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"Throughout history, people of color in the United States have experienced discrimination and maltreatment when it comes to education, employment, housing, healthcare, and mass incarceration, among others. It is through these and other systems that structural racism is maintained as a result of historical actions that continue to be felt today. Because of this, these marginalized communities have dealt with poverty and food insecurity at a much higher rate than white people. In fact, Black people are two times more likely to experience poverty than the overall population of the United States, and the percentage only increases for women of color."

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Hunger is a Racial Equity Issue | Move For Hunger

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The housing shortage during the Great Depression led the government to create housing programs aimed to create segregated housing for middle-class Americans with white families occupying new homes and apartments in the newly developed suburbs, while Black families were regulated to urban high-rises often much farther from work.

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"Food insecurity affects 13.9% of Connecticut residents, but the New Haven rate is 22%-- twice the national average." (Yale Hunger and Homelessness Action Project)

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The Challenge

Around 130,000 people call New Haven their home. Several thousand of them make up part of the half million people in Connecticut who rely on SNAP (formerly called food stamps) to make ends meet. Over twenty percent of city residents are food insecure, meaning they do not have consistent access of affordable and nutritious food.

Hand in hand with this issue is homelessness. Nearly 4,000 people in Connecticut were identified by the 2016 Point in Time Count as either currently homeless or at risk of homelessness. The homeless population includes single men and women, and families with children. Those experiencing homelessness have varied and complicated stories, but they include victims of domestic violence, the mentally or physically ill, and veterans. Minorities are disproportionately represented on the streets and in the waiting lines for shelters. ( Connecticut Point in Time Count).

Connecticut residents rely on snap assistance.

Of Connecticut's 3.5 million residents, over half a million people rely on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits every month to meet their food needs.

of new haven residents are food insecure.

Food insecurity is defined a lack of consistent access to affordable, nutritious food. Food insecurity affects 13.9% of Connecticut residents, but the New Haven rate is 22%-- twice the national average.

people in new haven live at or below the poverty line.

New Haven's low income families account for a quarter of the city's entire population. Overall, the rate is virtually unchanged from 2010 and continues to be much higher than the state's average.

YHHAP helps combat local food insecurity and homelessness issues through our diverse and innovative programs (see the "project wheel" on the menu), including clothing closets, food rescue services, case management, employment opportunities, and more. Join us in serving New Haven.

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Around 130,000 people call New Haven their home. Several thousand of them make up part of the half million people in Connecticut who rely on SNAP (formerly called food stamps) to make ends meet. Over twenty percent of city residents are food insecure, meaning they do not have consistent access of affordable and nutritious food.

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"More than 1 in 10 adults in Greater New Haven experience food insecurity at some point during the year. 28% of Latine adults and 20% of Black adults in the region experience food insecurity. 14% of Greater New Haven residents stayed home in 2020 because they did not have reliable transportation."

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The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

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Did You Know?

40% of children under the age of 5 in New Haven live at or below the federal poverty level, which is $30,000 per year for a family of four.

More than 1 in 10 adults in Greater New Haven experience food insecurity at some point during the year. 28% of Latine adults and 20% of Black adults in the region experience food insecurity.

14% of Greater New Haven residents stayed home in 2020 because they did not have reliable transportation.

50% of Black residents, 47% of Latine residents and 32% of white residents in Greater New Haven are burdened by housing costs that are more than 30% of their monthly incomes.

Between August 2021 and August 2022, the rate of food-cost inflation outpaced overall inflation. While the consumer price index increased 8.3 percent over that period, overall food costs increased 11.4 percent and the cost of groceries increased 13.5 percent.

Even before these recent rises, prices in Connecticut were higher than the national average. While the average cost of a meal in the U.S. was $3.25 in 2020, the average cost of a meal was higher in New Haven County at $3.77

Persons who experience food insecurity are two to three times more likely to have diabetes. As a result of food policies and other structural factors, healthy food options that are lower in saturated fats, sugar, and sodium often cost more and are more difficult for families to access.

Data source: Greater New Haven Community Wellbeing Index 2023

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Est. 2020 by Karen Pritzker to help ensure that all Greater New Haven area residents have the basic material needs of daily life.

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"Approximately 25% of residents live in poverty, compared to 10% statewide. An additional 40% struggle to afford basic necessities like housing and food." (CARE and New Haven Food Policy Council)

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Excerpt:

New Haven is a diverse city with deep and enduring economic and social disparities. Approximately 25% of residents live in poverty, compared to 10% statewide. An additional 40% struggle to afford basic necessities like housing and food. While intricately tied, poverty is just one of several issues that drives hunger. Unemployment, low-wage jobs, transportation, and family resources also make it difficult for people to access the food they need to thrive.

Across New Haven, 22% of the city's residents are food insecure - with not enough food or money to buy food - much higher than the Connecticut rate of 12% and national rates of 13%. Food insecurity varies widely in New Haven, affecting low-income people of color at higher rates. In two recent studies in New Haven - DataHaven's Wellbeing Survey and CARE's New Haven Health Survey, both conducted in 2015 - food insecurity impacts 1 in 3 adults in the city's lowest income neighborhoods. Within these neighborhoods, food insecurity is notably high among those not employed at 41.3% and underemployed (working part-time but wanting full-time employment) at 53.9% compared to 18.9% among those employed with a full-time job. Hispanic and Latinx communities in New Haven bear the greatest burden of food insecurity. Compared to other demographic groups, both DataHaven and CARE reported higher food insecurity among Latinx residents: across New Haven at 34% and among those in the six lowest-income neighborhoods at 50.1%. Rates of hunger are highest in neighborhoods with larger Latinx populations, like Fair Haven. Future data collection efforts should better capture food insecurity among undocumented residents. Undocumented residents may be particularly vulnerable, because they often work in low-paying jobs, are ineligible for government assistance programs, and may be afraid to go to emergency food providers due to anti-immigration policies.

This report was written by Alycia Santilli, MSW, Director, CARE Kathleen O'Connor Duffany, PhD, Director of Research and Evaluation, CARE with contributions from Mark Abraham, DataHaven Billy Bromage, Connecticut Mental Health Center Austin Bryniarski, Yale Sustainable Food Program Grace Carroll, Yale School of Public Health Peggy Gallup, Southern Connecticut State University Joy Johannes, City of New Haven Maria Markham, Connecticut Food Bank John McDougall, Yale School of Medicine Victoria Zigmont, Southern Connecticut State University.

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State of Hunger in New Haven: Report on Food Insecurity and Recommendations for Action 2017-2018

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Excerpt: New Haven is a diverse city with deep and enduring economic and social disparities. Approximately 25% of residents live in poverty, compared to 10% statewide. An additional 40% struggle to afford basic necessities like housing and food. While intricately tied, poverty is just one of several issues that drives hunger.

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"groups such as the Connecticut Food Bank and Community Fund for Greater New Haven adapt their strategies for providing resources for New Haven residents and continuing their fight against food insecurity."

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Wikimedia Commons

In the wake of COVID-19, New Haven nonprofits have sharpened their focus on the growing issue of food insecurity.

Amid the economic downturn brought on by the pandemic, New Haven residents have turned to food banks, soup kitchens and grocery voucher programs to get their food. This demand has added new pressure to the food supply lines of local food banks. At the same time, the pandemic has reduced the number of companies and organizations that supply food to the banks, pressing many to purchase from wholesale markets - a move that has brought an unprecedented amount of financial duress on the nonprofits.

This change has forced groups such as the Connecticut Food Bank and Community Fund for Greater New Haven to adapt their strategies for providing resources for New Haven residents and continuing their fight against food insecurity.

"There has been an increase in need with the onset of the pandemic," CFB spokesperson Paul Shipman told the News. "An increase of maybe 30 to 40 percent in traffic to our network of programs."

Thirty percent of those coming into food backs since the start of the pandemic have been first-time visitors, Shipman said. Feeding America, CFB's nationwide network partner, has predicted that the amount of food insecurity in New Haven County will increase by nearly five percent in 2020.

The spike has astounded Shipman, who said he expects people of color to "suffer disproportionately." DataHaven - a New Haven organization that has focused on polling COVID-19 during the pandemic - cites that food insecurity ranged from nine percent among White adults to 22 percent and 27 percent, respectively, among Black and Latino adults.

With this increase in need, CFB has had to buy larger and larger amounts of food from wholesale retailers. In the past, the organization has relied on large donations from the food industry - including grocery chains, food distributors and local farmers. Since the start of the pandemic, Shipman said this supply dropped by 60 percent creating a gap in the food bank's normal supply chain.

"We have needed to purchase food at a level we never had to before," Shipman said. "We had purchased more food since April than we had purchased in the last six years together."

Christina Ciociola, the senior vice president for grantmaking and strategy at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, told the News that the demand for goods to meet basic needs such as food, water, clothing and shelter have increased dramatically in recent months.

Ciociola said that the Community Foundation has had to reconsider the organizations it targets for grants as it adapts its strategies to tackle the surge in food insecurity during the pandemic. The change has pushed the foundation to work with groups smaller than they would otherwise.

The Theta Epsilon Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority is among the Foundation's newest partner organizations in its fight against food insecurity.

The sorority received two grants to help with their outreach, one from the Community Foundation and another from the Yale Community for New Haven Fund - a fund set up by the University in response to the impact of the pandemic. The sorority used these funds to purchase $50 food gift cards for elderly New Haven residents, a group that is especially vulnerable to food insecurity during a public health crisis when elderly residents are asked to remain indoors, chapter member Diane Turner said. With the program's food cards, program beneficients can purchase food for delivery. It also allows the sorority to ensure that the funds are used to obtain food.

"We wanted to avoid making choices for people," said Turner, who has led the sorority's efforts in this project. "They may only spend $20 or $50, but still have money left over for the next time they need something."

As the Elm City heads into the winter, local community leaders like Ciociola and Shipman told the News that issues related to food insecurity will remain, if not grow. To confront this, Shipman said he hopes community members will look for more ways to help their fellow residents in need.

CFB began as a soup kitchen in New Haven in 1982.

Zaporah Price | zaporah.price@yale.edu

Awuor Onguru | awuor.onguru@yale.edu

ZAPORAH PRICE

AWUOR ONGURU

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Nonprofit organizations address food insecurity with New Haven community - Yale Daily News

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In the wake of COVID-19, New Haven nonprofits have sharpened their focus on the growing issue of food insecurity. Amid the economic downturn brought on [...]

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"Last year, the food rescue organization recovered 1.5 million pounds of food worth $3.75 million. The group is run by about 200 active volunteers who pick up items from different sites and drop those off at nearly 200 local organizations such as day cares, churches, social service groups and health care clinics"

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NEW HAVEN - Maria Rodriguez was in line two hours before a free food distribution in front of a police substation on Blatchley Avenue, just like she does every Tuesday.

She would get fruits, vegetables, perishable items and, sometimes, meat. As someone who lives by herself and works early hours, getting free food helps offset her expenses.

"When I go shopping, it's like, oh, my goodness, only four, five things, it's $20," Rodriguez said. "It is what it is. Here, it's free and in good condition."

Inside that substation, Sister Luisa Villegas of Apostle Immigrant Services along with four other volunteers were preparing food items into boxes to give out to 62 families, a number that grew from 12 since they started doing this every week three years ago.

"They need food," Villegas said. "But more than the food, it's to be recognized as a person" rather than just "a person in need. It's kind of like a way of relationship that's inculturation that's needed."

The food items being distributing were rescued from grocery stores, universities, retailers and event sites throughout Greater New Haven. And the group behind that effort to prevent unsold or unused food from going to waste is Fair Haven-based Haven's Harvest.

Last year, the food rescue organization recovered 1.5 million pounds of food worth $3.75 million. The group is run by about 200 active volunteers who pick up items from different sites and drop those off at nearly 200 local organizations such as day cares, churches, social service groups and health care clinics.

The goal, according to founder Lori Martin, is to build community and reduce food waste in Connecticut, an issue some volunteers think doesn't get enough attention.

Martin, also an executive director of Haven's Harvest, started doing this as a project with her son, Caleb MartinMooney, eight years ago when he turned 19. She said she told him, "let's do something good for the world."

Martin said her son had friends who would dumpster-dive at Trader Joe's in Orange, so they decided to check in with the store to see what it was doing with its food. Her career as a food rescuer began there.

Initially, Martin said they only did two runs a week, but Trader Joe's called, telling them that food still got thrown away other days.

When she realized they had "an amazing amount of food" and wondered what to do with it, she reached out to New Haven's elderly services and learned that there was a need in local organizations.

"I thought it would be a small project, but then it just kept growing," Martin said. "It just organically grew and it still grows."

How the rescue operates is that volunteers get an alert on an application called "Food Rescue Hero" for an open run with details about the donor and the receiving sites, they then can sign up for the run; they also can "adopt" a recurring run.

"We do use a direct delivery model and also a hyper-local model, so we try not to move the food that far," Martin said, noting most runs only take about 30-45 minutes.

Besides Greater New Haven, Haven's Harvest volunteers also deliver to New London and Lower Naugatuck Valley areas.

Pam Linder, who works at Yale New Haven Hospital, has been volunteering with the group since 2020 with her daughter. She picked up yogurt parfait cups from Yale's central kitchen in her minivan Wednesday morning to bring them to the hospital for the patients.

"We get a lot of people there who have had their food stamps cut, who are food insecure or who are coming there for therapy, for treatment, mental health," said Linder, who works in the intensive outpatient program on George Street. "Your mental health can't get better if you don't have food to eat."

The effects from the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Linder to get involved in this

"There was just so much need," she said. "Not just the underserved but also the idea of not letting food go to waste, not letting food end up in the landfill."

Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media

Not much spotlight on the issue

Of the solid waste stream in Connecticut, about 22 percent consist of food, which reflects about 520,000 tons per year of food thrown away, according to a 2015 study from the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection.

Data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows a similar figure for the whole country - 21.3 percent of total solid waste was food waste and 3.9 percent of that was diverted from landfills or recovered.

Martin said Connecticut is in "a waste crisis," so it's critical to pull out the food from the waste stream. About 70 percent of food waste in the stream is edible, she said. She also emphasized the need to compost.

"What we talk about is that the environmental justice communities are in double jeopardy," Martin said. "Because either for one thing, people are often experiencing food insecurity and if we don't keep the harmful effects from CO2 and methane, even from food waste, it affects those same communities the hardest."

With the work Haven's Harvest does along with other food rescue organizations in the state, Martin estimated that only 2 percent of food waste is recovered.

Charlize Leon, a rising sophomore at Yale University who's interning at Haven's Harvest, said since she started the internship at the end of May she has learned that "it's a very pressing issue" but there are many passionate people working to overcome it.

Leon said she became interested because she did similar work during her first year in high school back home in New Jersey. She also pitched an idea similar to the food rescue app during her high school years.

"Unfortunately, a lot of people focus on other organizations and other models like food banks," Leon said, noting they're also doing great work. "But we have a need to have as much of a space as those organizations have within the food and security industry."

The political science student at Yale said while it could be "a little disheartening to see how much need there is, there are people out there that want to do this work and they want to improve the community."

Like most nonprofits, one the biggest challenges for Haven's Harvest to sustain is funding, according to Martin. She said people always think nonprofits don't need money to run, but that's false because staffing and having a warehouse, among other things, cost money.

Going forward, Martin said she would like to develop the organization into a food recovery hub in New Haven, which she said would be the first in the state. She explained it would be a place to aggregate food, repackage items with a commercial kitchen and share the food more easily in local communities.

"Those also mean if we really want to make a difference, run food, food waste, then we need to be investing in infrastructure," Martin said.

chatwan.mongkol@hearstmediact.com

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New Haven group rescued more than 1.5 million pounds of food in a year, fighting waste and helping the hungry

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Haven's Harvest is run by about 200 active volunteers with a partnership with about 200 local organizations in Greater New Haven and other regions.

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"gentrification can be defined as the socioeconomic upgrading of a previously low-income, central city neighborhood, characterized by the influx of higher socioeconomic status residents and an increase in housing prices."

