| Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now, Inc. “The Greater Norwalk Area’s Community Action Agency” Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now, Inc. (NEON a private non-profit organization, is the community action agency serving the greater Norwalk Area including New Canaan, Westport, Weston, Wilton and Darien. |
| Building blocks of growing up smart |
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| NEON, Inc. 98 South Main Street Norwalk, CT 06854 Phone: (203) 899-2483 Central Admin: 203.899.2420 Fax: 203.899.2430 Email: admin@neon-norwalk.org |
"London Bridge is fa-lling down, fa-lling down, fa-lling down..." Giggling, a group of Head Start preschoolers dance to the old nursery-rhyme song while others play house and arrange translucent, colored pieces to make new colors. They don't think about the skills they're developing; it's just fun. But the social, cognitive and motor skills children learn in early childhood are no laughing matter. As schools and communities look for ways to close the achievement gap and help kids who might otherwise drop out of school or end up imprisoned to become productive members of society, a growing number of experts, policy makers, agencies and funders statewide are convinced that early childhood is the most effective time to point youngsters toward success. This focus has occurred mainly within the last decade — the state legislature allocated millions toward providing preschool slots for needy families in 1997 — and intensified in the last five years as more funders have jumped on board and Gov. M. Jodi Rell expressed her desire to make the state a national model for early childhood education. Although state funding has faltered, private funding for early childhood education has become easier to get. Several area agencies, including the United Way of Norwalk & Wilton and the Norwalk Chamber of Commerce, indicated that the business world has increasingly bought into early care and education in the past five years, to ensure skilled workers in the future. The movement comes at a time when the No Child Left Behind Act is pressuring Norwalk's school district to improve academic achievement — the district has been identified as "in need of improvement" for three successive years under the act — and more of the city's young students are showing what experts believe is a lack of healthy social-emotional development. "Sometimes, I spend half my time just teaching the kids about eye contact. Every year there's more and more," said Marie Pino, a kindergarten aide at Silvermine Elementary School who's seen a significant increase in behavioral problems among entering kindergartners, regardless of the economic or racial demographic from which they come. During her 11 years in the job, Pino has noticed more children who are emotionally needy, socially unprepared and/or unaware of "basic civil courtesy" like sharing or saying 'please' and 'thank-you', she said. She's not alone. Children in kindergarten through second grade are "far more challenging" than they were five years ago, said city teachers' union President Bruce Mellion. Teachers have told him that more young children are acting out in school, whether it be fighting, kicking, throwing objects or using inappropriate language, he said. "It's just unbelievable what lower elementary teachers are dealing with, that maybe they never had to deal with before," Mellion said. "It's gotten so much more complicated ... all the way around. It's social, it's emotional, and in some cases it's very academically challenging as well. (Teaching) elementary school may be the most challenging in terms of expectations." Norwalk's elementary out-of-school suspensions for grades kindergarten through five increased by 34 percent, from 148 to 199 students, from fall 2000 through spring 2003, although elementary enrollment dropped by nearly 3 percent. More than 80 percent of the elementary students suspended in that time were minorities, according to a 2003 district analysis, and most of those were black. In 2003, minorities represented 93 percent of out-of- school suspensions and black boys made up 53 percent. Black girls represented the second highest demographic suspended, at 19 percent. Secondary suspension rates fell last school year, due to a push for alternatives to suspension, but no data was available to show if elementary suspension rates have followed a similar pattern. Disruptive behavior and disrespect for authority are the most common reasons for suspension at any level, said district Human Relations Officer Bruce Morris. Whether they've dropped or not, elementary out-of-school suspensions remain a concern for the school district, Morris said, because sexually inappropriate behavior and violence among very young children has risen in the past eight years. Apparently, it's not only schools that have trouble with children's behavior. In a survey circulated last summer by Norwalk Kids Start Smart, a community collaborative designed to get parents involved, more than half of the 220 parents who responded said they wanted to learn about disciplining their children. Discipline was selected by 138 parents, more than other topics such as, "helping my child do well in school" or "developing healthy eating habits." Local experts believe parent education is key to helping young kids prepare for kindergarten and do well in early grades, but it's difficult to get parents to come to workshops or meetings. Child behavior problems are not limited to Norwalk. David Nee, executive director of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, a $110 million-endowment foundation that funds early childhood programs in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state, said it is an issue that is generating a lot of discussion. Many experts blame the increasing amount of "screen time" spent by young students, and accompanying isolation, for the rise in unwanted behaviors. Television acts as baby-sitter to many young children, who are often exposed to inappropriate programming and commercials, said Dr. Andrew Lustbader, a child psychiatrist and medical director at the Mid-Fairfield County Child Guidance Center. U. S. children are spending more time in front of a screen than ever before: On average, they spend between three and four hours per day watching television and a 2006 report from the National Institute on Media and the Family found that 42 percent of children play video games for at least one hour a day. A fall 2003 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that children 6 and under spend an average two hours a day using screen media, and that television viewing begins earlier than the minimum age of 2 recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Norwalk Board of Education member Bruce Kimmel, who teaches elementary school in New York City, said he's noticed a change in the way young students speak and act. "I begin to see certain types of behaviors at a younger age than I did 10 years ago," he said. "It's really shocking. You can get in conversations with third-graders, fourth-graders and they've seen movies, TV shows, that just blow you away." Kimmel, 58, believes preschool is necessary now as a substitute for the social, cognitive and physical experiences that his generation got by playing outside with neighborhood buddies. "They're not experiencing the life that a child is supposed to experience," he said. "For some reason we had that ongoing life outside the school that was linguistically rich, socially rich, and physically very demanding. We did a lot of the things on our own that go on in preschool. There wasn't a crying need for preschool like there is now because society seemed to be a lot safer. Now, you've got to structure it more." Kimmel agrees with many experts who say a quality preschool experience is an effective, relatively inexpensive way to minimize unwanted behavior by allowing early problem detection and guidance. Children's early performance in school is a clear indicator of their futures, said Janice Gruendel, the governor's senior advisor on early childhood. Kids who drop out of school are more likely to end up on welfare or incarcerated, she said, and it's more cost-effective to invest earlier, rather than later. "If you have really problematic reading scores in third or fourth grade, then when we look deeply we're going to find a whole lot more risks," she said. "Kids who can't read by third grade also can't read by eighth grade. It's just a trajectory that goes to bad places. If we invest early we're not going to be chasing our tail in 6th or 8th grade." Gruendel said Connecticut does not use third or fourth grade test scores formally to project prison populations as do some other states, including New Jersey, but state Sen. Bob Duff, D-25, said he and other legislators are well aware of the link between early childhood experience and prison. The state's prison population has nearly doubled since 1990, numbering 18,902 as of Jan. 1. Most of those — about 63 percent — were minority men, with black men comprising the largest category, just as black boys account for most elementary suspensions in Norwalk. The state Department of Correction reports an annual cost of more than $30,000 per prison inmate in the fiscal year 2005-06, while Connecticut school districts spent, on average, about $12,000 per student. In Norwalk, several agencies and leaders are taking the prevention and early intervention principle a step further, convinced that behavior and learning are closely linked to physical and mental health. Just as kids with rotting teeth or poor nutrition are disadvantaged in school, so are those whose social- emotional development is lacking, they say. "We can't split the child up into pieces," said Mary Budrawich, the school district's early childhood education specialist. "(Social-emotional development) is very typical for this age, for 3- and 4-year-olds. They're starting to understand that there are other people in the world. Some kids get it. The children we're talking about ... are kids who are just not getting ... that 'I could negotiate it with words.'" A new citywide action plan addressing the care, education, and health of kids birth through 8 and their families — with particular attention paid to those at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level — was presented to the Board of Education Jan. 16, after more than four months of work by the school district and several city agencies. It includes steps to ensure that 95 percent of young city kids will be appropriately screened for behavioral and developmental health issues and have their own pediatrician by 2010. Many poor kids simply visit the emergency room when ill and thus have less chance of being diagnosed and treated early, according to the plan. The Norwalk Community Health Center, which primarily serves a poor and minority clientele, has recently hired three more pediatricians so more children can be served, as well as a pediatric case manager to provide referrals and follow-up. The center plans to partner with the Child Guidance Center in using the expertise of a full-time clinician, experienced in evaluation and treatment of young children, who is yet to be hired. Most primary care pediatricians don't have the time, expertise and/or experience to diagnose and treat children's mental health issues, said Lustbader, who will be a consultant for the Health Center. He left his pediatrics practice about 15 years ago to learn child and adolescent psychiatry. "Over half the kids I saw in pediatrics had psychological problems and I didn't know how to treat them," he said. It's important that underlying mental and emotional issues are identified and treated early, regardless of whether they manifest themselves in disruptive behavior at school, and don't become compounded as youngsters grow older, he said. If pediatricians have the knowledge and resources they need to identify mental health problems and refer families to treatment, they are more likely to do so, Lustbader said, adding that families are more likely to comply if treatment services are readily accessible. But the movement toward early care and focus on preschool isn't without its concerns. Many experts hope it won't result in too much structure, too soon, because preschools aren't immune from a nationwide thrust toward accountability, testing and very focused curricula. Head Start now tests youngsters in fall and spring to measure their progress, said Rose Marie McKenzie, director of childcare for Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now Inc., which operates Head Start, School Readiness and toddler programs that serve more than 500 city youngsters between ages 18 months and 5 years. It's important to remember that children learn through play, she and others said, whether they're learning the alphabet, the color wheel or how to behave and get along with others. Noelle Frampton can be reached at (203) 354-1006 or nframpton@thehour.com. |
| This is the seventh in a series of articles about the lives of and issues regarding at-risk children and young adults living in Norwalk, funded by a fellowship grant from the Norwalk Children's Foundation. The articles, written exclusively under editorial oversight of The Hour, will appear approximately every two weeks for three to five months. |
| The Hour January 28, 2007 by Noelle Frampton |
