. Griswold was incorporated in 1815 and named after Roger Griswold, the Federalist Governor of Connecticut who died in office in 1812. Jewett City, originally called Pachaug City, was settled around 1771 by Elizier Jewett who erected saw and grist mills, clothiers and a tavern. The area continued to develop at the confluence of the Pachaug and Quinebaug Rivers in Jewett City and was incorporated in 1895 through state legislation. ¹
GOVERNMENT

Griswold operates under the Selectman – Town Meeting form of government. The Borough, which occupies one square mile, has its own charter and is governed by a warden and four burgesses within the government of Griswold.
(Insert data on voter turnout)
DEMOGRAPHICS

Population

According to the US Census, the population of Griswold in 2010 was 11,951 (up from 10,807 in 2000), In terms of racial breakdown, 93% of the population identifies as white, 4.78% as Black or African American, and 5.6% as Asian and 5.6% as Hispanic or Latino. ²

The median age in Griswold is 39.55. There are approximately 676 children under 5 years of age and 740 children between five and nine years old—that’s approximately 1,500 children in our “Early Years’ focus, which is nearly 12% of our total population.
Housing and Family Characteristics

In 2010, there were 4,646³ households. Many military families (Insert additional data)
Economic Well-Being

The 2006-2010 median household income for Griswold was $59,295, compared to the state household income of (insert data). From 2006 to 20011, the unemployment rate more than doubled from 4.6% to 9.4 respectively.





Insert additional data on Economic Wellbeing. Insert data on employers: school, town, casinos, military. Put into narrative:

• 
  poverty rate of 4.4%
  

Education

Griswold Public School District is comprised of an Elementary, Middle, and High School, all of which are situated on one campus, as well as an Alternative High School located approximately 5 miles from the main campus. The main campus creates a natural hub in the community for both school-related and community-based activities and events, thus fostering a great sense of pride and community cohesion.
The Elementary School recently completed a state-of-the art renovation and encompasses PreK through 4^th grade with an enrollment of 750 students. The District has a 20 year history (confirm this number) of providing free preschool, though the age of admission changed from 3 years to 4 year olds in 2008. Currently, only 3 year olds with special needs are admitted to the program.
This strong commitment to early childhood education has had a positive result in that the majority of our Kindergarteners enter school with preschool experience—nearly 93% in 2012. Kindergarten is currently a half-day program, though the proposed school budget for 2013-2014 includes full day Kindergarten at a 1.85% increase over last year.
Insert School readiness data?
Despite this strong start, the drop-out rate, which in 2010 was 14.83%, is historically well above the state average which is (Insert data)
Provide more details on the general state of children.



OUR POPULATION RESULT



What is a Population Result?
The quality-of-life condition we want to achieve for a target population. RBA results are stated in plain language, in a way that every taxpayer and voter can understand the issue and see its importance. It is our end goal.

All Griswold’s Children Are

Healthy, Prepared and Successful Lifetime Learners

(Insert Graphic)


OUR HEADLINE INDICATORS

An indicator is a measure that will tell us if we are getting closer to achieving our desired result. The best indicators are those that tell us something of central importance about our result, can be communicated to a broad audience, and for which there is quality data available on a timely basis.
All Griswold’s Children Are

Healthy, Prepared and Successful Lifetime Learners

% of Preschoolers with Healthy BMI

% of Kindergarteners with Healthy BMI

% of Kindergarteners Reaching Benchmark in Reading

% of Children Reaching Goal on 3rd Grade CMTs in Math

% of Children Reaching Goal on 3rd Grade CMTs in Reading

These are not the only data points important, however. These headline indicators are the major data points that we, as a community, have determined are the best representations of our population result statement. However, we have identified additional secondary indicators that may also tell us if we are moving toward our result, including: (need to confirm)

• 
  Poverty
  
• 
  Single Mother’s education
  
• 
  Domestic Violence
  
• 
  Food insecurity
  
• 
  4^th grade fitness
  
• 
  Pre k preparedness
  
• 
  Chronic absenteeism
  
• 
  Substance abuse
  

Our Domain Teams

In order to ensure this Community Plan is robust and comprehensive, and in order to focus our partnership working, data collection and analysis, and strategy development efforts, we progressed our work in two different domain teams: Health and Education.

We sought to include the participation of the organizations and individuals with expertise in, and responsibility and passion for, the health, wellness and development of our little ones. In addition to the organizations listed below, parents have been key contributors to the development of the Plan. Details of their findings are described in depth on the following pages, which includes:

• 
  How we are doing on our indicators, i.e. what is the data telling us, what is our baseline?
  
• 
  What are the community conditions that contribute to that baseline
  
• 
  What strategies and activities will help us influence that baseline, or “turn the curve”
  

Health

The Health Team chose to start its efforts to reach our result by focusing on obesity, and as a headline indicator, tracked the percentage of kindergarteners and preschoolers with a healthy BMI. (We need to broaden our investigation and identify additional health indicators, i.e healthy births, developmental delays, kids with insurance, well baby/child visits, medical home, dental health, mental/behavioral health, chronic disease-BMI not proxy)

Contributors to our Health Team include:

• 
  Birth to Three, Sara Kidsteps, Inc.
  
• 
  Child First
  
• 
  First Congregational Church
  
• 
  Griswold Youth and Family Services and Department of Parks and Recreation
  
• 
  Griswold Public Schools: Social Workers, Teachers and Administrators
  
• 
  Thames Valley Council for Community Action
  
• 
  Uncas Health District
  
• 
  United Community Family Services
  
• 
  William W. Backus Hospital
  

Education

The Education Team looked at both the Prepared and Successful elements of our result statement, choosing indicators that and developing strategies to help our families build strong foundations in reading and math, as well as improve our kids’ readiness for, and success in, school. And while the chosen indicators are reflective of the academic development of our children, we recognize that cognitive, emotional and social development, particularly in the very early years, that is, birth to preschool are essential indicators of healthy development. This remains an area where we seek to gather more robust local data on how our children are faring and what actions we can take to make sure every child has the best possible chance for success.
Contributors to our Education Team include:

• 
  Birth to Three, Sara Kidsteps, Inc.
  
• 
  Child First
  
• 
  First Congregational Church
  
• 
  Griswold Youth and Family Services and Department of Parks and Recreation
  
• 
  Griswold Public Schools: Social Workers, Teachers and Administrators
  
• 
  Little Log Schoolhouse
  
• 
  Love 2 Learn Daycare
  
• 
  Local Private In-home Childcare Providers
  
• 
  Preston City Congregational Church
  
• 
  Second Congregational Church
  
• 
  Thames Valley Council for Community Action