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Connecticut has been suffering from a housing shortage of homes that are affordable and readily available for low-income residents. Debates over the cause of this crisis have been mixed, and some analysts have characterized Connecticut as a seller's market where homes are routinely sold for greater than their value. The Covid-19 pandemic certainly didn't help the market as the state endured a record high number of evictions according to the Connecticut Fair Housing Center. One phenomenon that is present at all levels has been the pricing out of renters who until recently were able to afford their rent. This raises suspicions of gentrification especially in urban centers that are undergoing urban renewal.

For the purposes of this report, gentrification can be defined as the socioeconomic upgrading of a previously low-income, central city neighborhood, characterized by the influx of higher socioeconomic status residents and an increase in housing prices. ¹

The 5 cities chosen for this report are:

Cities were chosen based on the following criteria: all must be an urban city, located in Connecticut, where the median income was below the 75th percentile state and national incomes in the year 2000, and has grown in population since the year 2000.

All data in this report comes from the US Census in the years 2000, 2010, and 2020. The surveys utilized were the Decennial Survey and the American Community Survey.

One way to view gentrification is as a two-step process. The first step is a change in the financial demographic makeup of a city, and the second step is a change in the social demographics of a city. A change in social demographics could include changes in educational attainment, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, marital status, etc.

When quantifying gentrification, demographic and financial shifts are considered significant when there is at least a fifty percent change. ² Gentrification also cannot be defined as just a demographic change in a community. Communities must satisfy both "steps" to be considered gentrified.
National Housing Attributes in the US- Census data; Educational Attainment in the US- Census data Connecticut Decennial Census - CT 1. Bridgeport 2. New Haven
New Haven is, of course, home to Yale University which brings many students, professors, academics, fellows, and so forth to live in the area. The school has also increased its enrollment and has opened new professional schools. Much of the community that Yale brings only resides in the city for a limited amount of time. Thus, the demographic information regarding education may be skewed by this data. However, the school also brings in tremendous amounts of growth to the city and has been labeled a gentrifier of New Haven by its own faculty and students.
3. Norwalk 4. Stamford 5. Waterbury
*** The educational characteristics for this report only include the portion of the population that is 25 years old and above. This is to account for children and most youth who do not participate directly in the housing market.

Waterbury, Stamford, and Norwalk all have significant growth in their respective financial housing characteristics such as median rent and mortgage, but gentrification may not be the explanation for the growth in these cities as education level appears to grow steadily and slowly. However, Bridgeport and New Haven are seeing dramatic changes in the composition of their cities. For all five cities, rent seems to be the most volatile price while mortgages seem to be the most stable. One way in which this report falls short though, is a lack of analysis on whether age, gender, or marital status may come into play.

The volatility of rent prices suggests there needs to be a larger focus on the impact of the housing market of renters. Market value of homes is growing proportionally to the cost of mortgages; thus, it may be of interest to look at gross selling prices of homes and the type of mortgages that are being contracted. This may uncover what is driving the seller's market in Connecticut. Overall, the most vulnerable group in Connecticut are low-income renters.
¹ ² Hirsch J A, Schinasi L H. A measure of gentrification for use in longitudinal public health studies based in the United States. Philadelphia, PA: Drexel University Urban Health Collaborative; August 2019 Lei Ding, Jackelyn Hwang, Eileen Divringi, Gentrification and residential mobility in Philadelphia, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 61, 2016, Pages 38-51, ISSN 0166-0462, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2016.09.004.

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Signs Of Gentrification In Connecticut's Cities

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Connecticut has been suffering from a housing shortage of homes that are affordable and readily available for low-income residents. Debates over the cause of this crisis have been mixed, and some analysts have characterized Connecticut as a seller's market where homes are routinely sold for greater than their value.

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"As urban neighborhoods gentrify, it can be hard for people to keep up with rising rents. Some groups are buying up land through what's called community land trusts so that longtime residents don't have to leave. "

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AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

As urban neighborhoods gentrify, it can be hard for people to keep up with rising rents. Some groups are buying up land through what's called community land trusts so that longtime residents don't have to leave. Simon Rios of member station WBUR in Boston reports on how these organizations are trying to create permanent affordable housing.

SIMON RIOS, BYLINE: Tiny brick row houses cram two full city blocks just south of downtown Boston. The buildings recall a time when waves of new Americans settled in the area - first Arab, Jewish and Irish families and eventually families from China.

LYDIA LOWE: Back in the day, there were hundreds of immigrant families living in these small properties.

RIOS: Lydia Lowe is a longtime community organizer in what's now known as Boston's Chinatown.

LOWE: And this whole area - because it was, like, landfills. It was kind of stinky. It was also near a rail yard. It was very undesirable at the time, and so the only people who would live here were the immigrants.

RIOS: It would have been hard to imagine in the 1800s how these little buildings would become prime real estate. Fearing the historic homes would be lost, a group of activists got together in 2015 and formed a community land trust. That's a type of nonprofit that acquires properties with the goal of keeping them affordable for residents. A trust owns the land and rents or sells the homes on it. The first place the Chinatown Trust wanted to purchase was a three-unit row house. Lowe recalls they had to scrape together $1.7 million to beat bids from investors.

LOWE: We had to show that this was possible because nobody believed us. So this is Boston's first community land trust condo.

RIOS: More than 600 people applied to buy the three condos in the building. Among them was Meidan Lin, a 32-year-old restaurant server. Her family won a lottery to buy one of the condos, which sold for roughly a third of market value. Speaking through an interpreter, Lin says being a homeowner means her family can stay in Chinatown.

MEIDAN LIN: (Through interpreter) There is no worrying about rent. And also, we have been accommodating to lives in Chinatown, and moving somewhere else would be a big culture shock.

RIOS: The community land trust model dates back more than a half a century, developed by civil rights activists and Black farmers trying to protect farmland in Georgia. John Davis of the nonprofit Center for Community Land Trust Innovation says there are now more than 300 of these trusts across the U.S., and he estimates that 20% of them have come online over the last decade. That's because, Davis says, gentrification has taken a toll in many urban areas.

JOHN DAVIS: So you really lost the diversity of people, uses, businesses that keep a neighborhood vital and vibrant. So the community land trust preserves affordability for housing.

RIOS: And he says they can also set aside spaces for what he calls low-profit businesses, like day cares, barbershops and artist studios. One trade-off is that people who buy homes in these land trusts won't get market rate when they sell. Davis says that's so the housing stays affordable.

DAVIS: Let's say the city gave you a $20,000 down payment grant. You're not going to walk away with that, you know? So we're going to leave that public subsidy in the home for the next homebuyer.

RIOS: Making less profit hasn't seemed to deter people from wanting to join. Founded just five years ago, the Houston Community Land Trust now has more than 130 homes in its portfolio. That's a tiny fraction of the city's housing stock. But these homes make a huge difference to the people who live there, says Ashley Allen, who runs the trust.

ASHLEY ALLEN: Most of the people that come through our program couldn't save before. They couldn't think about a 401(k) or a college savings plan because all of their money was going to housing.

RIOS: Houston's mayor, however, recently decided to slash the group's funding. And high property values are making it harder for the community land trust to buy, something that poses a problem for land trusts across the country. Still, advocates say the trusts are a permanent way to help people who are struggling to stay put, even as prices around them rise.

For NPR News, I'm Simon Rios in Boston. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Community land trusts are providing a solution to gentrification

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Gentrification is making it harder for some people to stay in their neighborhoods. One solution: community land trusts, which buy up properties and then keep the homes there affordable.

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"His agency mastered the use of tax credits and philanthropic and government preservation dollars to rehab rather than demolish beautiful old houses in lower-income New Haven neighborhoods"

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After decades of helping families stay one step ahead of gentrification, Jim Paley and Bridgette Russell have some ideas for confronting new threats. ...

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"NHS of New Haven is revitalizing New Haven’s neighborhoods with a holistic approach to development that merges community building with direct service."

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"Light pollution may not appear at first as something that is a major threat to humans or to the environment – when in reality it has severe adverse effects and degrades environmental quality. Many researchers and environmentalists consider light pollution to be one of the fastest and more pervasive forms of environmental pollution.  "

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Light pollution is "the inappropriate or excessive use of artificial light." There are three main types of light pollution - glare, skyglow, and light trespass.

Glare light pollution is a result of unshielded light that can cause harm to the eyes, especially as a person ages.

Skyglow refers to the bright halo that appears over urban areas at night which is a product of light being scattered by water droplets or particles in the air.

Light trespass is when unwanted artificial light spills onto an adjacent property and lights up an area that otherwise would be dark.
What are the Effects?
Light pollution may not appear at first as something that is a major threat to humans or to the environment - when in reality it has severe adverse effects and degrades environmental quality. Many researchers and environmentalists consider light pollution to be one of the fastest and more pervasive forms of environmental pollution.

Many migratory birds fly by night and the light from stars and the moon helps them navigate. They become disoriented by the glare of the artificial lights when they fly over urban and suburban areas.

Regarding humans, there are many health impacts. Humans are dependent on their body's natural cycle, which is regulated by light and dark. If humans are exposed to light while they are sleeping, the production of melatonin can be suppressed. This can create many problems including sleep disorders, headaches, fatigue, medically defined stress, and some forms of obesity that are caused by a lack of sleep and increased anxiety.

Not only does light pollution have adverse effects for humans and animals, it also increases energy consumption. About ¼ of energy consumption worldwide is from lighting. Lighting at night can result in over-illumination and lead to an excess of wasted energy. This is a waste in cost and increases the carbon footprint.
How Can You Help?
Light pollution is already a serious issue but that does not mean it is too late to try to reduce it. There are actions humans can take to try and decrease light pollution and help the environment. Only use light when and where it is absolutely needed. Use well-designed light fixtures that have modern optical controls so the light can be directed downward and use the minimum amount of wattage needed for the area to have sufficient lighting.

More information is available from the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) at www.darksky.org

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What is Light Pollution?Light pollution is "the inappropriate or excessive use of artificial light." There are three main types of light pollution - glare, skyglow, and light trespass.Glare light pollution is a result of unshielded light that can cause harm to the eyes, especially as a person ages.S

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"Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill aimed at protecting birds and the night sky in Connecticut from the harmful effects of light pollution. Act 23-143 requires all state-owned buildings to dim nonessential outdoor lights after 11pm year-round for birds. It also directs the CT Code and Standards Committee to consider a change to the lighting requirements in the State Building Code."

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Today,Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill aimed at protecting birds and the night sky in Connecticut from the harmful effects of light pollution. requires all state-owned buildings to dim nonessential outdoor lights after 11pm year-round for birds. It also directs the CT Code and Standards Committee to consider a change to the lighting requirements in the State Building Code.

Every year, light pollution contributes to the death of millions of birds. Many migratory birds such as songbirds and sandpipers, as well as seabirds like Ospreys, that migrate at night are exposed to light pollution in our cities and towns, with major increases in nighttime lighting over the last 50 years. Artificial light can impact the timing of migration and other seasonal bird behaviors.

Connecticut joins only a couple of states in the nation, including Illinois and Minnesota, to have a comprehensive Lights Out law to protect migratory birds from light pollution.

After a similar bill failed last year to get out of committee, it was reintroduced by Rep. Ann Hughes (D-Easton, Weston and Redding) and then carried by the Environment Committee, with 10 of its members co-sponsoring the bill. This year, the bill passed both chambers unanimously.

The state Office of Fiscal Analysis estimates the bill will save the state of Connecticut at least $1.3 million per year. And Lights Out Connecticut estimates it could prevent as much as 4.4 million pounds of CO2 from being released unnecessarily into the environment. (That's the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of over 440 gas-powered cars driven for one year.)

"This law is unique. It simultaneously addresses two of the biggest threats facing our environment today, biodiversity loss and climate change," said Meredith Barges, Co-Chair of Lights Out Connecticut.

Organizing to pass the bill was a combined effort of Lights Out Connecticut bringing together organizations across the state, including Audubon Connecticut, Connecticut Audubon Society, Connecticut Ornithological Association, CT Chapter of Dark Sky, New Haven Bird Club, Pollinator Pathway, and CT chapter of the Sierra Club Foundation, and many others.
About Lights Out CT
Meredith Barges, Co-Chair, Lights Out Connecticut

617-792-1304 Meredith.barges@yale.edu

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Connecticut Passes "Lights Out" Law to Protect Birds - Lights Out Connecticut

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Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill into law aimed at protecting birds and the night sky from the harmful effects of light pollution. It requires all state-owned buildings in Connecticut to dim nonessential outdoor lights after 11pm year-round for birds. It also directs the CT Code and Standards Committee

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"By focusing on prevention, early intervention, and a comprehensive support system through wraparound services, Finland has shown the world that homelessness is a solvable problem."

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Eradicating Homelessness in Finland
Parker Lester, Social Science Analyst
As part of Finland's commitment to the Housing First approach, the government converted homeless shelters into housing units to create new housing stock with supportive services. Housing First Approach
In the latter years of the 2010s, the nation of Finland positioned itself as a global leader in combating homelessness. Through an innovative public policy strategy that has virtually eliminated homelessness within its borders, Finland has redefined how nations can address homelessness. By focusing on prevention, early intervention, and a comprehensive support system through wraparound services, Finland has shown the world that homelessness is a solvable problem.

A 2020 article in Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, written by Marybeth Shinn and Jill Khadduri, states that until the 1990s, Finland used the "staircase" or "treatment first" approach to addressing homelessness, which entails providing housing to individuals only after they have been treated for mental illnesses, drug abuse, or other ailments. The article cites research suggesting that the staircase model "can work well with those who have opted for substance abuse rehabilitation and can cope with shared housing. However, the insistence on service users being intoxicant-free and able to take control of their lives has proven to be an insuperable barrier for many homeless people with multiple problems."

Between 2004 and 2008, the number of single homeless individuals in Finland hovered between 7,400 and 7,960 after having been nearly halved during the previous decade. By 2008, Finnish policymakers realized that the staircase approach had reached its maximum effectiveness, and a new strategy was needed to further reduce Finland's rates of homelessness. Shinn and Khadduri cite Finnish experts at the Y-Foundation, Finland's largest nonprofit landlord, who concluded that the staircase approach "requires adopting the Housing First principle where a person does not have to first change their life around in order to earn the basic right to housing. Instead, housing is the prerequisite that allows other problems to be solved."

Finland began to prioritize the Housing First approach, providing housing immediately and without preconditions to residents in need. The underlying principle of Housing First is that having a stable and secure home is a fundamental human right and a critical foundation for tackling other issues contributing to homelessness, such as mental health issues or substance abuse. By prioritizing housing as the first step in addressing homelessness, Finland's government successfully created a supportive environment for individuals to address other challenges. According to the Finnish experts Shinn and Khadduri cite, "In the Housing First model, a dwelling is not a reward that a homeless person receives once their life is back on track. Instead, a dwelling is the foundation on which the rest of life is put back together." They further state, "A person who is homeless goes directly into a rental apartment, either an independent apartment or a unit in a supported housing development and has the opportunity to choose services and supports. Staff in supported housing developments treat clients as equals and strive to build community."
Applicability in the United States
As part of Finland's commitment to the Housing First approach, the government converted homeless shelters into housing units to create new housing stock with supportive services. Shinn and Khadduri cite Y-Foundation research finding that the number of shelter and hostel beds in Helsinki fell from 2,121 in 1985 to 52 in 2016. During the same period, the number of supportive housing units in the city grew from 127 to 1,309, and independent rental apartments for people formerly experiencing homelessness increased from 65 to 2,433.

Part of the country's focus is on scattered sites, meaning that Finland's government distributed public housing in sites throughout the city to encourage members of lower economic classes to mix with more affluent residents. This policy was a key to successfully keeping Finnish people who were experiencing homelessness off the street, because residents could be placed in safer neighborhoods that were closer to employment centers.

When examining what lessons the United States could derive from Finland's experience, scholars must consider the considerably different sizes of the two nations. According to the World Bank, Finland had an estimated total population of approximately 5,541,000 - considerably smaller than that of New York City, at 8,622,000. The United States had an estimated population of approximately 331,900,000 in 2021. Despite the population disparity, Shinn and Khadduri present evidence indicating that it is not the size of the United States that prevents it from eradicating homelessness. Rather, they argue, Finland's social programs are simply "more effective at reducing poverty." The authors cite research stating that, in terms of market income, Finland has a slightly higher poverty rate than the United States, at 32.4 percent and 31.2 percent, respectively. After accounting for social programs, however, the authors point out that "16.2 percent of Americans are below [the] relative poverty line, compared to 7.2 percent of Finns."
Conclusion
Researchers should also note that, according to World Habitat, the city government of Helsinki owns 70 percent of the land in the city, simplifying the process of creating a large public housing system. Local governments in the United States that are grappling with homelessness, on the other hand, must work in tandem with private partners who own the land where affordable housing can be built or the structures that can be converted to affordable units. However, Finland's homelessness strategy also relies on close collaboration among various stakeholders, including government agencies, municipalities, nongovernmental organizations, and housing providers. By sharing expertise, resources, and best practices, Finland has created a unified and streamlined approach to tackling homelessness. This collective effort has been vital to the strategy's success and its ability to adapt to changing social and economic conditions in urban areas.

