Tourism Awards Recognize Diligence in Promoting State

The 2016 Connecticut Governor’s Tourism Awards — individuals and organizations "who go above and beyond to enhance both the appeal of our state as well as the health of our economy," were presented at the 2016 Governor's Conference on Tourism, held in Hartford.  Sessions at the day-long conference included Using Creativity to Reimagine Tourism, Digital Marketing, Social Media Practices, and Innovative Trends in Cultural Tourism.

The  ctvisit.com website was also highlighted, and key stats reflecting the success of the state's Still Revolutionary campaign were promoted.  Among them:  3 million visits to the tourism website, 250,000 followers on social media, 25 percent visited Connecticut after seeing an ad, summer tourism was up 12 percent last year, leaf-seaon visits were up 16 percent, hotel occupancy was up 4 percent and room tax revenue up 7 percent.  Total economic impact is $14 billion.

Award recipients recognized during the conference include:

Tourism Volunteer of the Year - Jeffry and Maryan Muthersbaugh, Nehemiah Brainerd House B&B

As valuable members of the Central Regional Tourism District’s Board of Directors and members of the Executive Committee, Jeff and Maryan are tireless in their efforts to support statewide and regional tourism marketing. In addition to being owners and operators of the Nehemiah Brainerd House B&B in Haddam, CT, Jeff also serves as the Vice President of the CT Lodging Association and Chairman of the Bed & Breakfast Association. They have been instrumental in forming the CT Bed & Breakfast Association under the CLA umbrella.

Tourism Rising Star Award - Regan Miner, Norwich Historical Society

At the age of 23, Regan has already accomplished more in the area of regional tourism than some seasoned professionals. A life long native of Norwich, she worked with Norwich Historical Society to unite the city’s many historical entities into a comprehensive destination, securing a grant to open the Norwich Heritage and Regional Visitors Center on the Norwich town green in 2015. Ms. Miner has also developed a series of “Walk Norwich” trails and seasonal events hosted by volunteers and supported by a strong social media presence.

Tourism Partners of the Year Award - Carmen Romeo, Fascia’s Chocolates and Howard Pincus, Railroad Museum of New England

Fascia’s Chocolates and the volunteer-run Railroad Museum of New England have truly laid the track for a sweet collaboration. They’ve joined forces to operate special train tours, including a wine-and-chocolate-themed sunset ride and Halloween event for families, and are adding a regularly scheduled “Chocolate Train” in 2016 to market to charter groups such as bus tours. This partnership has resulted in a unique experience that has attracted high interest at recent ABA and NTA conferences and is a model for other partners statewide.

Leader of the Year - Stephen Tagliatela, Saybrook Point Inn, Marina & Spa

An influential proponent for the tourism industry as a board member of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts and University of New Haven, Stephen is a strong advocate for arts and culture, education, and both historic and environmental preservation in the state. Under Stephen’s direction, The Saybrook Point Inn, as well as Spa and Marina, have won numerous awards for its often best-in-class green practices, including the first Connecticut hotel to be named a Certified Energy Hotel in 2007.

  Tourism Legacy Leader - John Lyman III, Lyman Orchards

John Lyman is a member of the 8th generation of the Lyman family to farm the land in Middlefield, CT. An early proponent of what has become known as “agritourism,” he has helped to steer his 275-year-old family business toward becoming one of Connecticut’s leading tourist destinations, attracting more than 600,000 visitors a year. Fostering working partnerships with other tourism leaders in the state and region, John initiated cause marketing with unique Sunflower and Corn Mazes, contributing $1 to charitable causes for every person who “gets lost” in the maze, currently surpassing $500,000.

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204,000 Self-Employed in CT; Freelancers Increasing Nationwide

The ranks of the self-employed are growing in Connecticut, as the number of freelancers continues to expand nationwide.  In Connecticut, there are now an estimated 204,000 individuals who are self-employed, more than 11 percent of the state’s workers, which exceeds the national average. As of March 2016, approximately 15.3 million people in the United States designated their employment status as “self-employed,” according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and increase of about 700,000 since May 2014, just over 10 percent of all U.S. employment.

