According to the United Way of Connecticut (the agency that administers the state's Care 4 Kids program) 4,424 fewer children were being served in December 2016 than in August 2016 when the program closed to most new applicants.

Families from cities like Bridgeport, Hartford, Waterbury and New Haven were hardest hit, with a combined 1,429 fewer children being served.  These cities represent one-third of the total subsidies lost between August and December.

While Care 4 Kids (C4K) does not provide a racial breakdown of the children being served, estimates of the percentage of children of color enrolled in public schools in each of these cities, according to Edsite, suggest that 83% of them are children of color.  The pattern holds for the next five towns hardest hit: Danbury, East Hartford, Meriden, New Britain and Norwich, where 862 combined fewer children were being served; estimates suggest that 66% of these are children of color.

Connecticut has the distinction of having the widest achievement gap in the nation.  The reduction in racial isolation sought through the Sheff v. O’Neill case remains elusive and in CCJEF v. Rell, Judge Thomas Moukawsher ruled that Connecticut is defaulting on its constitutional duty to give all children an adequate education.

The closure of the C4K program follows in the sad tradition of unequal access to quality care and education for the state’s youngest children of color.  The data is clear on the benefits of early care and education and it is equally clear about the school-to-prison pipeline.

The C4K program uniquely achieves the value of members on both sides of the aisle – in that it allows low income families, the majority of who are people of color, to go to work, which affords them the pride of providing for their families.  Care 4 Kids gives these families the help they need to propel themselves from poverty and creates access to high quality learning experiences for their children while they work.  For many, it is the only source of support that they access through the state to cover the cost of childcare, which is among the highest in the nation.

And while the decision to close the program will result in some forgoing work to stay at home, many will remain committed to their vision of economic independence – choosing instead, unreliable and low quality care, oftentimes in unregulated and unsafe settings.  Regardless of the decision, the data and history have shown us that the impact will be the same:  A life sentence for children of color to a second-chance rather than a first-chance society.

The fact is clear for families of color regardless of their economic means, but most profoundly for low income families.  The pathway to achieve their vision of success for their children is profoundly impaired by their decision to raise their families in Connecticut.

The countervailing view will invariably be, “What can we do if there is no money?  We cannot spend what we do not have.  These are bad economic times for everyone.”  But for many of Connecticut’s children of color, even in times of economic abundance their access to quality care and education remains deferred.  And although some may see the decision to close the C4K program as a temporary measure, history has demonstrated the pernicious legacy of unequal and delayed access to quality care and education for children of color.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his book Why We Can’t Wait, “The words ‘bad timing’ came to be ghosts haunting our every move … they did not realize that it was ridiculous to speak of timing when the clock of history showed that the Negro had already suffered one hundred years of delay.”  Sadly, time appears to be standing still for children of color in Connecticut’s educational system.

It is for this reason that I urge legislators, on both sides of the aisle, and the governor, to look beyond the very narrow view of the current fiscal crisis and take a much broader perspective on how Connecticut can be proactive in ensuring success for children of color in its educational system.

I urge our elected officials to reopen the C4K program now and provide the funding needed today and into the future to ensure that Connecticut’s most vulnerable children begin on the right path from the very beginning.  It is time to put our money where our mouth is.

We can no longer wait!

Georgia Goldblum is co-founder of CERCLE and director of Hope Child Development Center in New Haven.

The Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance spoke with NBC Connecticut News. 
​Watch the interview after the break. If you would like to share your story with CERCLE, click here.

Last Tuesday evening, CERCLE hosted its first Community Forum on quality affordable child care in Connecticut. Reacting to the drastic changes in the Care 4 Kids subsidies announced in late May, CERCLE and CT Parent Power cosponsored the event bringing together families, child care providers and legislators. 

In a quiet room at Hope Child Development Center, Parents impacted by the new requirements shared their stories with state representatives, alderpersons and other families attending to lend support even though the cut would have no effect on their ability to pay for child care services.

While, the forum was a great success for CERCLE as we continue to develop our voice in the early education community, Care 4 Kids families need us to do more now. In the coming weeks, CERCLE will continue to mobilize families, small business providers in the ECE industry, and other stakeholders to speak out against these cuts and their devastating effects on families in underserved communities.

If you would like to help, please consider volunteering. Email us at info@cercle.org for more information.

Make no mistake, prekindergarten education is critical to a child's future academic success. But not just any pre-K; instead, early education where quality is paramount accomplishes the long-term benefits that are sought.

As discussed in a recent New York Times op-ed, curricula that actively engage children's minds make the difference. Accordingly, preschoolers are more inclined to retain knowledge and learning techniques beyond their kindergarten years when they are immersed in an early-learning environment where, for example:

• the concept of length is taught by comparing the distance covered by shadows cast on the ground;
• measurements are learned by creating a guide on how to make light blue; or
• assignments incorporate reading, math, science, and art theories.

This is the case in Boston where research indicated that preschoolers there were four to seven months more advanced in reading and mathematics.  These accomplishments were identified as factors contributing to the city's pre-kindergartners narrowing the achievement gap on Massachusetts' third-grade examinations: approximately 27 percent more scored "proficient" or better on the state's tests.

The successes in Boston are mirrored in other parts of the country: Michigan, North Carolina, and Tulsa, Okla. have noted comparable outcomes. More specifically, results from New Jersey showed that when children from low-income families attend quality preschool programs the achievement gap is reduced by up to 30 percent at the fifth-grade level when measured against the nationwide average. The benefit was more enduring in Chicago, Ill., where high school students who were enrolled in the city's Child-Parent Centers' pre-K program had a graduation rate 29 percent higher than their peers who were not.

Early education that ​is less rigorous does not produce similar long-term benefits, however. In Tennessee, for instance, children enrolled in state preschool programs made significant progress in reading, mathematics, and language. But none of these advantages was noticeable by the end of their kindergarten years. And they remained absent when the children were evaluated at the third-grade level.

​There is a remarkable distinction in how preschool children in Boston and Tennessee are educated. Tennessee's method lacks a systematic strategy, and essentially, "each teacher is inventing pre-K on her own," observed Dale Farran, a Vanderbilt University professor and one of the researchers who conducted the study of the children enrolled in the state's preschool program. Conversely, Boston's approach is more wholesome. Teachers are trained in child development and mentored in their profession by more experienced educators. The city's commitment is equally evident in its curriculum, which emphasizes children's active participation in learning. "Too often, children sit in a circle and the adult does all the talking," chides Dr. Jason Sachs, Director of Early Childhood Education for Boston Public Schools.