Shinn and Khadduri point to the success of the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program as an example of an effective implementation of the Housing First approach in the United States. The program, which is designed to house veterans experiencing homelessness, has contributed to an 11 percent decline in homelessness rates among U.S. veterans since early 2020 (based on a 2022 Point-in-Time Count). Specifically, data show that on a single night in January 2022, a total of 33,136 veterans were experiencing homelessness in the United States, down from 37,252 in 2020. This decline represents a 55.3 percent reduction in the number of veterans experiencing homelessness since 2010.

By prioritizing the Housing First approach, instituting a comprehensive system of collaboration, and harnessing private and political will to eradicate homelessness, Finland has achieved notable success at effectively addressing homelessness. As countries worldwide grapple with their own homelessness challenges, the Finnish strategy offers valuable lessons and a roadmap for other nations striving to reduce rates of homelessness.

You can find the Cityscape report here: Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research - Two Essays on Unequal Growth in Housing - How Finland Ended Homelessness (huduser.gov)

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Eradicating Homelessness in Finland Parker Lester, Social Science Analyst As part of Finland's commitment to the Housing First approach, the government converted homeless shelters into housing units to create new housing stock with supportive services. Housing First Approach In the latter years of the 2010s, the nation of Finland positioned itself as a global leader in combating homelessness.

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Topic:
MUNICIPALITIES; PROPERTY TAX;
Location:
TAXES - PROPERTY;

OLR ISSUE BRIEF

An Informational Brief Prepared for Members of the Connecticut General Assembly by the Office Of Legislative Research

98- R-1164
IF EVERYONE COMPLAINS ABOUT PROPERTY TAXES, THEN WHY DOESN ' T ANYONE DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM?
In 1978, California voters revolted against escalating property tax bills by approving a constitutional amendment limiting the extent to which municipalities could increase property taxes. Since then Connecticut and other states have wrestled with the tax, but few have radically changed it. Why is it so hard to reduce or eliminate this tax?

WHICH TAX DO PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT THE MOST? SURVEY SAYS...

∴

STILL, CITIES AND TOWNS RELY MAINLY ON PROPERTY TAXES TO PAY THEIR BILLS

Despite the unpopularity of the property tax, cities and towns nationwide continue to raise most of their revenue from it. Historically, land was the first measure of wealth. The property tax evolved as the local tax when state governments began levying other types of taxes to pay their bills. State legislatures eventually formalized this division of taxing powers by enacting laws allowing municipalities to assess and collect property taxes and precluding them from levying other types of taxes without explicit state legislative authorization.

A different story emerges if we measure property taxes as a share of all locally generated revenue, excluding state and federal aid. Nationally, the tax ' s share of local revenue rose from 70% in 1954 to 87% in 1964, before dropping to 75% in 1984. It continued to generate 75% of local revenue through 1994. While this trend also suggests that municipalities are turning to other local revenue sources, it shows that the property tax is still municipalities ' major revenue generator.

∴

WHY DO PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT THE PROPERTY TAX MORE THAN OTHER TAXES?

The answer may have more to do with the way municipalities collect and assess the tax than with the amount of tax people actually pay. People and businesses pay the tax in a lump sum. For many homeowners, this means writing a big check to their town, usually twice a year. On the other hand, people pay a sales tax only when they buy something, and the tax is part of the purchase price. They pay their income taxes in small sums that usually come directly out of their pay.

Both groups feel they have to shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax when towns give special tax breaks to certain groups, such as developers constructing new office towers or manufacturers buying new machinery. On the other hand, taxpayers literally see everyone paying the same sales tax, even though legislatures exempt certain groups from paying it. Perhaps the difference has to do with proximity. Since municipal governments are closer to voters than state governments, voters are more likely to notice local tax breaks than state ones.

Low Income and elderly taxpayers also dislike the property tax because it usually takes a bigger bite of their income than it takes from their more affluent neighbors.

∴

∴

IF EVERYBODY COMPLAINS ABOUT PROPERTY TAXES, THEN WHY DON ' T MUNICIPALITIES CUT THEM?

Most states have studied the property tax to death, but all have shied away from overhauling or repealing it. Connecticut alone created at least five commissions and task forces since 1972, but none have led to significant changes in the way the tax is assessed and collected. Eliminating the tax is easier said than done because:

1. Property tax revenue is stable in economic good times and bad, and it grows roughly in line with population and inflation.

2. People pay property taxes in proportion to their property ' s value. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the tax is not regressive when you compare the tax a family pays over time on its property with the amount of income it earns over time. In other words, the share of a family ' s income going toward property taxes fluctuates over time as its income rises and falls.

3. Property taxes, when part of a broad and diverse mix of taxes, reduce the degree to which governments depend on those other taxes and help minimize their negative aspects.

5. Voters feel the pinch of property taxes more than other taxes. For this reason, they are more likely to hold those officials who rely on this tax more accountable than those who rely on other taxes.

∴

WHY DON ' T WE REDUCE THE PROPERTY TAX AND INCREASE THE SALES AND INCOME TAX

This is certainly an option, but it overlooks the downside of increasing these other taxes. No tax is perfect, but for different reasons. Choosing one tax over another solves one problem but poses others. This dilemma reflects the fact that each tax taxes different things, and in the process shifts the burden from some taxpayers onto others.

The sales tax taxes businesses and people based on their ability to consume. The tax is the same for everyone since it is based on a percentage of the purchase price. This seems fair, but the tax takes a relatively bigger bite out of the revenues and incomes of small businesses and low-income people who spend a relatively bigger share of their income for necessities, such as housing, food, and clothing.

Income and corporate business taxes, on the other hand, tax people and businesses based on their ability to earn. But many state tax codes define income and profits in a way that allows high-income people and large corporations to pay less tax.

Furthermore, taxpayers will quickly notice abrupt increases in sales and income taxes. In the subsequent election, they may accuse incumbent candidates of sneaking in a tax increase and ignore claims that it was part of a "revenue neutral plan."

And replacing local revenues with state revenues poses political and economic challenges. State funds sometimes come with strings that compromise local autonomy and control. Local officials will feel short-changed if the state revenue source fails to replace current and expected local growth. If the state addresses both, it could jeopardize its own fiscal position since its revenue sources might not grow fast enough to meet both its needs and those of municipalities. Of course, states can restrict the extent to which property tax revenues can grow each year, but local officials might counter that such restrictions simply force them to raise other taxes or cut spending.

∴

PROPERTY TAX RESTRUCTURING IS A DEVIL ' S BARGAIN

Cutting or eliminating property taxes is simple until one considers the broader implications. The property tax is part of larger multi-tax tax system. Changing one tax affects the other taxes that make up this system. For example, since people can deduct property taxes from their federal income taxes, reducing property taxes could actually increase their federal income tax payments.

Each tax affects some taxpayers more than others do. Eliminating or reducing one tax puts more pressure on the other taxes and those groups that are burdened more than others by those taxes.

There are indirect ways to reduce property taxes, but these pose other complex questions. The legislature could reduce or eliminate costly mandates it imposes on towns, but many of these mandates often address broader social issues such as preventing environmental hazards or providing education to disabled students. Towns can save money by creating regional bodies to deliver certain services such as public works, but this could reduce the degree to which these bodies are accountable to the voters.

FURTHER READING

The following Office of Legislative Research report on this topic may be of interest. Call the Legislative Library at 240-8888 or visit our Intranet web page at http://cgalites/olr/

98-R-0047

Property Tax Initiatives, Office of Legislative Research (1998), summarizes five types of recent property reform initiatives from16 states (8 pages).

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If Everyone Complains About Property Taxes, They Why Doesn't Anyone Do Anything About Them?

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If Everyone Complains About Property Taxes, They Why Doesn't Anyone Do Anything About Them?

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"Since 2017, Save the Sound volunteers have cleared half a million pieces of trash in Connecticut. Food wrappers and small plastic pieces were among the top items that Save the Sound volunteers found, but cigarette butts were found the most, at over 20,000 annually."

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For decades, an environmental group in Connecticut has picked up litter in parks, rivers and Long Island Sound. In Save the Sound's summarizing hundreds of cleanups over the last six years, plastic pollution remains a statewide problem.

Since 2017, Save the Sound volunteers have cleared half a million pieces of trash in Connecticut. Food wrappers and small plastic pieces were among the top items that Save the Sound volunteers found, but cigarette butts were found the most, at over 20,000 annually.

Those discarded cigarettes do more than just pollute the environment with chemicals, said Melissa Pappas, ecological communication specialist at Save the Sound.

"Cigarettes also have plastic components," Pappas said. "The smaller they get, the harder they are to remove from the environment."

Over six years, the report details how more than 82,000 tiny pieces of plastic and over 54,000 food wrappers were found.

Bigger pieces of plastic litter can break down when exposed to wind, sun, and waves, according to Evan Ward, who leads the marine sciences department at the University of Connecticut. Those can become microplastics, which at high concentrations, can be dangerous to both wildlife and to people.

" Because the amount of macro plastics is increasing in our waterways, so too, will the concentration of microplastics increase over time," Ward said. "We know if the concentration gets too high, it will start affecting these animals."

According to Sylvain De Guise, director of Connecticut Sea Grant, the long term health effects of microplastics aren't completely understood, aside from occupying space in the intestines. Larger pieces of plastic can also cause choking, entanglement and suffocation in animals.

Stricter laws reducing dependence on single-use plastic and styrofoam would be an important step to curbing the hazard, Pappas said.

Save the Sound's cleanups began over 20 years ago along the coastline as part of the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup. In recent years, the group has expanded cleanups to inland rivers and parks. Save the Sound has also utilized a scuba diving team to remove underwater trash and has used kayaks to pick up trash on the water's surface.

Information about upcoming cleanups can be found on Save the Sound's website.

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Environmental advocates quantify scale of CT's plastic pollution problem

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For decades, an environmental group in Connecticut has picked up litter in parks, rivers and Long Island Sound. In Save the Sound's new report summarizing hundreds of cleanups over the last six years, plastic pollution remains a statewide problem.

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"After nearly a decade of decreases, homelessness in Connecticut rose slightly for the second year in a row in 2023 — likely a result of sustained fallout from the pandemic, experts said. The latest point-in-time count shows that there were 3,015 people experiencing homelessness in January 2023, compared to 2,930 in January 2022. That’s close to a 3% increase, according to the report released Monday."

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After nearly a decade of decreases, homelessness in Connecticut rose slightly for the second year in a row in 2023 - likely a result of sustained fallout from the pandemic, experts said.

The latest point-in-time count shows that there were 3,015 people experiencing homelessness in January 2023, compared to 2,930 in January 2022. That's close to a 3% increase, according to the report released Monday.

For eight years, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Connecticut had been on the decline. But last year saw a 13% increase compared to 2021. Providers fear the increases in the report are a harbinger for a rough winter.

"We're seeing increases across the board, not only in calls to 211, but we're predicting that this is going to be the worst winter ever in Connecticut for our services," said Sarah Fox, newly appointed chief executive officer at the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness.

Service providers said last year and in public testimony during the legislative session that pandemic-related economic problems persisted for many people with low incomes and had led to increases in homelessness. Evictions have also been on the rise, which can lead to homelessness for many families.
[RELATED: An eviction is forever: How the legal, financial and emotional costs can persist for years]
Rents have also risen in recent years, which has made it more difficult for many to find an apartment. Experts have attributed this largely to a lack of supply - Connecticut lacks about 89,000 units of housing that would be affordable and available to its lowest-income renters.

The lack of supply also means that people are spending more time in shelters as they look for a place to live, Fox said.

Connecticut saw increases in homelessness likely tied to income loss, the end of pandemic-era eviction protections and a lack of affordable housing, said Brennden Colbert, training program coordinator at Advancing CT Together, the group that led Connecticut's count.

The point-in-time count is a federally mandated annual census of the homeless population in every state. It's conducted over a 24-hour period in January. The results of the count help the federal government determine how to allocate certain funding for homeless services. But many say the report is likely an undercount.

Connecticut's latest data show that the number of chronically homeless people in Connecticut stayed steady at 117. People who are chronically homeless are unhoused for at least a year or in multiple instances and have a serious mental illness, substance abuse disorder or physical disability. The population often has complicated needs.

Fourteen people who identified as transgender or gender non-conforming were unhoused, according to a summary of notable findings in the report. Studies have shown that the LGBTQ population is at disproportionate risk of experiencing homelessness and once they're homeless are more likely to experience discrimination.

The report also shows that the number of people 24 years and under experiencing homelessness has increased nearly 8% since last year.

Colbert said that's likely tied to more people who are living in cars or other places not meant for human habitation self-identifying as homeless, along with increases in evictions. Studies have shown that families with children are at increased risk of eviction.

Nationally, the count has been criticized as incomplete. Many housing experts say it tends to miss children because they are more likely to stay in a hotel or to be "doubled up," with friends or family.

Fox referred to Connecticut's as a "huge undercount."

The point-in-time count typically captures data on those who are staying in shelters. People who are on the streets, in cars, or hotels, among other locations, are more difficult to count. This leads to different data points depending on how homelessness is counted,.

For example, the Connecticut Department of Education's homelessness dashboard counted 3,984 students experiencing homelessness in the 2021-22 school year. That's more than the total number of adults and children included in the point-in-time count for either of those years.

Fox said internal data show about 4,500 people accessed homelessness services - including some day services - in February.

"It's not always somebody living under a bridge with a bunch of blankets who are homeless," Colbert said. "Sometimes they look like average people. Sometimes people don't look like what they're going through."

The national 2022 point-in-time count found that there were nearly 578,000 people experiencing homelessness in the United States. That number only includes the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

The 2023 national numbers aren't yet available.

Steve Berg, chief policy officer at the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a press call last week on the 2022 numbers that the issue is largely that people are moving into homelessness faster than they are moving out of it.

"The number of people losing their housing and becoming homeless is on a bad ... trend right now," he said.

It's difficult for developers to build housing that's affordable to the lowest-income renters and turn a profit without government assistance, said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive officer at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

"This is a basic market failure that requires government intervention," Yentel said on the call.

Wages also aren't increasing fast enough to keep up with rising rents post-pandemic, leaving many paying larger chunks of their income toward housing costs, said Peggy Bailey, vice president for housing and income security at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, on the press call.

In Connecticut, housing and homelessness got renewed attention during the legislative session. Homelessness service providers asked for $50 million to fund the homelessness response system. The money would have gone to pay increases for workers, annual dollars for the cold weather response and the 211 system.

While they didn't receive the full amount, there were some increases in the budget for homelessness services. Fox said these services got $5 million that they are working to allocate, $2 million in flexible spending and additional dollars for the 211 system.

Other money to support people experiencing homelessness is dispersed through several agencies including the Department of Housing.

She's worried about going into winter without extra money in place needed to open up emergency cold-weather beds.

"Once again we're in this place where it's August, and we don't have the resources in place to adequately shelter people through the winter," Fox said.

Providers are also low on staff and many don't have the money to hire new employees to replace those who have left, Fox added.

The coalition has recently started work on a plan to end homelessness in Connecticut. In 2016, Connecticut became the second state in the nation to get official federal recognition for ending veteran homelessness.

When people in the housing and homelessness sphere talk about "ending homelessness," they typically mean that they are meeting the federal definition of what's called "functional zero."

Essentially, this means that the overall system designed to prevent homelessness and help people experiencing homelessness is ready. It means that workers can prevent homelessness as often as possible and ensure that when it does happen, it's rare, brief and one-time.

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Ginny MonkHousing and Children's Issues Reporter

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Report: Homelessness in CT increased for second year in a row

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Experts attribute the rise to sustained fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Evictions are increasing as well, and rents are rising.