In 2015, 29 states and the District of Columbia had self-employment rates below the U.S. rate of 10.1 percent, and 21 states had rates as least as high. Montana had the highest rate among states, 16.1 percent, followed by Maine (15.4 percent), Vermont (14.4 percent), and South Dakota (14.2 percent). The lowest rates were in the District of Columbia (7.1 percent), Delaware (7.2 percent), and Alabama (7.5 percent), according to BLS data.

Additionally, published reports last fall indicated that 54 million individuals report doing freelance work, either full-time or on the side, in the U.S., representing about one-third of the nation’s workforce.  That is an increase of 700,000 since 2014, according to a comprehensive study conducted by the independent research firm Edelman Berland.

“Americans who are freelancing already contribute more than $700 billion to our national economy and help U.S. businesses compete and find the skills that they need,” said Fabio Rosati, CEO of Elance-oDesk, which commissioned the survey with Freelancers Union.  The study identified five freelancer segments:

• Independent Contractors (36% of the independent workforce / 19.3 million professionals)
• Moonlighters (25% / 13.2 million)
• Diversified workers (26% / 14.1 million)
• Temporary Workers (9% / 4.6 million)
• Freelance Business Owners (5% / 2.5 million)

In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation (of the workforce) will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before," Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, which organized the Davos gathering,  wrote earlier this year. "The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. ... These changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance."

Already, 2.9 million freelancers earned more than $100,000 last year, up from 2 million who hit the six-figure mark just four years earlier, according to MBO Partners.  The report indicated that 60 percent of freelancers surveyed said they started freelancing by choice—up from 53 percent last year—and 67percent of freelancers agree that more people are choosing to work independently today compared to three years ago.

The survey commissioned by Freelancers Union and Upwork in 2015 found that than one-third of freelancers report that demand for their services increased in the past year, and 3 in 4 non-freelancers are open to doing additional work outside their primary jobs to earn more money, if such an opportunity was available.  The report stated that “freelancing is becoming a more prevalent, viable option for workers—a trend that spans across borders, industries and occupations.”

Chronic Absenteeism Declining in CT Schools, Except Among African-Americans

Chronic absenteeism in Connecticut schools declined overall between 2011-12 and 2014-15, but increased among African American students, according to data from the State Department of Education (SDE). In the four-year period, chronic absenteeism among white students dropped statewide from 8.1 percent to 7 percent, among Hispanics from 18.4 percent to 18 percent and among Asians from 7 percent to 6.1 percent.  Hispanic students had the highest chronic absenteeism rate all four years.

Among African American students, the percentage of students chronically absent climbed from 15.2 percent in 2011-12 to 16.1 percent in 2014-15. 

Chronic absence is defined as missing 10 percent, or more, of school days for any reason, including excused, unexcused and disciplinary absences. The statistics are included in the Connecticut Department of Education’s new data website, www.edsight.ct.gov

Chronic absenteeism is declining among both male and female students, with males maintaining a slightly higher percentage (one-tenth of one percent) in the 2011-12 and 2014-15 school years as both rates declined.

While English-Language-Learners had a consistently higher percentage of chronic absenteeism than non-English Language Learners, the percentage was dropped at a higher rate, one percentage point versus four-tenths of a point.

The only other sub-category of students to see a higher percentage of chronically absent students when comparing the 2001-12 and 2014-15 school years, in addition to African American students, was Special Education students, according to the data.  In 2011-12, 18.6 percent of special education students were chronically absent.  By 2014-15 the percentage was 19 percent, which was, however, lower than the two previous years (19.4 percent and 19.1 percent).

Overall in Connecticut, the chronic absenteeism rate dropped from 11.1 percent in 2011-12 to 10.6 percent in 2014-15.  The State Department of Education website explains that “improving and sustaining good attendance requires the active engagement of district and school-based leaders and administrators along with a clear articulation of roles and responsibilities.”

