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

What we know

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  In 2010, Griswold was home to 676 children under five years of age.
  

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  There are very few infant care slots – in 2010, only 18 slots in licensed home-care providers. (get current number)
  

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  Programs for infants-toddlers – library, etc.
  

The School Years
What we know (keep updating data)

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  CMT scores: rise in reading, drops in math.
  
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  In 2010, Griswold was home to 740 children age 5 to 9
  
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  The high school graduation rate in 2009 was 87.2% (State average 91.3) which was up from 83% in 2008 (State average was 92)
  

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  The percentage of ELL students, though still low, has risen significantly in the last 4 years: .6% in 2006 > 2.3% in 2009
  

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  39% of Griswold Elementary School children were eligible for free or reduced meals in 2009, down to 34% in 2010. (awaiting data from Tom)
  

OUR STRATEGIES EDUCATION

Turning the curve for positive change

1. 
   Integrate math and literacy learning in everyday life through town-wide activities
   

2. 
   Launch town-wide campaign to raise awareness of resources and programs
   

3. 
   Develop robust plan to cultivate effective parental/community engagement that will help “turn the curve” on our indicators.
   

Each strategy will be accompanied by a plan of action to make it happen, to include: action steps with no-cost/low-cost and timeline identified, key partners, finance plan

RESULTS BASED ACCOUNTABILITY AN OVERVIEW

Results-Based Accountability (RBA) is a disciplined way of taking action to improve the quality of life in communities and using measurable data to provide the evidence of that improvement. More than 40 states and 8 countries use RBA as a framework to develop community plans. The process begins by identifying a desired result and then utilizing robust data collection and analysis methods to identify specific strategies and actions that will achieve that result. This evidence-based approach allows us to track our progress along the way to ensure we are moving in the right direction (tweaking as needed), and celebrate our successes along the way.

As part of the RBA process we ask ourselves the following “Accountability Questions”.

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  WHAT IS OUR DESIRED RESULT? What are the quality of life conditions we want for the children, adults and families who live in our community?
  

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  WHAT WOULD CONDITIONS LOOK LIKE IF WE COULD SEE THEM? How we would experience the quality of life in our community if we could achieve it. What would we see, hear, notice that would be different?
  

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  HOW CAN WE MEASURE THESE CONDITIONS? Which indicators will quantify whether we have achieved our result. For example, third grade CMT scores help us understand our children’s success in school. BMI data helps quantify the health of our youngsters.
  

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  HOW ARE WE DOING (What is our Baseline?) and WHAT IS THE STORY BEHIND OUR BASELINE We analyze current data and recent trends for our headline indicators and determine how the community is currently performing. During this step, we also work hard to identify the story behind the baseline, i.e. the community conditions that exist that are causing the current trends. For example, we could look at Griswold’s unemployment rate and number of SNAP recipients to quantify the state of our economy.
  

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  WHO ARE THE PARTNERS WHO HAVE A ROLE IN DOING BETTER?
  

Community issues require community solution, thus we identify partners who can contribute to making the numbers better. Who can work together to improve conditions for Griswold’s children?

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  WHAT STRATEGIES WILL TURN THE CURVE, INCLUDING NO- AND LOW-COST IDEAS?
  

We identify strategies and actions to improve these conditions. These strategies are based on what we know works (from research and best practices) and common-sense approaches.

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  WHAT DO WE PROPOSE TO DO
  

The seventh step lays out the precise actions that will bring the results that are desired. These actions include no-cost and low-cost efforts

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  IS IT WORKING
  

After developing our proposed plan, we collectively work with our partners to select the most important performance measures that we all agree to track and to which we hold ourselves accountable.

The intent of RBA is to help communities bring public and private sectors together to turn around conditions that are “not okay.” For more information, see Mark Friedman’s book Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough or visit the websites at www.raguide.org and www.resultsaccountability.com.

1^ Community Information Guide and Map

2^ Town of Griswold website (www.griswold-ct.org)

3^ US Census, 2010

4^ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/index.html

5^ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm.

6^ Connecticut Department of Public Health: Childhood Obesity in Connecticut, Fall, 2007.

7^ Connecticut Department of Public Health: Childhood Obesity in Connecticut, Fall, 2007.

8^ Ibid.

9^ Connecticut Commission on Children: http://www.cga.ct.gov/coc/obesity.htm

10^ Connecticut Department of Public Health: Childhood Obesity in Connecticut, Fall, 2007.

11^ Ibid.

12^ Connecticut Commission on Children: http://www.cga.ct.gov/coc/obesity.htm)

13^ http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/childhood/data.html

14^ 2006 Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance Survey. Reported in Trust for America’s Health. F as in fat: 2008, 10-11. (2008, Aug.). Downloaded from http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/081908.3424.fasinfat.pdf

15^ Connecticut Department of Public Health (2008). 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Results. http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/ChOb_Fact_Sheet_Fall07.pdf

16^ Connecticut Department of Public Health (2008). 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey Results. http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/hisr/pdf/yrbs2007ct_summary_tables.pdf

17^ Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – what was previously referred to as “Food Stamps”

18^ Bridging Tough Times for Connecticut Families: 2010 Connecticut KidsCount Data Book. Connecticut Association for Human Services, 2010.

19^ As defined by the USDA: a low-income census tract is one in which a substantial percentage of residents has low access to a large grocery store