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"About 22 percent of Connecticut students who participated in the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior survey said that they experienced bullying in school — higher than the national average of 19.6 percent."

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About 22 percent of Connecticut students who participated in the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior survey said that they experienced bullying in school - higher than the national average of 19.6 percent.

Also, the number of students who said that they were cyber-bullied is higher than the national average. In the survey, 17.5 percent of Connecticut students said that they were cyber-bullied, compared to 14.8 percent nationally.

Teachers at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School (Co-op) in New Haven said they were aware that bullying remains a problem, but that the school system has taken steps to address it.

Mindi Englart, a creative writing teacher at Co-op, said, "bullying is a problem in life, not just in high school."

Valerie Vollono, also a teacher at Co-op, agreed. "A lot of bullying still occurs, particularly over social media," she said. Both said the school system has a good policy about bullying, but that it doesn't stop the problem altogether because victims are sometimes afraid to report incidents.

Teachers and staff have undergone training in recent years to identify, prevent and address bullying. Englart said she tries to intervene when she sees a situation that could constitute bullying.

"When I see that that someone, including myself, is doing or saying something that makes someone else feel bad, I try to bring attention to the behavior and give additional ways for a person to act, so their words or actions don't harm others," she said.

According to kidshealth.org, bullying and cyber-bullying can both cause victims to become depressed and experience other stress-related disorders. Sometimes bullying can even lead to suicide.

The attempted suicide rate among high schoolers in Connecticut is 8.1 percent, compared to 8 percent nationally, the youth survey showed.

A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people were related to bullying.

Englart said some teenagers aren't even aware that their behavior qualifies as bullying. Educating students about it is key.

"Anyone can act in a way that makes someone else feel scared or inferior. Sometimes, we do it and aren't even aware we're doing it," she said. "I see small acts of bullying almost every day."
Miranda Noad is a student at the Co-Operative Arts & Humanities High School, New Haven.

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Reports Of Bullying In Connecticut Exceed National Average

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About 22 percent of Connecticut students who participated in the 2013 Youth Risk Behavior survey said that they experienced bullying in school - higher than the national average of 19.6 percent. Also, the number of students who said that they were cyber-bullied is higher than the national average.

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Six year old report on Recommendations for Action 2017-2018

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Excerpt:

New Haven is a diverse city with deep and enduring economic and social disparities. Approximately 25% of residents live in poverty, compared to 10% statewide. An additional 40% struggle to afford basic necessities like housing and food. While intricately tied, poverty is just one of several issues that drives hunger. Unemployment, low-wage jobs, transportation, and family resources also make it difficult for people to access the food they need to thrive.

Across New Haven, 22% of the city's residents are food insecure - with not enough food or money to buy food - much higher than the Connecticut rate of 12% and national rates of 13%. Food insecurity varies widely in New Haven, affecting low-income people of color at higher rates. In two recent studies in New Haven - DataHaven's Wellbeing Survey and CARE's New Haven Health Survey, both conducted in 2015 - food insecurity impacts 1 in 3 adults in the city's lowest income neighborhoods. Within these neighborhoods, food insecurity is notably high among those not employed at 41.3% and underemployed (working part-time but wanting full-time employment) at 53.9% compared to 18.9% among those employed with a full-time job. Hispanic and Latinx communities in New Haven bear the greatest burden of food insecurity. Compared to other demographic groups, both DataHaven and CARE reported higher food insecurity among Latinx residents: across New Haven at 34% and among those in the six lowest-income neighborhoods at 50.1%. Rates of hunger are highest in neighborhoods with larger Latinx populations, like Fair Haven. Future data collection efforts should better capture food insecurity among undocumented residents. Undocumented residents may be particularly vulnerable, because they often work in low-paying jobs, are ineligible for government assistance programs, and may be afraid to go to emergency food providers due to anti-immigration policies.

This report was written by Alycia Santilli, MSW, Director, CARE Kathleen O'Connor Duffany, PhD, Director of Research and Evaluation, CARE with contributions from Mark Abraham, DataHaven Billy Bromage, Connecticut Mental Health Center Austin Bryniarski, Yale Sustainable Food Program Grace Carroll, Yale School of Public Health Peggy Gallup, Southern Connecticut State University Joy Johannes, City of New Haven Maria Markham, Connecticut Food Bank John McDougall, Yale School of Medicine Victoria Zigmont, Southern Connecticut State University.

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State of Hunger in New Haven: Report on Food Insecurity and Recommendations for Action 2017-2018

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Excerpt: New Haven is a diverse city with deep and enduring economic and social disparities. Approximately 25% of residents live in poverty, compared to 10% statewide. An additional 40% struggle to afford basic necessities like housing and food. While intricately tied, poverty is just one of several issues that drives hunger.

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The Healthy Community Design Initiative, also known as the Built Environment and Health Initiative, is no longer a funded program and the information on this website is not being reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

Definitions

Gentrification is often defined as the transformation of neighborhoods from low value to high value. This change has the potential to cause displacement of long-time residents and businesses. Displacement happens when long-time or original neighborhood residents move from a gentrified area because of higher rents, mortgages, and property taxes.

Gentrification is a housing, economic, and health issue that affects a community's history and culture and reduces social capital. It often shifts a neighborhood's characteristics (e.g., racial/ethnic composition and household income) by adding new stores and resources in previously run-down neighborhoods.

Causes of Gentrification

The causes of gentrification are debatable. Some literature suggests that it is caused by social and cultural factors such as family structure, rapid job growth, lack of housing, traffic congestion, and public-sector policies ( Kennedy, 2001). Gentrification can occur on a small or large scale. For example, individual newcomers can slowly populate an area because of renovations. Conversely, large-scale redevelopment and the accompanying regeneration can cause an immediate shift in neighborhood residents.

Health Effects

Where people live, work, and play has an impact on their health. Several factors create disparities in a community's health. Examples include socioeconomic status, land use/the built environment, race/ethnicity, and environmental injustice. In addition, displacement has many health implications that contribute to disparities among special populations, including the poor, women, children, the elderly, and members of racial/ethnic minority groups.

These special populations are at increased risk for the negative consequences of gentrification. Studies indicate that vulnerable populations typically have shorter life expectancy; higher cancer rates; more birth defects; greater infant mortality; and higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. In addition, increasing evidence shows that these populations have an unequal share of residential exposure to hazardous substances such as lead paint.

Other health effects include limited access to or availability of the following:

affordable healthy housing

healthy food choices

transportation choices

quality schools

bicycle and walking paths, exercise facilities, etc.

social networks

Changes can also occur in:

stress levels

injuries

violence and crime

mental health

social and environmental justice

Gentrification and Environmental Justice Resources:

Federal

Nonfederal

References:

Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices ( http://www.policylink.org/sites/default/files/DealingWithGentrification_final.pdf [PDF - 209 KB]) Maureen Kennedy and Paul Leonard. Discussion Paper prepared for the Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and PolicyLink. April 2001.

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The Healthy Community Design Initiative, also known as the Built Environment and Health Initiative, is no longer a funded program and the information on this website is not being reviewed and updated on a regular basis. Gentrification is often defined as the transformation of neighborhoods from low value to high value.

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CT.gov - Connecticut's Official State Website

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Stop Bullying - a special initiative from the Department of Health and Human Services, provides information and resources from government agencies on how to prevent, respond, and take action against bullying.

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Causes, Problems, and Possible Solutions To Stop Littering - Conserve Energy Future

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Litter is any kind of trash thrown in small amounts, especially in places where it doesn’t belong. With time, it heaps up. The practice is unlawful because it costs municipalities millions of dollars annually in cleanup costs.

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Components of State Anti-Bullying Laws and Regulations

Which Connecticut laws and regulations cover bullying?

How are bullying and cyberbullying defined in Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations?

Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations include the following definitions of bullying and cyberbullying:

"Bullying" means an act that is direct or indirect and severe, persistent or pervasive, which (A) causes physical or emotional harm to an individual, (B) places an individual in reasonable fear of physical or emotional harm, or (C) infringes on the rights or opportunities of an individual at school. "Bullying" shall include, but need not be limited to, a written, oral or electronic communication or physical act or gesture based on any actual or perceived differentiating characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, socioeconomic status, academic status, physical appearance, or mental, physical, developmental or sensory disability, or by association with an individual or group who has or is perceived to have one or more of such characteristics;

"Cyberbullying" means any act of bullying through the use of the Internet, interactive and digital technologies, cellular mobile telephone or other mobile electronic devices or any electronic communications.

Conn. Gen. Stat. § 10-222d (2019)

Do Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations cover cyberbullying that occurs off-campus?

Yes. Connecticut anti-bullying laws cover off-campus conduct outside of the school setting if such bullying (i) creates a hostile environment at school for the student against whom such bullying was directed, (ii) infringes on the rights of the student against whom such bullying was directed at school, or (iii) substantially disrupts the education process or the orderly operation of a school.

What are the policy requirements for schools to prevent and respond to bullying behavior?

Connecticut local and regional boards of education must develop and implement a safe school climate plan to address the existence of bullying in schools and must appoint a district safe school climate coordinator responsible for implementing the district's safe school climate plan. The principal or the principal's designee in each school must serve as the school climate specialist responsible for investigating reported acts of bullying and collecting and maintaining records of reports and investigations. Schools must establish a school climate committee responsible for developing and fostering a safe school climate and addressing issues of bullying. Safe school climate plans must contain key policy and procedural elements, including, but not limited to:

Statements prohibiting bullying and statements of scope indicating where and when the policy applies;

Procedures for reporting and investigations, including provisions for anonymous reporting and procedures for documenting and maintaining records;

Prevention and intervention strategies;

Procedures for parent notification and parent conferences with parents or guardians of students who commit verified acts of bullying and the parents or guardians of students against whom such acts were directed;

Procedures for documenting and maintaining records of reports and investigations;

Procedures directing the development of case-by-case interventions for addressing repeated incidents of bullying and the development of student safety support plans detailing safety measures the school will take to protect students against further acts of bullying;

Statements of consequences for violation of the policy in student codes of conduct;

Requirements for law enforcement notification when acts of bullying may constitute criminal conduct; and

Requirements regarding how the policy will be publicized within the district.

Connecticut state law requires districts to submit safe school climate plans to the Department of Education for review and approval. Schools must also complete and submit to the Department of Education an annual assessment using school climate assessment instruments and must report verified acts of bullying.

Do Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations include protections for specific groups?

Yes. Connecticut anti-bullying laws prohibit bullying based on any actual or perceived differentiating characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, socioeconomic status, academic status, physical appearance, or mental, physical, developmental or sensory disability, or by association with an individual or group who has or is perceived to have one or more of such characteristics.

Connecticut schools that receive federal funding are required by federal law to address discrimination based on certain personal characteristics. Find out when bullying may be a civil rights violation.

Do Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations encourage or require districts to implement bullying prevention programs or strategies?

Yes. Connecticut school district safe school climate plans must incorporate a prevention and intervention strategy that may include, but is not limited to, implementation of positive behavioral interventions and supports or other evidence-based model approaches, school rules prohibiting bullying, adult supervision of selected areas of school campuses, individual interventions with students involved in bullying incidents, school-wide school climate training, parent engagement strategies, and culturally-competent school-based curriculum.

Do Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations encourage or require districts to train teachers and other school staff on how to respond to bullying incidents?

Yes. Connecticut school district safe school climate plans must include a requirement for all school employees to complete annual in-service training on the prevention, identification, and response to school bullying. Each local and regional board of education, in collaboration with the Connecticut Department of Education, must provide training materials to school administrators regarding the prevention of and intervention in discrimination against and targeted harassment of students. Connecticut anti-bullying laws also require that any candidate in a program of teacher preparation leading to professional certification complete a school violence, bullying, and suicide prevention and conflict resolution component.

Do Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations encourage or require districts to provide safeguards or mental health supports for students involved with bullying?

Yes. Connecticut safe school climate plans must direct the development of case-by-case interventions, including counseling, for addressing repeated incidents of bullying, and must direct the development of student safety support plans that address safety measures the school will take to protect students against further acts of bullying. Connecticut safe school climate plans must also incorporate a prevention and intervention strategy that may include interventions with a bullied child, such as referrals to a school counselor, psychologist, or other appropriate social or mental health service, and periodic follow-up by the safe school climate specialist with the bullied child.

Do Connecticut anti-bullying laws and regulations involve parents in efforts to ad dress bullying behavior?

Yes. Connecticut schools must designate a committee in the school to be responsible for developing and fostering a safe school climate and addressing issues related to bullying in the school. The committee must include at least one parent or guardian of a student enrolled in the school. Connecticut school district plans must include provisions to notify the parents or guardians of students who commit any verified acts of bullying and the parents or guardians of students against whom such acts were directed. School districts must also invite the parents or guardians of a student against whom bullying was directed to a meeting to communicate the measures being taken by the school to ensure the safety of the student and that policies and procedures are in place to prevent further acts of bullying. School districts must also invite the parents or guardians of a student who commits any verified act of bullying to a meeting to discuss specific interventions undertaken by the school to prevent further acts of bullying. Prevention and intervention strategies may include the promotion of parent involvement in bullying prevention through individual or team participation in meetings, trainings, and individual interventions.

For More Information

Visit the Connecticut State Department of Education's " Bullying and Harassment" webpage and/or view the Connecticut model school climate policy on bullying and harassment.

The key component framework used in the analysis of state laws is based on the review of legislation presented in the " Analysis of State Bullying Laws and Policies - December 2011" (U.S. Department of Education).

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Connecticut Anti-Bullying Laws & Policies

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Find out what laws and policies cover bullying and cyberbullying in Connecticut. Visit StopBullying.gov for more information.

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Tax Forms and Calculator courtesy of 401kcalculator.org via flickr
Michael J. Graetz-
Our nation's tax system is badly broken. Everyone knows that. The income tax law inflicts huge distortions on our economy. The only area of the economy where the tax system creates jobs is in tax planning, tax controversies, and tax compliance. Daunting income tax complexities confront taxpayers at every income level. They sow confusion and create the perception that those who can afford clever advisers escape paying their fair share of taxes. Front page stories throughout the country confirm that the IRS is unable even to answer taxpayers' simplest questions. All of this, in turn, erodes the goodwill and honesty crucial to the system's functioning, making it ever more vulnerable to tax avoidance and evasion.

In Congress, everyone talks about the need for major tax reform. After all, it has been nearly thirty years since the income tax got a good cleansing, and the 1986 Tax Reform soon unraveled. Last year, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R. MI) unveiled a massive tax reform proposal-an effort to reprise the 1986 reform by broadening both the corporate and individual tax bases and lowering their rates. Unlike the 1980s, however, this time there was no obvious target like widespread tax shelters, to help finance rate reductions. So Chairman Camp had to attack income tax's sacred cows-things like itemized deductions for home mortgage interest, state and local taxes, and charitable contributions, as well as exclusions from income of employer-provided health insurance and state and local bond interest. Even so, rather than the twenty-two-point reduction in the top marginal rate-from 50 percent to 28 percent-that Ronald Reagan accomplished, Congressman Camp was able to move the top rate from about 40 percent to 35 percent. This spotlighted the limited gains from income tax reform. After Republicans and Democrats all kept a safe distance from Camp's plan, he retired from Congress and moved to the private sector, passing the torch to former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who now heads the House tax-writing committee. In the Senate, the new Republican chairman of the Finance Committee, Utah's Orrin Hatch, has created task forces to work on tax reform and insists he can get it done. Talk about tax reform abounds. But how can anyone remain optimistic about fixing our nation's tax system without radical surgery?
A Little History
Although an income tax helped finance the Civil War, it did not become permanent until World War I. From the end of the Civil War until 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, the Federal government raised its revenue almost exclusively from tariffs on imported goods and assorted excise taxes. Tariffs and excise taxes, however, raised the costs of goods for everyone, while large fortunes accumulating in real estate, corporate stock, and other investments were left untaxed. The extraordinary public support necessary to amend the Constitution and impose an income tax arose to fund a reduction in tariffs and to balance the taxes on consumption with a tax more closely linked to people's ability to pay.