In comprehensive guidance provided to local school districts nearly three years ago, the state Department of Education explained that “chronic absenteeism is also emerging as an early indicator of future academic difficulty. Children who are chronically absent in both kindergarten and first grade are much less likely to read proficiently by the end of third grade.”

The guidelines also indicated that “If chronic early absence is not addressed at the elementary level, then it may worsen in the higher grades (Chang and Romero, 2008). By sixth grade, chronic absence is a key early indicator of dropout from high school (Baltimore Education Research Consortium, 2011). By ninth grade, attendance may be a better indicator of dropout than eighth-grade test scores (Allensworth and Easton, 2007).”

The 17 pages of guidelines, which outline how various absences are defined, documented and prevented in accordance with “nationally recognized best practices,” aimed to serve “as a valuable resource to help decrease rates of chronic absenteeism and enhance student outcomes,” former commissioner Stefan Pryor said in a memo to school superintendents and principals in May 2013.

Public Act 15-225, passed by the legislature a year ago, requires schools to track and publish chronic absenteeism data. Schools and districts that exhibit a certain percent of chronic student absenteeism must institute Student Attendance Review Teams (or use an existing body for this purpose), to coordinate interventions for students who are chronically absent.  The legislation requires SDE to help develop prevention and intervention plans for districts in tackling chronic absenteeism.

PERSPECTIVE: An Intervention in History

by the Equity Task Force of Wesleyan University In recent years, due to the increasing corporatization of universities across the nation, and the pressures of the economy, campus cultures have become more fragmented as students negotiate learning, professionalization, and community engagement.

Wesleyan’s mission as a transformative liberal arts education begins with a “holistic review” of potential applicants who are, in many ways, already fragmenting under these pressures. Moreover, the well-being of students is increasingly affected. We need a sustainable and integrative educational approach that is mindful of the uneven impact of these pressures.

The overcommitted student does not have time for thinking. In Spanish there is a saying, “Hay que darle tiempo al tiempo,” we must give time the time. Learning is a process and contemplation is an integral component. Our institutional pedagogy should recognize and inspire a more present, civic-minded, and active learner. It may also serve to counteract the academic, personal, and social dissonance in students’ lives.

Considering this as we forge ahead, it is imperative that we reassess our scholastic values. Indeed, after a period of capitulation to the market, the University must reaffirm and recenter itself on our source of pride, our intellectual mission. Although it is a sign of our times, opting for digitization and screen culture has only encouraged students (and not only students) to view faculty as “resources,” reducible to delivery mechanisms; the result is no longer contemplative learning, but the passive quantifiable consumption of information without attentiveness to pedagogy.

This growing trend, doomed to become our Achilles’ heel, grossly undermines faculty-student relations and the creativeness and possibilities in the exchange of knowledge. An educational mission is not the provision of consumer-centered services. The consumer model that has allowed the institution to compete is leading us astray from our very educational standards.

Students are not partners in transactions, and faculty and staff also require work environments with boundaries, protection, and inspiration. We must work diligently together to reconcile the disjuncture between our branding and reality as we recommit to an integrative and non-instrumental style of learning, based on the twin strengths of Wesleyan’s scholar-teachers and its dynamic staff.

Moreover, it should not be taken for granted that Wesleyan’s known history of activism (especially during the 1960s-90s) continues to determine the campus climate or that it gives students the same sense of belonging as their non-activist peers.  Although students have demonstrated over the years and waged campaigns such as Diver$ity Univer$ity, AFAMIsWhy, Trans/Gender Group, and WesDive$t more recently, in the last decades, evident commitment to social justice on a global scale has been waning on this campus, just as it has nationally.

While recent events indicate a resurgence of some awareness, we must admit and confront the shifting generational tendency towards insularity and the interpersonal, which threatens to diminish cognizance and interest in international matters.

Global strife resonates at all levels, and as such is not unrelated to political struggles at home. And with the pervasiveness and persistent power of structural racism, Wesleyan needs the institutional will and commitment from members of its community to ongoing reflection and engagement.

