Candidates Diverge On Early Childhood Ed Fixes

A locally run charter preschool, supported by the school district? Or more non-profit childcare centers, supported by well-off parents’ tuition?

Mayoral candidates presented those two ideas for how New Haven can expand access to a limited number of pre-school spots at a first-ever forum on early childhood care and education.

The event, held on Wednesday night at All Our Kin’s Chapel Street offices, was put on by CERCLE, an advocacy group supporting high-quality early childhood programs in underserved communities, in partnership with the Hope Child Development Center, a Bible-based child care center in Wooster Square; All Our Kin, a training center for child care providers; the CT Early Childhood Alliance, another advocacy group, and CSEA-SEIU Local 2001, a union representing home-based family childcare providers.

Both Toni Harp and Justin Elicker agreed that more can be done to support the city’s youngest. They pointed to the latest research on brain development. And they said that state government is failing to support kids before they arrive in kindergarten as 5‑year-olds.

Harp and Elicker, the two candidates competing in a Democratic mayoral primary on Sept. 10, diverged in their solutions.

Harp, who referenced her two decades drafting budgets in the State Senate, said New Haven needs to pressure the legislature for more funding, while looking at starting another local charter school that would be limited to the early grades.

Elicker, who referenced his time dealing with public schools on summer programs as executive director of the New Haven Land Trust, said New Haven should band together with other big cities to pressure lawmakers, while it uses the city’s economic development tools to support child-care centers, especially ones that reach across class with sliding-scale tuition.

Georgia Goldburn, the director of Hope Child Development Center, said that the back-to-back, 40-minute Q&A’s were designed to get the two candidates on the record with their election-year promises about a system that needs a lot of work.

NH ChILD, a newly formed group of advocates trying to set a 10-year vision for the city’s tots, estimates that at least 1,960 kids under age 5 don’t have access to quality programs.

Those families, who couldn’t claim a spot in existing programs nor afford $300-a-week programs like KinderCare and The Little Schoolhouse, are left out of an intricate network of government grants that’s not meeting the city’s needs for early child care and education.

The state offers one primary subsidy for infants and toddlers, Care4Kids, which works like a voucher that parents who make under half the state’s median income (around $47,000 for a family of three) can use to offset tuition at licensed day-care providers or even compensate a close family member. That reaches about 1,700 kids in New Haven.

But providers point out that Care4Kids is always a target. After being put on hold in 2016, it’s been reinstated, but it still doesn’t cover the full cost and has been bogged down by delays, including a current three-month backlog to review parents’ eligibility applications.

An Equity Issue, Seen Two Ways

To fix those problems, both candidates said they’ll try to persuade state lawmakers that New Haven needs more funding — with two different pitches.

Harp said she’ll tell Gov. Ned Lamont that adequately funding early childhood care is an issue of equality for women.

“I’m really disappointed with the changes that have occurred at the state level with Care4Kids,” Harp said. ​“I think it’s really important that we get to the bottom of that and figure out how that can be changed.

“Whenever you have a workforce and businesses that are largely run by women, you see those businesses treated in a disparate way,” she continued. ​“I think this is women’s ability to work issue, and we’ve got to get the governor to see that it’s got to be adequately funded.”

Elicker said that he’ll join with Connecticut’s other urban centers to pressure state lawmakers, outside of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities that represents all 169 towns.

“There’s all these different rules, and it’s really complicated to figure out all the different funding streams,” Elicker said. ​“That does not facilitate easy access to programming, particularly for, say, a family care provider that’s trying to enter into the system.

“I’ve been advocating that we create a coalition of large cities,” he went on. ​“I think that we, instead of just complaining to the state and having our own small legislative agenda from New Haven, we got to work with the Bridgeports, Hartfords and New Londons, and collaborate and say we need to move the dial on some of these issues that are really disproportionately impacting our urban centers.”

Slots Needed, But Who Runs Them?

In the meantime, the candidates also proposed different ways of supplementing the city’s offerings.

Harp said that New Haven should push for more Magnet Pre‑K seats to go to New Haven residents and also look at creating another ​“local charter” — a model that allows a school to make its own rules while employing a unionized faculty and accepting city kids under the school board’s oversight.

That’s what happened at Elm City Montessori, which was founded in 2014, after a group of moms expressed frustration at the lack of options for early childhood education in the city. After a recent charter renewal, the school is planning to expand to eighth grade.

“It has higher aspirations now, but I really think that we need to look at perhaps even doing another charter school that really is based upon us going from Pre‑K to 3, and that’s all it’s going to do is early childhood,” Harp said. ​“Then we bring kids in from the suburbs as well, and I think that will get us away from as much racial isolation as we see in the city.”

Elicker said the city should support more ​“blended programs” with sliding-scale tuition that would help integrate across race and class.

Currently, early childhood programs in the city can be ​“very, very segregated,” he said, adding that is ​“not only unethical, but it’s actually not a good way to teach our kids.” As a model for how to change that, he pointed to the Friends Center, which charges families 12 percent of their gross income, up to an annual cost of $22,000 for infants and toddlers and $16,995 for pre-schoolers.

“They can take some of those dollars to help subsidize other families, to supplement the existing funding coming,” he said, ​“which is not enough to support the kind of wages that we actually should pay our providers.”

Elicker added that should support those providers as they try to navigate the complicated bureaucracy of licensing and funding.

“This is a business, and it’s hard to run,” he said. The city ​“can help teach families … how to maneuver the system, access some funding and also run a business. That’s a way we can help support communities where they already have some of their own family care that may be off the books and unofficial, to start a business that can actually grow and make sure we’re creating more jobs.”

Watch the entire forum below.