The income tax was expected to contribute only a small portion of ordinary government revenues and to supplement other revenue sources in times of emergency. It was not supposed to play the central role in financing the Federal government that it does today. Until World War II the tax law shielded most Americans from having to pay. From 1918 until 1939, only about five percent of the population filed taxable income returns. Even after the economic shocks of the Great Depression and the creation and expansion of the New Deal the reach of the income tax remained extremely limited. True to its original conception, it was a low-rate tax on a relatively small group of higher-income Americans-until World War II.

In 1940-41, Congress increased the number of Americans subject to the income tax by 400 percent, from 7.4 million to 27.6 million. By 1943, 50 million Americans, or nearly 70 percent of the population, were required to file tax returns.
Where We Are Now
Our nation's basic tax structure has remained fundamentally unchanged since. In the decades following World War II, the United States essentially had all the money there was. Even a horrid tax system with income tax rates up to 91 percent could not stall our nation's economic progress. From 1946-73, when OPEC quadrupled the price of oil, the economy grew by an average of 3.8 percent per year, and unemployment averaged 4.5 percent. Since then, however, the economy has grown more slowly, and middle-class wages have stagnated. Our nation's workers today face stiff worldwide competition for jobs and wages.

Given the internationalization of economic activity during the past 25 years and the increased competition from abroad, we need to attract capital to create better conditions for American workers and businesses, goals which the current tax system stifles. Our competitors' tax systems are dramatically different from ours. They have not stuck with their archaic World War II era tax systems.

The United States is a relatively low-tax country, but not with respect to income taxes. With total Federal, state, and local taxes at about 25 percent of our total economic output, the United States enjoys considerably lower taxes than the average (36 percent of GDP) of the thirty countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Our income-tax level is comparable, however. We typically collect about 12 percent of GDP in corporate and individual income taxes, while the OECD nations average about 13 percent. The biggest difference is that most other nations rely much more heavily on consumption taxes than we do: 11 percent of GDP in the OECD compared to about 5 percent in the United States. Indeed, we are the only OECD nation that does not impose a national level tax on sales of goods and services.
Where Do We Go from Here?
The United States hobbles itself in today's international economy by continuing to rely so heavily on income taxation. The truth is that we need a tax reform that is considerably bolder than either Congress or the president is now contemplating. We need to rebalance our federal tax system to take advantage of our status as a low-tax country by relying less rely less heavily on income taxation. To create a simple, internationally competitive and viable long-term solution to our fiscal requirements, we should return the income tax to its original purpose: the collection of a simpler tax on high-income earners who tend to have multiple income sources. In order to do that, we need to tax consumption-that is, sales of goods and services. By enacting a broad-based tax on sales of goods and services now used by more than 150 countries worldwide, we could use the revenues to finance an income-tax exemption of $100,000 of family income and to lower substantially the individual income-tax rate on income above that amount-freeing over 150 million Americans from ever having to deal with the IRS. Through payroll-tax cuts and debit cards to be used at checkout counters, we can protect low- and middle-income families from any tax increase.

With this kind of reform, most Americans would owe no tax on their savings and all Americans would face lower taxes on savings and investments. The United States would become a much more favorable place for economic growth, without shifting the burden down the income scale. A low corporate tax rate would solve the problems caused by international tax planning by multinational corporations and the current competition for corporate investments among nations. Rather than trying to leave, companies would want their headquarters to be located in the U.S. By taxing imports and exempting exports, this system would yield hundreds of billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury in the decade ahead from sales of products produced abroad- $600 to $700 billion at current trade levels.

By returning the income tax to its pre-World War II role as a relatively small tax on a thin slice of high income Americans, there would be no temptation for Congress to use tax breaks as if they are solutions to America's social and economic problems. We have tried that, and it doesn't work. And for the vast majority of Americans, April 15 would just be another spring day. They would never have to deal with the IRS again.

Michael J. Graetz is a Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School. He is the author of 100 Million Unnecessary Returns: A Simple, Fair, and Competitive Tax Plan for the United States.

Further Reading:

Featured Image: Tax Forms and Calculator by 401kcalculator.org via Flickr under a Creative Commons license

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How Do We Fix America's Tax System? - Yale University Press

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Michael J. Graetz- Our nation's tax system is badly broken. Everyone knows that. The income tax law inflicts huge distortions on our economy. The only area of the economy where... READ MORE

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Lots of students don't want to go to school. Some students, however, face a daily struggle to get into school or class.

School refusal, school phobia, truancy, chronic absenteeism, school avoidance. These are just a few of the terms you may have heard to describe the problem of poor attendance. Some families may identify more with some of these labels than others and for good reason. Children struggle with attendance for a variety of reasons.

For students that struggle with attendance, school and everything that comes with it (homework, tests, quizzes, the cafeteria, other students, teachers, etc.) can trigger strong emotions like anxiety and depression. Parents may also struggle to send their child to school, as they worry about their child's mental and physical health. Some parents struggle with how to break the cycle of school avoidance.

School avoidance can start for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons include:

Illness

Bullying at school

Problems at home (e.g. divorce, parental illness)

Transitions to a new school

Academic difficulty

Onset or worsening of psychiatric illness

These situations that can trigger school avoidance need attention. They suggest there are valid real world problems that need to be addressed so the student can begin the journey back to school.

The Center for School Engagement works with students, their families, and their home school district to understand the problems surrounding attendance issues. We seek to create collaborative relationships with families in order to learn more about each student and their particular struggles. Through collaborative relationships an ideal learning environment can be designed.

What do these terms mean?

School refusal: This term is used in research and clinical settings to describe students that miss school due to an emotional reason (e.g. anxiety, depression). Parents/guardians are aware that the child is missing school. School refusal does not mean that the child does not want to go to school; it means that when it comes time to go to school and their emotions run strong, their tendency is to say "no." Sometimes students identified with school refusal may develop other challenging behaviors such as poor sleep habits, excessive electronics use, and over-reliance on adults. Over-reliance on adults may mean spending lots of time with adults and/or relying on adults to manage emotional situations for them (parental accommodation). It is the job of the school, treatment providers, and families to help this child to learn how to manage emotions and to provide a healthy learning environment.

School phobia: This term is no longer in use, but was one of the first terms used to describe children that were afraid to go to school. It is no longer used as trouble with attendance is more than just being afraid of school. It may relate to a variety of issues, as noted above. Children who experience difficulty attending school may be diagnosed with a variety of psychiatric diagnoses. Some students may not have a diagnosis at all.

Truancy: Truancy has different definitions used by the state and in research/clinical settings. The Connecticut State Department of Education (2013) defines "a truant" as a student who "has four unexcused absences from school in any one month or ten unexcused absences from school in any school year."

In clinical and research settings, truancy has been used to refer to students that avoid school in order to pursue more enjoyable activities. These students are different from those identified with school refusal, as they are not avoiding school due to an emotional reason and they try to hide their absences from adults.

Chronic absenteeism: This is a broad term used to describe excessive absences for any reason. Students missing more than 10% of school due to excused (e.g. illness) issues, unexcused issues, truancy, school refusal, etc. would all be defined as chronically absent. Given the impact that attendance has on learning, it is important for schools to identify chronically absent students, regardless of the reason. It is important that the schools help all students.

School avoidance: We use the term school avoidance to describe the students that come to the Center for School Engagement. They may be missing school due to school refusal or for other important issues that need to be addressed including academic shortcomings, problems with the learning environment, family issues that may be impacting school attendance, etc. Some students may need help with credit recovery, psychiatric difficulties, or both.

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Learn more about School Avoidance at instituteofliving.org

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CT.gov - Connecticut's Official State Website

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Housing and Homeless Services Unit

Geller Commons

New Reach

PROGRAM INFORMATION

Housing and Homeless Services can be accessed through Coordinated Access Networks (CAN), which consist of community providers across the state who work with DMHAS eligible heads of households and individuals experiencing homelessness.

Persons are prioritized for housing services based on an assessment to be completed after calling 211.Calling 211 and/or completing the assessment does not guarantee housing.

Dial 211 from anywhere in Connecticut.
If you are hearing impaired use the TTY number: 1-800-671-0737.
If you are outside of Connecticut or have difficulties using the 211 number, dial 1-800-203-1234.

To begin this process, persons experiencing homelessness or at imminent risk of homelessness must call 211 and dial #3 and #1 to speak to a contact specialist trained to assess housing needs.

If a 211 contact specialist is unable to identify resources, the person will be offered a CAN assessment appointment in the community of his/her choice.

If assessed and prioritized with a high need for housing, the CAN community providers will include the household on the prioritized waiting list for housing.

Housing resources available through the CAN are prioritized for individuals and families who meet the literal homeless definition of the federal government's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Coordinated Access Networks (CAN) Map CAN Brochures
A potential housing resource may include any of the following DMHAS programs:

CT Collaborative on Re-Entry

Social Innovation Fund

HUD 811 Program

HUD Continuum of Care Rental Assistance

Permanent Supportive Housing Services

Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH)
Federally funded through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), PATH programs provide outreach and engagement into services to persons who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and have serious mental health needs or who have mental health needs with a co-occurring substance use disorder.
SSI/SSDI Outreach, Access, and Recovery (SOAR)
Connecticut's SOAR Initiative is led by the State Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). SOAR is a model used to complete the SSI/SSDI application to assist clients in gaining access to the disability income benefit programs administered by the for Social Security Administration (SSA) . The SOAR model is used eligible adults who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of experiencing homelessness and have a mental illness and/or a co-occurring substance use disorder.

Visit the SOARWorks website for more information on program eligibility and to see if there is a trained SOAR case manager in your area.

Please see the contacts below for more information in your area:
Fairfield County Coordinated Access Network
Catholic Charities of Fairfield County

203-743-4412

New Reach

203-492-4866
Greater New Haven Coordinated Access Network
Columbus House

203-401-4400

Liberty Community Services

203-495-7600
Northwest Coordinated Access Network
Center for Human Development

203-596-9323
Middletown/Meriden/Wallingford Coordinated Access Network
Columbus House

860-343-3145
Greater Hartford Coordinated Access Network
Community Health Resources

(860) 646-3888
Central CT Coordinated Access Network
Friendship Service Center

860-225-0211
Northeast Coordinated Access Network
Perception Programs Inc.

(860) 450-7122
Southeast Coordinated Access Network
Reliance Health

(860) 887-6536

In an effort to address a marked increase in persons who may be experiencing homelessness, mental health, and/or substance use concerns at CT Rail and FasTrak stations, the Connecticut Department of Transportation (DOT) has partnered with DMHAS and the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP) to provide a new outreach program. The goal of this new program is to engage, support and connect people who may be unstably housed, or who may have challenges with mental health or substance use, to community resources. Connecticut Harm Reduction Alliance (CTHRA) outreach workers will be available to transit stations in the evening hours, between 10PM and 1AM. These outreach workers will assist individuals with getting into shelter or onto the shelter waitlist; making housing plans; seeking treatment for mental health or substance use issues, and linking people to other services as needed. State Troopers will also be available during evening outreach to support the safety of the CT Rail, CT FasTrak employees, outreach teams, and riders. Transit HOP Program

CT Harm Reduction Alliance Outreach workers will have lanyards and badges that clearly identify them as well as allow them to ride the rails and FasTrak, so that engagement can happen on the trains, buses, or at the stations. This new program will begin with a focus on the Hartford and New Britain stations and will expand to other locations over time. If you have any questions, please contact Mollie.Machado@ct.gov.
Publications Links to organizations dedicated to ending homelessness and increasing housing opportunities
State and Federal Government:
Connecticut Department of Housing Connecticut Department of Social Services Connecticut General Assembly Housing Committee Department of Housing and Urban Development Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration United States Interagency Council on Homelessness
Connecticut-Based Agencies:
Advancing CT Together Connecticut Balance of State Continuum of Care Opening Doors Fairfield County Continuum of Care Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness Connecticut Housing Coalition Partnership for Strong Communities United Way of Connecticut National Agencies: CSH - The Source for Housing Solutions Melville Charitable Trust National Alliance to End Homelessness Additional Links: CT Housing Engagement and Support Services (CHESS) Supportive Housing Training Catalog Fall 2023 System-Wide Analytics and Projection (SWAP)
Housing and Homeless Service Provider Information

Contact Information

Alice Minervino, Director, alice.minervino@ct.gov, (860) 418-6942

Brenda Earle, Program Manager, brenda.earle@ct.gov, (860) 418-6845

Lisa Callahan, Health Program Associate, lisa.callahan@ct.gov, (860) 418-6629

Kimberly Beach, Health Program Assistant II, kimberly.beach@ct.gov, (860) 418-6832

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Housing and Homeless Services Unit Geller Commons New Reach PROGRAM INFORMATION Housing and Homeless Services can be accessed through Coordinated Access Networks (CAN), which consist of community providers across the state who work with DMHAS eligible heads of households and individuals experiencing homelessness.

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Reasons, Consequences and Possible Solutions of Littering - Caucasus Environmental Knowledge Portal

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Littering can be defined as making a place or area untidy with rubbish, or incorrectly disposing waste. Littering causes pollution, a major threat to the environment, and has increasingly become a cause for concern in many countries. As human beings are largely responsible for littering, it is important to understand why people litter, as […]

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Construction crews have begun building a new neighborhood on separate lots within one block of Karaine "Kay" Holness's hair salon. ...

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More Evidence of how lights during nighttime can effect humans

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More Evidence of how lights during nighttime can effect humans

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Sleepers can be exposed to light in a variety of ways, from bright overhead lights and bedside mobile devices to televisions and nearby street lamps. While this may seem common enough, research has shown that sleeping with a light on may affect a person's health and the quality of their sleep.

Sleeping with the lights on may affect sleep quality and increase the risk of certain health problems, like heart disease. These problems might be the result of disruptions to a person's internal sleep-wake cycle, which is heavily influenced by exposure to light. Disruptions in the sleep-wake cycle can and maintains the functions of the heart and blood vessels, which can lead to other health problems.

Heart Health

More research is needed to understand why light exposure has such an effect on heart health. However, doctors suggest people may be able to reduce the risk of heart disease by minimizing or eliminating exposure to light at night and increasing exposure to natural daylight during the day.

Obesity

Certain types of nighttime light exposure are . According to one study, women who were more likely to have obesity and to continue to gain weight. Nighttime use of blue light is also associated with an increased risk of obesity, but sleeping with a small nightlight is not.

More research is needed to understand the potential link between obesity and sleeping while exposed to artificial light. However, doctors recommend reducing light at night as much as possible to lower the risk of weight gain and obesity.

Diabetes

In general, it is best to sleep in darkness with no lights on. However, there are some cases when having lights on may be beneficial. For example, children or adults who are afraid of the dark may need to use a nightlight to help them relax and sleep. Also, some older adults may require a nightlight to prevent falls when getting up in the middle of the night. In these scenarios, experts recommend using a dim, warm-colored light to reduce intense light exposure as the benefits may outweigh the potential harms.

Light can significantly affect an individual's circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are internal patterns that change over a 24-hour cycle in response to environmental cues. For example, light alerts the body when to be awake while . So, when a person is exposed to artificial light, it can confuse the body into thinking it should be more awake at times it should be resting.

Biological Clock

The biological clock is a person's internal clock that regulates circadian rhythms. The biological clock is more sensitive to light about two hours before bedtime, as well as throughout the night and for about one hour after waking up in the morning.

Melatonin

Melatonin is a hormone that the body makes on its own to signal the body when to go to sleep. Sleeping with the light on can . Blue light exposure in particular, which includes light from screens on electronic devices, can suppress melatonin production. When the body does not produce melatonin at night, a person may have a hard time falling asleep.

Not everyone is able to sleep without any light on. However, there are ways to reduce the impact of artificial light on sleep. Switching to using red light at night instead of white or blue light can help because red light does not disturb the body's internal clock.

Additionally, natural light during daytime hours is just as important as reducing bright lights during night time when it comes to sleep health. Experts suggest getting an hour of exposure to natural sunlight every morning.

Other tips for good sleep hygiene include:

Refrain from caffeine and alcohol before bed

Get regular exercise, but avoid exercise too close to bedtime

Try not to eat large meals before bed

Practice relaxation techniques before bed like meditation, taking a bath, or reading

Keep the bedroom at a cool temperature for sleeping

Avoid blue light exposure from electronic screens

If you have any questions about your sleep patterns and your health, consult your doctor or a health care provider.