Therefore, effective and sustainable solutions will not arrive from above. Students, staff, and faculty together must create a campus environment of mutual respect. That environment depends on shared and deliberately articulated community principles. In this regard, on the one hand, the Office of Equity and Inclusion needs to better define, articulate, and communicate the institutional commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. That office should also provide a clear policy framework. On the other hand, that environment will be shaped most powerfully by our collective community practices.

As we reel in the wake of the 2015, we must ask ourselves what we want our relationship to this historical moment of crisis to be. Our view is that we must seize this time as an opportunity to intentionally shape Wesleyan’s future narrative…we should consider which aspects of our history continue to serve our progress, and which condemn us to repeat the past.

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This excerpt is from the Final Report of the Equity Task Force of Wesleyan University in Middletown, issued this past week.  The Task Force was created by President Michael S. Roth, and seeks to “address persistent problems of inequality and structural racism that are endemic both in our society at large and at Wesleyan.” The report makes three major recommendations:

• develop a Center with an “intellectually grounded mission in Social Justice and a focus on intercultural development and literacy.”
• devote significant resources toward redressing long-term issues of discrimination and marginalization, especially as this affects the composition of faculty and staff as well as the development of the curriculum.
• establish a standing institutional committee to coordinate, communicate and support change in these areas.

President Roth said this week that Wesleyan “will move forward immediately on all three recommendations.”  Task Force members included Gina Athena Ulysse (Faculty and Tri-Chair), Elisa Cardona (Staff), Antonio Farias (Staff and Tri-Chair), Matthew Garrett (Faculty), William Johnston (Faculty), Makaela Kingsley (Staff), Caroline Liu (Student), Henry Martellier, Jr. (Student), and Shardonay Pagett (Student and Tri-Chair). 

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK: Every Generation Has Something to Teach

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

CT Aims to Keep Ultra-Wealthy in State; Tracks Tax Payments of 100 Top Earners

Connecticut is ranked second in the nation in the number of millionaires per capita.  Only Maryland has more.  But with Connecticut’s precarious financial situation amidst what has been described as a “new economic reality,” any drop in the plethora of extremely wealthy residents can almost instantly have far-reaching consequences, officials say. In Connecticut, as well as California, Maryland and New Jersey, the top 1 percent pay a third or more of total income taxes, The New York Times reported this month. “There's an outmigration trend. It's real,'' Sullivan recently told The Hartford Courant, describing the departure of wealthy residents from Connecticut.

But Connecticut is not sitting idly by.  The state is trying to keep its wealthy residents right here in the Land of Steady Habits.

Connecticut, the Times reported, now tracks the quarterly estimated payments of 100 of its top earners. State Revenue Services Commissioner Kevin B Sullivan told Inside Wealth columnist and CNBC wealth editor Robert Frank that about five or six of the highest earners could have a "measurable impact on the revenue stream."

By way of example, Sullivan said that when one of the state's rich hedge fund executives planned to move his family and company to a lower-tax state, state officials met with him and persuaded him to leave some of his work force in Connecticut, the Times reported.  "We knew we were going to lose him," Sullivan said, "but we wanted to keep some of the higher-paying jobs."

He added, “We advised him that there are ways to be close to family and friends in Connecticut on occasion that are perfectly legal.  We're trying to send a more welcoming message to the high earners as a group." Homeowners who spend more than 183 days in the state are considered residents for tax purposes.

The top 10 states in millionaires per capita, after Maryland and Connecticut, are Hawaii, New Jersey, Alaska, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia, according to Phoenix Marketing International’s Global Wealth Monitor.

Earlier this year, the Courant reported that one of three Connecticut residents with an 11-figure net worth, according to the latest Forbes magazine list of the wealthiest individuals, had relocated from Greenwich to Florida, the second individual in that tax bracket to do so recently.  The exits, the Courant reported, “leave Connecticut with 13 billionaires, including Ray Dalio ($15.6 billion) and Steven Cohen ($12.7 billion), both hedge fund owners who live in Greenwich.”  Eight of those 13 state residents list Greenwich as their home address, according to Forbes.

