Paul Bass Photo
DuBois-Walton chats up future voter at campaign launch. She released a 15-point education plan Wednesday, including a proposal to extend the right to vote in municipal elections to 16 year-olds.
You’ve heard of “New Haven Promise” for college students. Mayoral candidate Karen DuBois-Walton wants to create a birth-to‑5 “New Haven Pre-Promise” as well.
DuBois-Walton, who is challenging first-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker for the Democratic nomination, released a birth-to‑5 universal childcare and pre-school proposal by that name Wednesday as part of a 15-part education platform.
She modeled the “New Haven Pre-Promise” proposal on the “New Haven Promise” program, which offers 100 percent four-year tuition to New Haveners who attended public schools for 12 years and maintained a 3.0 high school GPA, then maintain a 2.0 college GPA .
The plan would draw on a combination of local, state and federal government and private dollars and work with existing early education centers to offer free spots for all New Haveners under 5 years old.
“Investments in early care can generate significant, lifelong impacts for the children who gain access, increasing graduation rates, lifelong earnings, and parental work opportunities,” DuBois-Walton is quoted in a campaign release announcing her education platform.
Click here to read the full platform. It is the first of a series of policy platforms DuBois-Walton plans to unroll in coming weeks.
“Pre-Promise” would not replace existing child-care or early ed programs, the candidate said in an interview Wednesday. Rather, it would leverage existing public dollars for those programs to raise private dollars. Those private dollars would help create new slots and fill in gaps to enable providers to pay high enough salaries to offer sustainable, high-quality care and instruction to all families. That would “allow people doing [this] important work to actually get paid a fair wage.”
Parents would contact the program to find slots in programs and obtain financial help to make those slots affordable to families beyond those able to pay high fees.
DuBois-Walton said she envisions the program running as a separate nonprofit, like New Haven Promise, rather than out of the Board of Education or City Hall. At first it would subsidize programs; the ultimate goal would be to provide free universal birth-to‑5 care and education.
She said she does not have a cost estimate for the program.
The New Haven Pre-Promise proposal draws on research done by NH ChILD, an advocacy group engaged in a $1 million 10-year quest to transform the early-care and education system in New Haven. (Read more about that here.) The group was founded in 2017 and incorporated in 2019 under inaugural executive director Wendy Simmons, and is also led by one of DuBois-Walton’s early endorsers, Allyx Schiavone; DuBois-Walton was a founding advisor to the group. The group estimates that an additional 2,000 infant/toddler slots and 500 full-day full-year preschool slots are needed to adequately serve all families in New Haven who likely want access to care.
Asked about the proposal Wednesday, Elicker told the Independent he shares the goal of universal early childhood childcare and education and increasing the pay of workers in those programs. He noted that he raised the issue in previous campaigns, and worked with advocates. He said he hopes the city will be able to advance those goals with state pandemic relief dollars as well as money from President Joe Biden’s American Families Plan, if it passes. “If it does not pass, we will be working to accomplish this regardless,” Elicker said. (Click here to read about the education plan Elicker released in his 2019 mayoral campaign.)
Teacher Housing, Electric Buses, 16-Year-old Voters
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Other specific proposals from DuBois-Walton’s plan include:
• Converting the school bus fleet to electric vehicles.
• Expanding after-school programs and wraparound services through federal relief dollars.
• Start high school later in the morning (read more about that issue here) and add permanent remote learning options.
• Create a program offering free housing in public-housing complexes to teachers who agree to work with kids who live there. It would build on an existing housing authority program currently operating at the McConaughy Terrace development.
• Allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in municipal elections and serve on more boards and commissions. The voting change would require lobbying the state legislature for special permission. Communities like Oakland, California, have found that expanding the local vote to 16 and 17-year-olds engages them early in the political process and leads more of their parents to vote as well. “Our youth voices on the Board of Education have been helpful in ensuring that the student perspective is heard in Board meetings. We should expand this opportunity to more of our boards and commissions,” DuBois-Walton stated in her release.
Mayor’s Role On Board Of Ed
The plan reprises an argument DuBois-Walton has made recently on the campaign trail: That the mayor, a member of the Board of Education, should play a more active role on that board.
DuBois-Walton, who is a member of the state Board of Education, has been criticizing Mayor Elicker for failing to convince his colleagues on the board to reopen public schools to in-person learning last fall. That measure lost by a single vote. The mayor should not just cast one vote, but show leadership by convincing others to support a vision, DuBois-Walton argued.
Schools Superintendent Dr. Iline Tracey “wanted the buildings open. She needed the leadership of a partner to get that done. If a mayor can’t hold a consensus there to make that happen, that’s a problem,” DuBois-Walton said.
Elicker responded to that criticism after DuBois-Walton raised it at a press conference last week. He said in an interview that he defers to Tracey to run the school system and that he is only one vote among seven on the Board of Education. When city aid seems called for, he steps in, he said. “When there were concerns raised about some school infrastructure not being ready, the health, fire and building departments began inspections to ensure schools were safe,” Elicker said. “The other candidate has had countless opportunities to raise her concerns over the past year and a half. She has not once testified at a Board of Education meeting, while the rest of us have been working around the clock to ensure we are making safe decisions.”
“I don’t seek to quash voices that disagree with me,” Elicker added Wednesday.
DuBois-Walton was asked about criticism former Mayor Toni Harp faced when she sought to address divisions on the school board by becoming its president.
“I’m not asking for that,” she said, but rather for the mayor to work to exert more leadership. “Every member of the board brings their gifts and talents. The mayor brings the power of the citywide executive. There’s some responsibility that comes with that.”
Yeah, she wants 16 year olds to be able to vote for her so she can propose taxpayer-funded Netflix for everyone. What a joke. KDW has nothing to say, no experience except BAD experience with New Haven housing. Thumbs down from this longtime resident.