Jay Summer is a health content writer and editor. She holds a B.S. in psychology and master's degrees in writing and public policy.

Dr. Rehman, M.D., is a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine as well as Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism.

Learn more about our Editorial Team

References

1. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2022, August 16). Turn off all the lights at night: Your heart will thank you., Retrieved March 15, 2023, from
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2022/turn-off-lights-at-night-your-heart-will-thank-you

2. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2022, March 14). Study: Sleeping with even a small amount of light could harm heart health., Retrieved March 15, 2023, from
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2022/study-sleeping-even-small-amount-light-could-harm-heart-health

3. National Institutes of Health. (2019, June 18). Artificial light during sleep linked to obesity., Retrieved March 15, 2023, from
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/artificial-light-during-sleep-linked-obesity

4. Park, Y. M., White, A. J., Jackson, C. L., Weinberg, C. R., & Sandler, D. P. (2019). Association of Exposure to Artificial Light at Night While Sleeping With Risk of Obesity in Women. JAMA internal medicine, 179(8), 1061-1071. Advance online publication.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31180469/

5. Kim, M., Vu, T. H., Maas, M. B., Braun, R. I., Wolf, M. S., Roenneberg, T., Daviglus, M. L., Reid, K. J., & Zee, P. C. (2023). Light at night in older age is associated with obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Sleep, 46(3), zsac130.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35729737/

6. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (2022, March 24). Your sleep/wake cycle., Retrieved March 15, 2023, from
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/sleep/sleep-wake-cycle

7. National Institute for Occupational Safety Health. (2020, April 1). The color of the light affects the circadian rhythms. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention., Retrieved March 15, 2023, from
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/emres/longhourstraining/color.html

8. Goldstein, C. (2021, November 9). Overview of circadian sleep-wake rhythm disorders. In R. Benca (Ed.). UpToDate., Retrieved March 16, 2023, from
https://www.uptodate.com/contents/overview-of-circadian-sleep-wake-rhythm-disorders

9. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. (2022, July). Melatonin: What you need to know., Retrieved March 16, 2023, from
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/melatonin-what-you-need-to-know

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Sleeping With the Lights On: Helpful or Harmful? | Sleep Foundation

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Have you ever wondered the impacts of sleeping with the light on? Learn about the different effects that sleeping with the light on has on your health.

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We have many resources on this site to help you deal with cyberbullying. If you are a teen, check out: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Teens. If you are an adult who is being harassed online, see our recommendations here. If you are a parent of a child who is being cyberbullied, please see: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Parents and educators should review: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Educators.

If you feel comfortable sharing your story, we would like to hear from you. You can anonymize your experiences if you'd like, and we promise to maintain your individual confidentiality to the maximum extent of the law. The more detail you can provide the better. We use these stories to educate the public about the serious nature of cyberbullying with the goal of preventing others from doing it. We read every one of these stories and please know that you are not alone. Even though it may seem like there is nothing that can be done to stop the cyberbullying, don't give up.

SOME STORIES SHARED WITH US

The following is a small sample of the thousands of anecdotal stories and comments we've received from children and adolescents who have experienced cyberbullying. If you would like to anonymously submit a description of your cyberbullying experience to us, please do so in the form below. Please provide as many specific details of your experience as you can.

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Cyberbullying Stories - Cyberbullying Research Center

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We have many resources on this site to help you deal with cyberbullying. If you are a teen, check out: Responding to Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Teens. If you are an adult who is being harassed online, see our recommendations here.

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There is progress being made for a pandemic-era program aimed at getting students back into the classroom, and keeping them there.

State leaders announced a drop in statewide chronic absenteeism by about 3%. The Connecticut State Education Department said in the 2021-22 school year, chronic absenteeism rates were about 23.7%.

For last school year, from 2022-23, that rate dropped to about 20%. That's about 18,000 more kids consistently in school.

"I feel like having a connection with the staff is a better reason to come to school because you have people you can count on that believe in you," East Hartford High School freshman Dereon Ellison said.

She believes the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program, or LEAP, is helping her and her peers get to, and stay in school.

"I haven't missed any days of school, and most of the people like it here so they will come to school and do what they have to do," Ellison said.

The program that dates back to 2021 targets connections between schools, community organizations and families to identify barriers families are facing to get to school, and finding work-arounds.

"For me its one family, one home visit at a time," program co-coordinator Francisco Baires said.

Baires pointed out the progress in attendance numbers statewide is an incremental change, but in this case, believes progress must be made little by little.

"It's about stopping and figuring out what's going on family by family, visit by visit," Baires said.

Baires' counterpart, Caroline Calhoun, also identified numerous other benefits not initially expected at the rollout of the program.

"An increased sense of gratitude, an increased sense of belonging, feeling empowered and having connections and all of those were tangential benefits of the program," Calhoun said.

The program is also gaining steam at a critical moment identified by Dalio Education. A recent report has pointed out that 19%, or 119,000 young adults ages 14 to 26 are at risk of being disconnected or are already disconnected from education or employment tracks. Over 58%, or 63,000 of those students are already in the disconnected category.

Governor Ned Lamont is not accepting the loss of students, adding Connecticut needs them for the future of the state's economy by filling jobs.

He acknowledged there is an uphill battle in continuing to lower the chronic absenteeism rate, but said it's work that has to be done.

"We have a long way to go, we have a long way to go because it's the best thing we can do for these kids to give them that opportunity, give them something to believe in," Governor Lamont said.

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Program helps drop chronic absenteeism in CT schools, but it's still a problem

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There is progress being made for a pandemic-era program aimed at getting students back into the classroom, and keeping them there. State leaders announced a drop in statewide chronic absenteeism by about 3%. The Connecticut State Education Department said in the 2021-22 school year, chronic absenteeism rates were about 23.7%.

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As housing costs rise, more than half a million people lack homes, including nearly 100k children.

Written By: Security.org Team | Published: January 25, 2023

Homelessness in America is a pressing crisis that can be difficult to document. The same pandemic conditions that ravaged the economy and disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable kept the government from accurately counting those left without shelter.

Following a period of limited data, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently completed its first comprehensive Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) in two years. It found that nearly 600,000 Americans are unhoused on any night - a slight increase over pre-COVID numbers. A deeper dive into the census reveals that while overall numbers were relatively stable during COVID's reign, some demographics shifted notably.

As part of Security.org's ongoing commitment to highlighting this societal problem, this annual report examines the overall scope of the homelessness issue, explores its geographical distribution, and identifies groups most at risk. This article builds on our previous reports from 2022, 2021, and 2019.

Key Findings:

582,462 individuals are experiencing homelessness in America, an increase of about 2,000 people since the last complete census conducted in 2020.

About 30 percent of people without homes are experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness. This means they've been without homes for more than 12 months or have experienced extended periods of extended homelessness over the past three years.

Most states saw their homeless populations rise since 2019, including four where the tally more than doubled (Delaware, Vermont, Louisiana, Maine).

Sixty percent of individuals experiencing homelessness are male, though unsheltered homelessness rose by five percent among women and girls. More than a quarter of those experiencing homelessness were with their families and children.

Much progress has been made in reducing homelessness among military veterans. Homelessness in this population declined by 11 percent over the past two years and has been halved since 2010.

FYI: Most U.S. cities exhibit a positive correlation between homelessness and crime rates. While we must prioritize compassion in addressing homelessness, it is understandable to exercise caution if you live in a neighborhood with high homelessness rates. We tackle all the different ways a home security system protects you and your family in our home security guide.

American Homelessness in 2022: An Overview

In December of 2022, HUD calculated that 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States and its territories. That number represented an increase of nearly 2,000 individuals over the last complete accounting of 2020, yet remained steady at .18 percent of the nation's population.

Despite this slight increase in those without homes since the pandemic's start and gradual increases since 2016, the number of people experiencing homelessness is lower today than a decade ago.

Of those experiencing homelessness, 60 percent found refuge in sheltered locations (like emergency shelters, safe havens, or transitional housing programs). The other 40 percent spent their nights unsheltered (often on the street, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not designated/suitable for human habitation).

These proportions mark a three percent increase in unsheltered individuals combined with a two percent decrease among those in shelter facilities. Though available shelter beds increased over the last two years (aided by emergency funding through the federal CARES act), the shift may reflect COVID restrictions compelling reduced occupancy.

Sadly, more than a quarter of those experiencing homelessness in 2022 did so as part of a family with children. Though the number of families without permanent homes is distressing, this group had greater access to assistance. Nearly nine in ten unhoused people who were part of families with children were sheltered - a much higher percentage than individuals experiencing homelessness (49 percent). Thankfully, the number of unhoused people in families with children has declined each year since 2012 and fallen collectively by one-third in that time.

Regional Trends in Homelessness

Homelessness touches communities of all sizes across every region, though some bear its brunt more than others. Contributing factors to the concentration of the unhoused include local financial hardship, housing markets, climate conditions, and available social resources.

Though the common conception of those experiencing homelessness might be unsheltered individuals on the streets of a city, the issue reaches communities of all types. While most unhoused Americans occupy urban areas, many live in suburban and rural settings.

Among major cities, Los Angeles (54,469 individuals) and New York City (32,308) have the largest unhoused populations, collectively accounting for nearly one-fifth of the country's total afflicted. No other city contains more than 10,000 persons experiencing homelessness, with Seattle, San Jose, and Oakland/San Francisco rounding out the top five afflicted metroplexes.

Major cities saw an increase in unhoused individuals over the past two years (5,694 additional persons) and featured the highest percentage of unsheltered homeless (55 percent). However, the most notable expansion in unhoused populations occurred in rural areas, where homeless numbers have jumped six percent since 2020.

Regionally, the western United States exhibited the highest per capita rates of homelessness, though numbers varied significantly by state.

States with largest populations of homeless people

States with most people experiencing homelessness per capita

Fastest growing populations of people in homelessness 2019 - 2022

California, New York, Florida, Washington, and Texas had the highest number of unhoused individuals. Vermont, Oregon, and Hawaii join CA and NY as the most afflicted states per capita. Delaware, Vermont, Louisiana, and Maine recorded the most significant percentage increases in homelessness - each more than doubling its rate since 2019.

In all, twenty-eight states saw homelessness increase in the latest AHAR. To find the extent of the homeless problem in your state, consult the data appendix below.

Special Populations Experiencing Homelessness

Every instance of homelessness has an element of tragedy, and each springs from a singular tale, yet certain commonalities and communities emerge among the unhoused population. Historically, armed forces veterans and BIPOC individuals are more likely to experience homelessness. At the same time, children and young adults on the streets before their adult lives have started may be the most vulnerable victims.

Chronic Homelessness

One of the most troubling trends is the continuing surge of individuals experiencing chronic patterns of homelessness. This includes people who have been homeless for more than 12 months or have experienced extended periods of extended homelessness over the past three years.

Currently, about 30 percent of unhoused individuals suffer from these chronic patterns. That number jumped 16 percent over the past two years and has grown by 64 percent since 2016.

In Nevada, Oregon, California, Colorado, and Oklahoma, a third or more of people experiencing homelessness were caught in chronic homelessness. These states had the highest rates of chronic homelessness.

Homelessness Among America's Youth

We previously noted the numbers of families experiencing homelessness, yet those do not account for all unhoused young people. Though advocates claim that the number of unhoused youths is vastly underreported, HUD found that more than 30,000 unaccompanied Americans under age 25 lack a permanent dwelling, and 13,000 of those young people are unsheltered.

Since the pandemic's start, governments, nonprofits, and other groups have made progress in reducing youth homelessness. The number of unaccompanied youths experiencing homelessness in America decreased by 12 percent between 2020 and 2022. California registered the most significant drop of any state (2,582 individuals) but still accounts for one-third of the country's unhoused youth.

The states with the largest shares of minors experiencing homelessness were Massachusetts (39 percent under 18), Delaware (32 percent), and Louisiana (31 percent).

Racial Disparities: Homelessness Across the Ethnic Spectrum

As with many economic hardships, homelessness affects BIPOC communities most deeply. The Black community suffers particularly hard, comprising nearly forty percent of all unhoused persons.

All racial groups other than White and Asian Americans experience homelessness at a rate that is disproportionately high to their share of the population. The same is true of those identifying as Hispanic or Latino, a separate classification in the federal statistical system.

Racial Disparities in Homelessness
Demographic characteristics of people experiencing homelessness, compared to national population
Conversely, the number of Black individuals identifying as homeless dropped by over 11,000 over the past two years, as most other communities endured a rise in their unhoused ranks.

Perhaps the brightest spot of progress in the battle against homelessness comes from the count of unhoused veterans. At the start of the last decade, more than 74,000 veterans were without permanent lodgings, with that community experiencing homelessness at a rate double the national average. Following years of increased funding and targeted initiatives, signs of success have emerged.

The states with the largest proportion of veterans in their homeless populations were:

Mississippi: 12 percent

Montana: 11 percent

Wyoming: 10 percent

South Carolina: 10 percent

Nevada: 10 percent

New York had the lowest percentage of veterans in their homeless populations at just one percent.

Conclusion

Following a year of incomplete data, HUD completed a comprehensive 2022 point-in-time survey of American homelessness. It showed that the number of unhoused individuals grew slightly (less than one percent) during the pandemic period.

Some would label this increase a failure of societal policies, while others might credit an influx of funding and proactive countermeasures with preventing a far worse catastrophe (some estimated that COVID and its accompanying recession would spike homelessness by 49 percent).

All would agree that with nearly 600,000 individuals unhoused, the nation still faces a challenging problem, especially among vulnerable communities. The Biden administration recently unveiled a new strategic plan to tackle the crisis. Still, as conservatives seize the nation's purse strings and housing costs continually rise, many foresee the problem deepening.

As mandated by Congress, a new Annual Homelessness Assessment Report will be issued next year, updating the country's progress. Security.org will again analyze the numbers for you.

Methodology

All figures on homelessness come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Annual Homelessness Assessment Reports to Congress, with the latest statistics derived from its 2022 Point in Time homelessness count. You can access the tables and HUD's latest report to Congress here. Demographic information regarding the general population came from publically available figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Data Appendix

State

2022 total unhoused

Percentage change since 2019

Percent of people experiencing homeless under age 18

Percent military veterans

Percent in chronic homelessness

Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Annual Homelessness Assessment Reports to Congress (2022).

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Homelessness in America 2023: Statistics, Analysis, & Trends | Security.org

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As housing costs rise, more than half a million people lack homes, including nearly 100k children. Written By: Security.org Team | Published: January 25, 2023 Homelessness in America is a pressing crisis that can be difficult to document. The same pandemic conditions that ravaged the economy and disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable kept the government from accurately counting those left without shelter.

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CT.gov - Connecticut's Official State Website

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Why are students chronically absent?

Research has shown that the reasons why students are chronically absent fall into four categories:

1. Myths and misperceptions about attendance

2. Barriers to attendance

3. Aversion to school

4. Disengagement from school

(Attendance Works, 2014)
Districts and individual schools will need to "unpack" their data and work closely with families and students to determine why students are absent. Communicating in a culturally relevant manner with parents around the myths and perceptions about attendance is essential so that they can become partners with school district efforts to improve attendance.

(Attendance Works, 2014)
Resources

Breaking Barriers to Attendance, Attendance Works

In School and On Track: A toolkit on "How to talk to parents of elementary school students about their children's absences," California Attorney General and Ad Council

The Attendance Imperative: How States Can Advance Achievement by Reducing Chronic Absence, Attendance Works

Understanding the Factors Contributing to Chronic Absence in Your School, Attendance Works

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Research has shown that the reasons why students are chronically absent fall into four categories: Myths and misperceptions about attendance Barriers to attendance Aversion to school Disengagement from school (Attendance Works, 2014) Districts and individual schools will need to "unpack" their data and work closely with families and students to determine why students are absent.

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Problems with Cyber Bullying Outside Of Schools

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Problems with Cyber Bullying Outside Of Schools

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The purpose of this article is to explore the laws, statutes, and cases relating to school bullying in Connecticut, specifically "cyberbullying," and to provide an overview of the types of legal avenues that may be available to a victim of bullying.

What is Cyberbullying?