Connecticut is not alone in keeping a watchful eye on its billionaires.  New York is now more closely monitoring wealthy taxpayers who have homes in New York but claim Florida as their tax residence. And New Jersey is collecting data on all of the taxpayers who make more than $1 million to forecast their tax payments more accurately, the Times reported.

As is true in a number of states with wealthy residents, including New York, New Jersey and California, even as some of the state's wealthiest residents head to warmer climates and more favorable tax structures, the number of millionaires in the state grows.

Just three years ago, in 2013, the number of millionaires in Connecticut topped 100,000 for the first time.  In 2015, it exceeded 101,000.  That compares with just over 84,000 in 2006.  Millionaires made up 6.2 percent of state residents that year, compared with 7.3 percent in 2015, based on data from Phoenix Marketing International.

Awards Will Recognize Innovative Efforts Invigorating CT Main Streets

A local theater helping to re-energize downtown Fairfield and a New London developer and property manager who took it upon himself to improve a neighborhood by offering attractive housing that is also affordable are just two of the initiatives being recognized with a 2016 Award of Excellence from the Connecticut Main Street Center (CMSC). In total, five recipients have been selected to receive the prestigious awards, including organizations and initiatives from Fairfield, Farmington, Mansfield, New London and Waterbury.

Also being recognized with awards are a public outreach effort in Farmington that resulted in hundreds of residents voicing their opinion on plans for a new gateway into the town; a holiday window display competition that draws shoppers back to downtown Waterbury while garnering extra press and marketing for the businesses; and a new Town Square in Storrs Center, built around the unique needs of the space and the people that use it.

This year's awards will be presented on June 6th at E.O. Smith High School in downtown Storrs.  CMSC’s mission is to be the catalyst that ignites Connecticut's Main Streets as the cornerstone of thriving communities. CMSC is dedicated to community and economic development within the context of historic preservation, and is committed to bringing Connecticut's commercial districts back to life socially and economically.

In addition to the competitive Awards of Excellence, where CMSC members submit applications that are reviewed by a jury of industry-related professionals and CMSC staff, CMSC also named Upper Albany Main Street (a CMSC member community) and the University of Hartford to receive the Founder's Award for their long and fruitful partnership - a relationship that has not only helped improve the appearance of the Avenue, but empowered many of the small business merchants in the neighborhood as well.

In addition, the Jack Shannahan Prize for Public Service was awarded to the Legislative Commission on Aging in recognition of their Livable Communities initiative.  This initiative aims to create thriving places for residents to grow up and grow older, notably by helping prepare Connecticut for the challenges presented by a rapidly increasing aging demographic through education, awareness and advocacy.

"This year's crop of winners is really special, because they demonstrate how important incorporating the voice of the people is in the final success of a project," said CMSC President & CEO John Simone. "In Farmington, Fairfield and Mansfield especially, each one either specifically asked - or was smart enough to observe - what people wanted in the space, and made changes accordingly.  As a result, there is greater support and usage of their public spaces and private businesses, meaning more people on Main Street and more money for the town coffers."

The June 6 awards ceremony will be followed by interactive experiences in the new Storrs Center.  Activities will include guided tours of the downtown development, a collaboration with the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, time for dinner and exploration among the Center's many shops and restaurants, and a closing concert featuring the Funky Dawgz Brass Band.

Created in 2003 to recognize outstanding projects, individuals and partnerships in community efforts to bring traditional downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts back to life, socially and economically, the Awards of Excellence are presented annually at CMSC's Awards Gala.  The evening’s welcome Reception Sponsor is United Illuminating and awards are presented with support from Webster Bank and Eversource Energy. 

CT Ranked Third Best State for Working Moms

Despite ranking 37^th in professional opportunities for women and 12^th in child care, Connecticut has been ranked as the third best state for working moms on the strength of a number one ranking in “work-life balance," according to a new analysis from the financial website WalletHub. With Mother’s Day just days away, the WalletHub analysis revealed 2016’s Best & Worst States for Working Moms.

The top five states were Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut, North Dakota and Massachusetts.  Vermont also ranked first in child care, and was the top-ranked state (after D.C.) in professional opportunities.  At the bottom of the list, considered the worst states for working moms, were Alaska, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama and Nevada.

