State Sends $2M To Fair Haven Childcare Hub

As a dozen preschoolers laughed and bounced around a fenced-in outdoor playground on Haven Street, city and state officials gathered in a Fair Haven childcare center’s parking lot to celebrate a $2 million early-childhood-education boost from the state.

On Wednesday morning, Gov. Ned Lamont, state Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye, Mayor Justin Elicker, and a half-dozen state and city legislators and childcare providers and supporters met up outside of LULAC Head Start​’s warehouse-turned-classroom space at 106 Haven St. to mark $2 million in state bonding now heading to the long-time local childcare program.

LULAC Head Start Executive Director Mikyle Byrd-Vaughn said that that recent surge in state aid will help LULAC construct a resource center for children with social-emotional and behavioral challenges, a family resource center, and a teachers lab at a Haven Street site that already serves more than 100 children who come from low-income families and who are between the ages of 8 weeks and five years old. 

“I know with the right environment, with the right support around you, with community engagement, children can do the unimaginable,” Byrd-Vaughn said during Wednesday’s presser.

LULAC Head Start just entered its 40th year serving New Haven area children and families, she said. ​“What a great way to kick off this year of celebration!” She said that the local childcare program is fully enrolled, and has a waitlist of around 150 infants and toddlers and an additional 40 prechoolers. LULAC bought the Haven Street ex-warehouse property in August 2020 for $800,000 and has subsequently moved out of its long-time former Fair Haven home on James Street.

This state money will ​“allow us to continue serving” the 100-plus young children LULAC provides care for, Byrd-Vaughn said. Without this aid, the program might not have been able to relocate and wouldn’t be able to complete construction on its ongoing Haven Street projects, thereby displacing 100 families who currently rely on the program for quality affordable early childhood education.

“We know our services are impacting children’s full development from the very early age that we are able to enroll them,” she said.

Each of the seven fellow speakers at Wednesday’s presser returned to those same points again and again as they stressed the importance of government investments in quality, accessible, affordable childcare.

“Just one or two years of high-quality early childhood education dramatically changes someone’s trajectory,” Elicker said, referencing the Perry Project’s years-long study of the impact of preschool on a program participants’ lives. ​“The data is clear. If we invest in our youngest people, we’re going to dramatically change their trajectories in the future. This is the right thing to do, not only for families, but for the children and their future.” 

In that vein, he said, the city recently won aldermanic approval to spend $1.6 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds on partnering with Hope for New Haven / Cercle Inc. to administer a workforce development grant program for early childhood education and childcare providers in New Haven. Alders also recently signed off on spending $1.4 million in ARPA on an agreement with United Way to run an ​“expansion and enhancement grant program” supporting local childcare providers, and still another $500,000 in ARPA aid to work with United Way on developing an ​“early childhood education and childcare strategic plan” for the city.

“One of the critical areas in our society is the fact that so many children are coming to kindergarten unprepared to be there,” State Sen. and President Pro Tem Martin Looney said. That can lead to a ​“downward spiral” of behavioral challenges and educational struggles over the course of a young person’s life in school.

“Whereas if they were prepared to walk into their first day of kindergarten with confidence, with preparation, with anticipation and with happiness and a sense of comfort and belonging,” Looney said, ​“it would make a world of difference, not only at age five going into kindergarten, but for the rest of their educational lives.”

Fair Havener and LULAC Head Start parent of two Tienna-Lynn Norman said that her four-year-old son and one-year-old daughter have both benefited tremendously from participating in the neighborhood childcare program.

She said that her son was ​“speech-delayed” but, upon going to LULAC, ​“he learned very quickly. His speech improved very quickly.”

About LULAC, she said, ​“they were very, very welcoming from the start.”