According to Connecticut's General Assembly Commission on Children, "25 percent of Connecticut high school students - and 35 percent of the state's 9 thgraders - report having been bullied or harassed on school property in the previous year."[1]Furthermore, the report states that "[m]ore than 900,000 U.S. high school students reported being cyberbullied in one year."[2]According to the U.S. Department of Justice, "Bullying may be the most underreported safety problem in American schools."[3]

The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) defines cyberbullying as "similar to other types of bullying, except that it takes place online and through text messages sent to cell phones." www.ncpc.org. The NCPC has said that cyberbullying can take the form of:

Sending mean or threatening emails, instant messages, or text messages;

Excluding someone from an instant messenger buddy list or blocking their email for no reason;

Tricking someone into revealing personal or embarrassing information and sending it to others;

Breaking into someone's email or instant message account to send cruel or untrue messages while posing as that person;

Creating websites to make fun of another person such as a classmate or teacher;

Using websites to rate peers as prettiest, ugliest, etc.

One recent study from Texas describes cyberbullying as bullying in which bullies use the Internet, text messaging, and similar technology, "which give an illusion to anonymity, [and] encourage bullying by those who would not normally engage in such behavior. They also allow a bully to avoid direct confrontation with the target."[4]

I. Conn. Gen. Stat. §10-222d

In July 2011, Governor Dannel Malloy signed Public Act 11-232 into law, marking Connecticut's first anti-bullying legislation. The Act, known as "An Act Concerning the Strengthening of School Bullying Laws," defines bullying as "the repeated use by one or more students of a written, oral or electronic communication, such as cyberbullying, directed at or referring to another student attending school in the same district."[5]

The law defines cyberbullying as "any act of bullying through the use of the Internet, interactive and digital technologies, cellular mobile telephone or other mobile electronic devices or any electronic communications."[6]

The law requires that each local and regional board of education develop and implement a specific bullying policy addressing the existence of bullying within its schools. Specifically, the law requires the school policy to:

Enable students to anonymously report acts of bullying to school administrators;

Appoint a safe school climate coordinator to facilitate the school's plan;

Enable the parents or guardians of students to file written reports of suspected bullying;

Require school administrators (including teachers and staff) who witness bullying or receive reports of bullying to notify a school administrator no more thanone dayafter the employee witnesses or receives the report of bullying; and to file a written report no more than two school days after making such oral report;

Provide for the inclusion of language in student codes of conduct concerning bullying;

Require each school to notify the parents or guardians of students who commit bullying and the parents or guardians of students who are the victims of bullying, and invite them to attend at least one meeting.

The Governmental Immunity Barrier

The doctrine of governmental immunity may preclude a plaintiff in Connecticut from recovering on a claim against a school district. Where the defendants' activities in a bullying case are discretionary, they may enjoy the defense of governmental immunity; conversely, where the defendants' activities alleged in the complaint are ministerial, they cannot be shielded by governmental immunity.[7]

A ministerial act is an act which is "performed in a prescribed manner without the exercise of judgment or discretion . . .." There must be a "written policy, directive, or guidelines mandating a particular course of action."[8] If a court deems the acts and responsibilities of a school district to be ministerial, governmental immunity will not serve to provide immunity.

That distinction was tested in Santoro v. Town of Hamden. There, the Connecticut Superior Court held that plaintiffs, parents of a bullying victim, could not maintain a private cause of action under §10-222d, finding that "section 10-222d does not provide a basis for circumventing the doctrine of sovereign immunity." As such, the court granted defendants' motion to strike two counts of plaintiffs' complaint on the grounds that the school district was shielded by governmental immunity.[9]

Exception to Immunity Defense

There is an exception to the immunity defense, which permits a tort action in the circumstance of "perceptible harm to an identifiable person." Scruggs, at *70. The "identifiable person, imminent harm exception" applies when the circumstances make it apparent to the public officer charged with the exercise of discretion that his or her failure to act would be likely to subject an identifiable person to imminent harm. Rigoli v. Town of Shelton, 2012 Conn. Super. LEXIS 349, at *9 (Feb. 6, 2012).

Connecticut courts adhere to a three-pronged test. Failure of a plaintiff to meet all three prongs will be fatal to a claim. Id.The test requires: (1) an imminent harm; (2) an identifiable victim; and (3) a public official to whom it is apparent that his or her conduct is likely to subject that victim to that harm. Id.The Court in Espositoconcluded that schoolchildren are a "foreseeable class to be protected." Esposito, at *28.

II. Criminal Statutes and Cyberbullying

The 2011 revision to Connecticut's anti-bullying statute included a new provision requiring the school principal, or the principal's designee, "to notify the appropriate local law enforcement agency when such principal, or the principal's designee, believes that any acts of bullying constitute criminal conduct."[10]

Below is a non-exhaustive list of crimes that may be implicated by school bullying.

a. Criminal Harassment

Connecticut General Statute § 53a-182b, Harassment in the first degree, and 53a-183, Harassment in the second degree, are Connecticut's criminal harassment statutes.

A person is guilty of harassment in the first degree when, "with the intent to harass, annoy, alarm or terrorize another person, he threatens to kill or physically injure that person or any other person, and communicates such threat by telephone, or by telegraph, mail, computer network, as defined in section 53a-250, or any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm and has been convicted of [a specifically enumerated felony]."

A person is guilty of harassment in the second degree when, "(1) By telephone, he addresses another in or uses indecent or obscene language; or (2) with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, he communicates with a person by telegraph or mail, by electronically transmitting a facsimile through connection with a telephone network, by computer network, as defined in section 53a-250, or by any other form of written communication, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm; or (3) with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person, he makes a telephone call, whether or not a conversation ensues, in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm."

Not all cyberbullying, however, rises to the level of statutorily defined harassment. As one author has noted, "it is more difficult to prosecute bullies under anti-harassment or anti-stalking statutes due to the mens rea requirement in criminal proceedings . . . [and] thus, criminal statutes do not offer victims of cyberbullying a viable option to seek redress against their harassers."[11]

b. Bias Crimes

A person is guilty of intimidation based on bigotry or bias when such person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of the actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression of such other person, causes serious physical injury to such other person or to a third person.[12]

Furthermore, a person is guilty of intimidation based on bigotry or bias when such person maliciously, and with specific intent to intimidate or harass another person because of the actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression of such other person, does any of the following:

Causes physical contact with such other person;

Damages, destroys or defaces any real or personal property of such other person; or

Threatens, by word or act, described in subdivision (1) or (2) of this subsection, if there is reasonable cause to believe that an act described in subdivision (1) or (2) of this subsection will occur.[13]

In an action for damages resulting from intimidation based on bigotry or bias, any person injured in person or property as a result of such an act may bring a civil action against the person who committed such act to recover damages for such injury. Where a plaintiff in such an action prevails, the court shallaward treble damages and may award equitable relief and reasonable attorneys' fees in its discretion.[14]

c. Criminal Threats

Under Connecticut law, a person is guilty of threatening when: (1) by physical threat, such person intentionally places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury; (2) such person threatens to commit any crime of violence with the intent to terrorize another person; or (3) such person threatens to commit such crime of violence in reckless disregard of the risk of causing such terror.[15]

III. Other Legal Issues Relating to Cyberbullying

a. Defamation/Slander

In Connecticut, "a defamatory statement is defined as a communication that tends to harm the reputation of another as to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him."[16]To establish a prima facie case of defamation, a plaintiff must show that: (1) the defendant published a defamatory statement; (2) the defamatory statement identified the plaintiff to a third person; (3) the defamatory statement was published to a third person; and (4) the plaintiffs reputation suffered injury as a result of the statement." Id.

Cyberbullying by means of social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook may give rise to defamation claims, if the plaintiff can meet all of the elements of defamation in Connecticut. Sometimes, however, "the tortious statements are not necessarily published or widely disseminated to cause harm, but are specifically aimed at inflicting distress on a particular target based on the content of the communication itself . . .."[17]

Therefore, defamation might not be a viable claim if the hurtful speech or writing is not disseminated to a wide enough audience. It is, however, an avenue to be explored.

b. Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

In order for a plaintiff to prevail in an intentional infliction of emotional distress cause of action, the plaintiff must show: (1) that the actor intended to inflict emotional distress, or that he knew or should have known that emotional distress was likely a result of his conduct; (2) that the conduct was extreme and outrageous; (3) that the defendant's conduct was the cause of the plaintiff's distress, and (4) that the emotional distress sustained by the plaintiff was severe."[18]In order for liability to be imposed, the conduct must exceed "all bounds usually tolerated by decent of a very serious kind."[19]

Though it can be difficult to prove that the conduct was of such a level as to be intolerable by any measure of societal standards, egregious cases of cyberbullying may gave rise to successful IIED claims. To prove an IIED claim, there is no requirement that the plaintiff suffer any physical harm. As the Connecticut Supreme Court stated in Whelan v. Whelan, "The enormity of the outrage carries conviction that there has in fact been severe mental distress which is neither figured or trivial so that bodily harm is not required."[20]It should be noted that "mere insults, indignities, threats, petty oppressions, or other trivialities" will not give rise to a successful IIED claim.[21]

Continuing Course of Conduct

An interesting facet of IIED law in Connecticut, and one that may apply to cyberbullying claims, is the invocation of the continuing course of conduct argument. While IIED has a three-year statute of limitations, the Connecticut Supreme Court has stated: "Courts that have applied the continuing course of conduct doctrine to claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress have done so on the ground that it is the repetition of the misconduct that makes it extreme and outrageous. Watts v. Chittenden, 301 Conn. 575 (2011).

In other words, a cause of action for IIED might not begin to accrue until plaintiff has endured such a repetitive course of conduct such that it has amounted to conduct that is extreme and outrageous.

In a 2003 case, the Connecticut Superior Court denied defendants' motion to strike plaintiff-student's claim for IIED, where the defendant co-conspirators locked the plaintiff in a locker, doused him with water, and threatened him with electrocution.[22]

Conversely, in Brodsky v. Trumbull, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiff's state-law IIED claim, having granted summary judgment as to all of plaintiff's federal claims in favor of defendants.[23]

c. Negligence

Many bullying cases sound in negligence. In a 2007 case, plaintiff parents alleged that defendant school district owed their son, the victim, "a duty to protect him and prevent intentional harm, provide him with a safe and productive learning environment, and supervise students at [the school] to prevent the alleged acts which harmed [plaintiff]."[24]The Court, finding that plaintiff did not make a proper showing of entitlement to the "identifiable person-imminent harm exception to governmental immunity for tort claims" (discussed infra), granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on the state-law negligence claim.

In Esposito, plaintiff student, a victim of bullying, brought an action alleging that the defendant school district, town, and the individual defendants were negligent in failing to follow its own bullying policies, thereby failing to ensure that plaintiff could attend school in a harassment-free environment.[25]Unlike in Scruggs, the court in Espositodenied the school board's motion for summary judgment, finding that governmental immunity did not apply and that the plaintiff met the identifiable person-imminent harm exception, as "schoolchildren are a foreseeable class to be protected." Id.

Finally, the doctrine of negligent supervision, codified at Conn. Gen. Law 52-572, may be available as a claim against the parents of a bully.

d. Recklessness

In a 2010 decision, a Connecticut court denied defendant school district's motion for summary judgment, finding that the student-plaintiff stated a plausible cause of action based on the defendants' "reckless and wanton" supervision of plaintiff's fellow classmates.[26]The court found that the defendant school board "offered no argument as to why a claim of common-law recklessness [was] not cognizable," given the specific facts of the case.[27]

e. Privacy Tort Laws

The emergence of cyberbullying by means of Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites may give rise claims sounding in tort privacy laws. Connecticut recognizes four distinct kinds of invasion of privacy torts.[28]Connecticut first recognized a cause of action for invasion of privacy in Goodrich v. Waterbury Republican, Inc., 188 Conn. 107 (1982), in which the Supreme Court clarified that the invasion of one's privacy developed into "four distinct kinds of invasion of four different interests," each of which "represents an interference of the right of the plaintiff to be let alone." Goodrich, at 125.

The four categories of invasion of privacy are: (1) unreasonable intrusion upon the seclusion of another; (2) appropriation of the other's name of likeness; (3) unreasonable publicity given to the other's private life; or (4) publicity which unreasonably places the other in a false light before the public. Id.; 3 Restatement (2d) of Torts.

A cyberbullying claim may implicate the third cause of action - unreasonable publicity given to the other's private life, and may also implicate the fourth cause of action - false light. To successfully allege a false light claim, a plaintiff must allege that "defendant gave publicity to a matter concerning the plaintiff." Goodrich.

"Publicity" refers to a matter made public through communication "to the public at large or to so many persons that the matter must be regarded as substantially certain to become one of public knowledge." 3 Restatement of Torts (2d) §252d comment A. The Restatement clarifies that publication do a small group of people will not give rise to a false light cause of action.

f. Free Speech

A 2011 article in Law Technology News questioned how Connecticut's anti-bullying law would fare in the face of free speech issues, noting that "[t]he new law puts school officials in the position of having to pass judgment on off-campus speech with little legal precedent to guide them . . . If they clamp down on online comments, they risk First Amendment challenges. If they're too lenient, they could be deemed responsible if cyberbullying leads to tragedy."[29]

What worries some officials and lawmakers is the prospect of the regulation of speech that doesn't take place on school grounds. Legal Director of the ACLU of Connecticut Sandra Staub stated during testimony in March of this year that "simply plugging the phrase 'cyberbullying' into the current statute on bullying policies will encourage and allow schools to regulate children's speech and conduct while they are in their own homes."[30]

Essentially, Staub's argument sounds in the notion that what children do in their own homes is under the control of their parents, who, pursuant to the United States Supreme Court, have a due process right to raise their children in the manner they see fit. Permitting schools to regulate such speech turns schools into internet police. Instead, Staub suggests that it is the school's responsibility to provide an education that instills in students the means by which to deal with conflicts in an appropriate manner.

g. Federal Claims

Victims of bullying have brought substantive due process claims against school districts and school district officials. See, Risica ex rel. Risica v. Dumas, 466 F. Supp. 2d 434 (D. Conn. 2006) (granting defendant school district's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that the School's failure to prevent continued bullying did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation because the school had no constitutional duty to prevent student-on-student harassment).

Finally, where bullying is based on sexual harassment, a plaintiff may have a cause of action under Title IX of the Education Amendments. See, Brodsky, at *19 (granting defendant school board's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that defendants acted reasonably and expeditiously in response to any alleged harassment against plaintiff student).

In order to successfully allege a student-on-student sexual harassment claim, the Supreme Court of the United States has clarified that the school administration must have "acted with deliberate indifference to known acts of harassment . . . [and the] harassment [must have been] so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim's access to an educational opportunity or benefit."[31]

IV. Conclusion

With the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, cyberbullying is as prevalent a problem as ever. Schools around the country are taking steps to eradicate bullying of all kinds, but for the time being, it is everywhere. Bullying issues can be handled by attorneys with experience in education law.

Navigating the school district system can be difficult, frustrating, and intimidating, and without the right guidance, you may find yourself reaching dead ends. If you find yourself with questions relating to bullying, cyberbullying, or education law in general, do not hesitate to contact Joseph Maya and the other experienced attorneys in our Westport, CT office at 203-221-3100 or JMaya@Mayalaw.com.

[1]Conn. Gen. Assembly Commission on Children, Anti-Bullying Bill Becomes Law, available at http://www.cga.ct.gov/coc/PDFs/bullying/2011_bullying_law.pdf(July 21, 2011).

[5] Conn. Gen. Law §10-222d(a)(1)

[10] Public Act No. 11-232.

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An Overview of Legal Issues Relating to Bullying and Cyberbullying in Connecticut

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The purpose of this article is to explore the laws, statutes, and cases relating to school bullying in Connecticut, specifically "cyberbullying," and to provide an overview of the types of legal avenues that may be available to a victim of bullying. What is Cyberbullying?

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CT.gov - Connecticut's Official State Website

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What can schools do to improve attendance

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The key functions of a School Attendance Review Team are to:

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Rates of teen depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation are at historic highs around the country, including the state of Connecticut. Moreover, Connecticut is one of the hardest places to find adolescent treatment. The shortage of providers is so extreme that two-thirds of teens in the state with major depression don't receive any Connecticut mental health services.