The website also noted that “women still earn only $0.79 for every dollar that men make and have far less upward mobility, as evidenced by the fact that only 4 percent of S&P 500 companies’ chief executives are female.”

WalletHub’s analysts compared the attractiveness of each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to a working mother, using 13 key metrics such as median women’s salary, female unemployment rate and day-care quality.

Connecticut’s ranking across the categories included in the survey ranked from second in parental leave policy to 24^th in the ratio of female to male executives.  The state’s rankings by category, in the WalletHub analysis:

• 2nd – Parental Leave Policy
• 6th – % of Single-Mom Families in Poverty
• 6th – Access to Pediatric Services
• 8th – Length of Average Woman’s Workday
• 9th – WalletHub’s “Best School Systems” Ranking
• 24th – Ratio of Female Executives to Male Executives

The Child Care metrics included Day-Care Quality, Child-Care Costs, Access to Pediatric Services, and WalletHub’s “Best School Systems” Ranking.   The Professional Opportunities category included Gender Pay Gap, Ratio of Female Executives to Male Executives, Median Women’s Salary, Percentage of Families in Poverty, Female Unemployment Rate, and Gender-Representation Gap in Different Economic Sectors.   The Work-Life Balance category included Parental Leave Policy, Length of the Average Woman’s Work Week, and Women’s Average Commute Time.

Data used to create these rankings, according to WalletHub, were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Child Care Aware® of America, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Council for Community and Economic Research, National Partnership for Women & Families and WalletHub research.

Link Literacy and Social-Emotional Skills to Improve Children’s Success in School, Report Urges

Experts agree that there is a deep connection between social-emotional development and literacy in children’s early school success including achieving reading proficiency in the early grades – and it turns out that the benefits of effectively making those connections sooner rather than later are significant, and can endure for a lifetime. A new report from the Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut (CHDI), “Connecting Social and Emotional Health and Literacy: Critical for Early School Success,” explores the interplay between young children's social-emotional development and early literacy and language skills, and “elevates awareness of the connections between these essential competencies,” according to CHDI and the report’s researchers.

The detailed 36-page report provides examples of linking strategies and outlines recommendations with the goal of accelerating actions by states and communities to advance children's readiness for school and successful educational achievement.

“Early cognitive and social-emotional skills are interactive and woven together - like strands of a rope,” notes Ann Rosewater, lead author of the report and co-leader of the Connecticut Peer Learning Pilot on Social-Emotional Development and Early Literacy. “The strategies and tools in this report will help communities implement approaches to align children’s literacy and social emotional health.”

The report urges a series of coordinated state actions to advance the linkage and integration of supports for children’s social-emotional health and learning:

• Align systems that address social-emotional development and literacy
• Increase support and education for parents
• Invest in professional development for those working with young children
• Institute universal and routine screening for social-emotional development and
• appropriate follow-up
• Expand the reach of evidence-based practices and programs
• Focus attention on special populations

The recommendations are drawn from the experiences of nine communities in Connecticut that explored researched-based strategies over the past year, to link supports for social-emotional and literacy skills. The effort was part of the Connecticut Peer Learning Pilot on Social-Emotional Development and Early Literacy, developed and led by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, in partnership with the National Center for Children in Poverty and with support from the Irving Harris Foundation and others.

Participating community teams represented Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund Discovery Initiative coalitions from Bridgeport, Colchester, Danbury, Enfield, Norwalk, Torrington, Vernon, West Hartford, and Winchester.  Their involvement, according to the report, “catalyzed notable progress in most participating communities, building on significant efforts their collaboratives had undertaken before engaging in the initiative.”  The communities “found reinforcement, inspiration and impetus to pursue as vigorously as their circumstances allowed strategies that recognized and promoted the relationship between children’s social-emotional health and literacy and language skills,” the report concluded.

In addition to urging state action, based on these experiences the report highlighted steps that can be taken at the community level to promote school success by reflecting the understanding that literacy and social-emotional development build on and reinforce each other.

Promising strategies used by communities include the following:

• Raise community awareness and reinforce community efforts to integrate social emotional and literacy skills fundamental to success in school and life
• Promote nurturing parent-child relationships, which are essential to children’s social-emotional development and can simultaneously stimulate literacy learning
• Screen for social-emotional competencies, with appropriate follow up and intervention
• Enhance home visiting and book distribution programs
• Incorporate professional development related to the connections between social-emotional development and literacy for those working with young children
• Promote attendance in early education programs and the early grades
• Support special populations, particularly children living in poverty, dual language learners or those faced with potentially unstable environments (foster care or homelessness)

The report indicates that “Far too many children are at a disadvantage in their development because they lack the language and literacy competencies they need to enter kindergarten, significantly hobbling their success in reading proficiently by the end of third grade. Disparities begin as early as infancy and become more pronounced in the toddler years, with children from families below 200 percent of poverty scoring lower than children from higher income families on measures of cognitive development.”

The report goes on to state that “At kindergarten entry age, only 48 percent of poor children are ready for school, compared to 75 percent of children from families with moderate or high income.”

The Child Health and Development Institute of Connecticut (CHDI), a subsidiary of the Children’s Fund of Connecticut, is a not-for-profit organization established to promote and maximize the healthy physical, behavioral, emotional, cognitive and social development of children throughout Connecticut.  CHDI works to ensure that children in Connecticut, particularly those who are disadvantaged, will have access to and make use of a comprehensive, effective, community-based health and mental health care system.

Public Supports Action to Protect Youth From Weight-Based Bullying

Parental support for enactment of laws and policies to protect youth from weight-based bullying is “present, consistent, and strong,” according to a new study by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. All 50 states currently have anti-bullying laws, but only three states – New York, Maine and New Hampshire - include body weight as a characteristic that places youth at risk of being bullied.

Many school districts have anti-bullying policies, yet body weight is often overlooked, stating that “evidence from students, parents and teachers indicates that weight-based bullying is one of the most prevalent forms of peer harassment towards youth in the school setting.”

The study found that support for including weight-based bullying in anti-bullying laws has grown during the past two years, stressing that “the omission of body weight in existing policies has important implications for youth who face weight-based bullying.”

“Parental voices can be influential in mobilizing advocacy efforts, and enacting policy change affecting children’s health,” said Rebecca Puhl, a study author, professor in UConn’s Department of Human Development and Family Studies, and deputy director of the Rudd Center.

The study findings, published in the journal Pediatric Obesity, can inform policy discussions about remedies for weight-based bullying among youth as increasing national attention is being paid to this issue.  The study indicated that “parental support is an influential catalyst motivating political will for policy decisions affecting youth, but has received limited research attention.”

Specific findings of the study include:

• Parental support has been consistently high (at least 81 percent) over the past two years for policies to address weight-based bullying among youth at the school, state, and federal levels.
• Support appears to have increased over the past two years for measures to better protect youth from weight-based bullying through improvements to state anti-bullying laws (87.9 percent – up from 84.7 percent) and through enactment of federal legislation (86 percent – up from 81 percent).
• While previous research has shown that mothers express more support than fathers for similar types of policies, this new study found no gender difference, suggesting that fathers’ support for these measures may be increasing.

“As a next step, it will be important to communicate with policy makers and school officials to identify interest and feasibility of viable policy initiatives,” said Puhl, “and to examine potential avenues for enacting change through law.” Puhl told CT by the Numbers that Connecticut’s law includes “physical appearance” but not body weight. There is, therefore, room to strengthen the state law, she pointed out, because physical appearance is a broad category that can include everything from clothing style to hair color, and body weight could easily slip through the cracks if it is not specifically enumerated.

The study involved online questionnaires of diverse national samples of parents in 2014 and 2015, totaling 1,804 parents over the two years. The research was funded by a donation from Rudd Foundation and a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The study co-authors include Young Suh and Xun Li of the UConn Rudd Center. The Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity is a non-profit research and public policy organization devoted to promoting solutions to childhood obesity, poor diet, and weight bias through research and policy.