Not only is there a lack of outpatient and residential programs in Connecticut for teens with depression, anxiety, trauma and other mental health issues, there is also a shortage of school mental health providers. The 2022 Hopeful Futures report found that Connecticut has about half the recommended number of school counselors and school social workers. A legislative task force recently investigated the need for Connecticut mental health centers in schools, and found that 157 schools in the state lack critical on-site health services.

Connecticut Teen Mental Health Statistics 2022

Each year, Mental Health America (MHA) ranks all 50 states and Washington DC in terms of mental health, substance abuse, and access to care. According to MHA's 2022 report, 15 percent of Connecticut teens-39,000 adolescents-had at least one major depressive episode during the year. In addition, 8 percent of Connecticut teens had severe major depressive disorder.
The state of Connecticut ranked 41st out of the 50 states in terms of youth access to care, making it one of the hardest places to find teen treatment.
MHA's 2022 Connecticut statistics show that 65.6 percent of teens aren't getting care for their depression or other mental health concerns. Due to the shortage of Connecticut mental health treatment centers, fewer than 1 in 4 of teens with depression received any consistent mental healthcare at all. And 5,000 teens did not have any insurance coverage for mental or emotional problems.

Looking at teen substance abuse statistics in Connecticut, MHA found that 4 percent of Connecticut teens-10,000 adolescents-suffered from substance abuse disorder. In addition, the Hub, a behavioral health action organization for Southwestern Connecticut, found that teens in this region have an increasingly low perception of risk when it comes to substance use-particularly marijuana use and binge drinking.

Student Surveys Focus on Connecticut Teen Mental Health

The Connecticut Department of Public Health conducts a biannual Connecticut School Health Survey of public school students in Grades 9-12. According to the most recent report, 70 percent of students reported that their mental health was not good in the past 30 days. They reported experiencing stress, depression, and problems with emotions on at least one day in the month prior to the survey.

Moreover, 30 percent of students surveyed said that, during the past year, they had had at least one period of two weeks or more during which they felt sad or hopeless almost every day-sad enough to stop doing some of their usual activities. Teen girls were most likely to report feeling sad and hopeless.

In Southwestern CT, anxiety was the greatest mental health concern for teens, with 64 percent reporting symptoms of anxiety. Depression and trauma followed anxiety as the most common mental health issues among this age group.

"There's not enough mental health resources. The resources are very limited. I think the assumption is that Connecticut is wealthy, so there must be lots of resources. And that's really not the case." -Elizabeth Murdoch, director of behavioral health at Connecticut's Family and Children's Agency

Rising Suicide Rates Among Connecticut Youth

An increase in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts is another result of the lack of Connecticut mental health services, including both individual providers and CT anxiety and depression treatment centers. Data from the Connecticut School Health Survey found the following Connecticut teen mental health statistics regarding teen self-harm and suicide:

18.4 percent of youth in grades 9 through 12 responded yes to the question of whether they had done something to purposely hurt themselves without wanting to die. Hispanic youth were the most likely to answer yes to this question.

13.5 percent of Connecticut youth said that they had seriously contemplated attempting suicide in the previous 12 months. Teen girls of color had the highest rates of suicidal ideation.

8 percent of youth reported that they had tried to attempt suicide in the previous 12 months. Black youth were most likely to have made a suicide attempt.

15%

of Connecticut teens have had at least one major depressive episode

Newport Academy's Connecticut Mental Health Services for Adolescents and Families

Newport Academy is responding to the need for Connecticut mental health services by expanding our programming in this region. We offer compassionate, evidence-based care at our adolescent residential treatment centers in Connecticut. We also have outpatient programs in CT for both teens and young adults.

Newport's programs for troubled youth in Connecticut address the underlying trauma and attachment wounds that catalyze mental health and co-occurring disorders. Our team of experts provides comprehensive and individualized care to address anxiety, depression, substance abuse, self-harm, and other maladaptive behaviors. Each client in our teen treatment centers in Connecticut is given a tailored treatment plan, designed by a team of medical and behavioral healthcare experts. Teens' daily schedules include a variety of evidence-based clinical, experiential, and academic modalities.

Treatment is provided in a supportive, caring environment where teens can connect with peers and mentors, ending the isolation and loneliness that is so prevalent among today's young people. Our licensed clinicians specialize in treating trauma and related issues through proven modalities such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, EFT, and EMDR. Our approach also involves family in the healing process, and our clinicians use the groundbreaking Attachment-Based Family Therapy model to repair parent-child relationships, an essential component of sustainable recovery.

Learn More About Our Adolescent Residential Treatment Centers in Connecticut

Our beautiful Connecticut mental health centers have dedicated spaces for experiential modalities such as music and art therapy, yoga, meditation, and other mindfulness practices. In both our residential program and Partial Hospitalization Program, clients spend structured time in the classroom each day, and with tutors as necessary, so they can continue to make academic progress while receiving the treatment they need.

Whether a teen needs the healing environment provided by residential care, or the structure and support of an outpatient program, we can help you find Connecticut mental health services that will best support them. Call us today to find out how we can help your teen-we're here 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our Admissions experts work with families and referring professionals to find the right fit for teens who need comprehensive care.

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Addressing the Shortage of Connecticut Mental Health Services for Teens

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The youth mental health crisis in the state is compounded by limited access to Connecticut mental health services.

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CT hits highest level of homelessness on record. A baby was born in a shelter; people are dying

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New data from the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness revealed more than 1,000 people are living without shelter in the state - a level that they say is the highest ever recorded.

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Sadness, hopelessness and suicidal thoughts have increased among Connecticut high school students, yet the number of students who say they're able to get the support they need has decreased, a newly released survey shows.

According to the Connecticut School Health Survey, conducted in 2021 and released this month by the Department of Public Health, more than a third of Connecticut high school students reported having felt sad or hopeless, while more than a quarter report that their mental health was not good most or all of the time and about one in seven said they had seriously considered suicide.

Yet only 22.3 percent of students said they can often or always get the help they need, the lowest figure on record.

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"This is like warning lights flashing at us non-stop, and we're not doing enough about it," Sarah Eagan, the state's child advocate said Monday. "We are missing the boat."

Data from the Connecticut School Health Survey shows that feelings of sadness among hopelessness have increased steadily over time, reaching a new high during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of students who reported considering suicide has increased in recent years as well, reaching 14.1 percent in 2021, though the number of students who report having attempted suicide has decreased.

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Mental health struggles are more common among female students, the survey found, with 47.6 percent of girls reporting feelings of sadness or hopelessness (compared to 24.2 percent of boys) and 40.5 percent saying their mental health was not good most or all of the time (compared to 16.4 percent of boys).

These findings reinforce what advocates have called a children's mental health crisis in Connecticut and elsewhere, exacerbated by the pandemic. They say rising needs among kids have stretched providers, leading to crowded emergency departments and hospitals and long wait lists for outpatient services.

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Kathrn Meyer, an attorney with the Hartford-based Center for Children's Advocacy, said she has seen a rush of young people seeking mental health services since the pandemic and a shortage of services available to help them.

"The increased isolation really put kids in a position of not having that socialization practice," said Meyer, who directs a medical-legal partnership at the Yale Child Study Center. "The peer conflict ... is just so escalated from the intensity, the severity, the frequency, the language used in the cases I've seen is just very escalated."

Eagan cited several figures from the Connecticut School Health Survey in a recent letter to state officials advocating for more funding for children's mental health programs in the state budget. In recent weeks, behavioral health providers have warned that budget proposals from both Gov. Ned Lamont and the legislature's Appropriations Committee could endanger key programs, including some that were established as part of a widely celebrated package of children's mental health bills passed last spring.

The budget process remains ongoing, and it's unclear whether lawmakers will eventually find more money for the programs.

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The Connecticut School Health Survey, conducted biannually, polled 1,760 students in 25 high schools during fall 2021, asking about not only mental health but also other aspects of youth behavior. Other findings included:

24.8 percent of students reported having had sexual intercourse, down from 34.3 percent in 2019 and the lowest figure on record, while 18 percent said they were currently sexually active. Only 1.9 percent said they'd had sexual intercourse for the first time before age 13.

15.4 percent of students said they had been in a physical fight, the lowest figure on record.

38.4 percent of students said they did not always wear a seatbelt, also the lowest figure on record. Reports of drunk driving and riding with a drunk driver also decreased to new lows.

Reported alcohol use also decreased, with 10 percent of students saying they had their first drink before age 13 and 17.5 percent saying they currently drank.

Use of tobacco decreased as well, with 1.3 percent of students saying they smoked cigarettes and 10.6 percent saying they used an electronic vapor product.

However, the number of students who described themselves as obese (15.1 percent) or overweight (16.6 percent) increased from 2019 to 2021, while the number who reported regularly eating fruits and vegetables declined.

53.7 percent of students described their health as excellent or very good, the lowest figure on record.

In presenting its findings, the Department of Public Health cautioned that the pandemic may have skewed the data in several ways. Whereas the survey is typically conducted during the spring semester of a given school year, the 2021 version was conducted in the fall, when data suggests some risk behaviors tend to be lower.

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New survey finds alarming data on children's mental health in CT

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More than a third of Connecticut high school students report having felt sad or hopeless, while about one in seven say they had seriously considered suicide.

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Information on the history of Light Pollution

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Information on the history of Light Pollution

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There may be more needed to help each child. Please note that these tips aren't just about school attendance. They can be important for any child or teenager, as they promote a healthy lifestyle, which is key for proper emotion regulation.

Establish rules at home and follow them consistently!

Establish an appropriate bed time and be consistent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children ages 6-12 get at least 9 hours of sleep and that teenagers get at least 8 hours of sleep.

Establish an appropriate wake time. Children and teenagers should be waking up and getting out of bed in time for school, regardless of school attendance. Inconsistent sleep patterns and excessive sleep can cause fatigue, just as too little sleep does.

Set appropriate time on electronics. Remember: Electronics are a privilege not a right.

Amount of time each day. A standard of 2 hours a day gives a child time to engage in other healthy activities and can help them to build a well-rounded lifestyle. There is an association between anxiety, depression, poor emotion regulation and moderate and high electronics use (greater than 2 hours in a day).

Set a time they are allowed to start using electronics.

Set a time to shut down electronics. An hour before bed is ideal.

Remember: Your child will survive without electronics (if they are upset that they cannot contact their friends...encourage social activities outside the home).

Your child will model your activity. Consider how much time you spend on electronics. Set up family rules around electronics, such as no phones at the dinner table.

Encourage regular physical activity. There are so many ways to get physically active: going for walks, playing with your dog, family hikes, exercise equipment, go to the gym, shoot hoops, yard work, etc. Physical activity helps with sleep and fatigue.

Set sleep and wake times. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children 6-12 get 9-12 hours of sleep a night and teenagers ages 13-18 get 8-10 hours of sleep a night. In addition to how much sleep students get, we need to think about when they sleep. Setting a bedtime that will allow the child to get up at the best time to be ready for school is important. Loss of sleep (due to not being in bed or being distracted in bed by electronics) is associated with increases in depression, anxiety, and irritability. When a child has a difficult night sleep, it is important to stay on the same wake up schedule. While it may be a difficult day when the child is tired, it will keep them on track to fall asleep at the appropriate time at night.
Plan regular family time (e.g. dinner together) Set consequences for non-attendance:

Loss of phone privileges until they return to school.

Loss of electronics privileges until they return to school.

Keep consequences for non-attendance short. Once you return to school...privileges return as well.

Make sure you follow through. If you don't follow through, your rules lose their meaning and it's hard to blame them for not going. If you don't follow through, why should they?

Consequences for attendance:

Provide verbal praise for steps toward getting to school.

Provide opportunities to get together with friends (e.g. sleepover, movies) when they go to school.

Establish appropriate rewards for children struggling with attendance. "You've been having a hard time. If we follow the plan we worked out with the school and make it 8 out of 10 days for the first 2 periods, you can have your friend over for a sleepover."

Again, make sure you follow through. If you don't, they won't.

Establish a written plan (e.g. "If you make it 8 days out of 10, we'll _____.") versus daily in the moment negotiations (e.g. "If you go today, I'll buy you _____.")

In the moment negotiations sets up potential for daily "Let's make a deal." When you negotiate in the moment the child benefits from saying "No" each day. They only get rewarded if they start the day with "No!"

Set up consistent daily rules that are written out so everyone knows what to expect every day.

Do not excuse absences that you know are not legitimate. If they are only mildly sick, send them to school and call the nurse. If they are feeling down or sad, send them to school and call their clinician.

Communicate with your child's teacher and school counselor/social worker. Keep them informed about what is happening at home, and what help you might need from them.

The home environment must not be more inviting than the school environment during school hours. In other words, between the hours of 8:00am - 3:00pm students should not have access to their electronics, be allowed to sleep for extended periods, participate in social activities, or participate in other forms of entertainment.

If a student misses school for an unexcused reason, they should be treated as if they stayed home "sick." If they are unable to attend school, they are not eligible to participate in any activities for the remainder of that day.

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Learn more about Attendance Tips at instituteofliving.org

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Research allows us to evaluate how we are doing and to learn better ways to help students. To date we have published two studies examining the use of cognitive behavioral therapy for school refusal. In addition, we are currently examining a new measure to assess factors associated with school distress. By engaging in research related to school refusal, we hope to continually improve the programs available to our students, families, and schools.

Past and current research
Intensive (Daily) Behavior Therapy for School Refusal: A Multiple Baseline Case Series An Open Trial of Intensive Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for School Refusal
Screener for Academic Distress: Elizabeth Davis, Ph.D. (primary investigator) and Scott Hannan, Ph.D. (co-investigator) are currently developing a measure aimed to identify those students at risk for school avoidance.

Developing a Parent Module for School Refusal: Parenting Adolescents Toward Healthier Ways (PATHWays): Scott Hannan, Ph.D. (primary investigator). This project is examining a treatment for parents of students ages 12-18 that are struggling with school attendance. It aims to address issues related to electronics use, sleep, activity, and accommodations for anxiety.

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Learn more about Research at instituteofliving.org

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When schools reopened their doors after the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, eager to "return to normal," millions of students didn't show up. Teachers prepared their classrooms to welcome children back to in-person learning, but millions of desks were unfilled. With an eye toward pandemic recovery, the government allocated billions of dollars to help students regain what they lost at the height of the pandemic, but many of them weren't there to receive the aid.

Many of them were absent - and still are.

Some of the latest absenteeism data reveals the staggering impact the pandemic has had on student attendance.

Before the pandemic, during the 2015-16 school year, an estimated 7.3 million students were deemed "chronically absent," meaning they had missed at least three weeks of school in an academic year. (According to the US Department of Education, there were 50.33 million K-12 students that year.) After the pandemic, the number of absent students has almost doubled.

Chronic absenteeism increased in every state where data was made public, and in Washington, DC, between the last pre-pandemic school year, 2018-19, and the 2021-22 school year, according to data from Future Ed, an education think tank. Locations with the highest increases saw their rates more than double. In California, for example, the pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rate stood at 12.1 percent in 2018-19 and jumped to 30 percent in the 2021-22 school year. New Mexico experienced one of the largest increases, with the rate jumping from 18 percent before the pandemic to 40 percent after the pandemic.

There is so far some evidence, based on new state data from the 2022-23 school year, that attendance rates are rebounding, albeit slightly. Though chronic absenteeism rates remain notably higher than pre-pandemic levels, nearly two dozen states have reported decreases. Of the 31 states and Washington, DC, that have made data public, 21 reported moderate decreases of 5 percentage points or fewer. Michigan saw the greatest drop in chronic absenteeism, with a nearly 8 percentage-point decrease. But its 2022-23 rate, 30.8 percent, remains far above its pre-pandemic rate of 20 percent.

Experts point to deeper issues, some that have long troubled students and schools and others that are only now apparent in the aftermath of school shutdowns.

"When you see these high levels of chronic absence, it's a reflection that the positive conditions of learning that are essential for motivating kids to show up to school have been eroded," said Hedy Chang, the founder and executive director of Attendance Works, an organization that tracks attendance data and helps states address chronic absenteeism. "It's a sign that kids aren't feeling physically and emotionally healthy and safe. Belonging, connection, and support - in addition to the academic challenge and engagement and investments in student and adult well-being - are all so crucial to positive conditions for learning."

Despite increased attention to the topic, chronic absenteeism is not exactly new - until recently, it was considered a " hidden educational crisis."

"This has been an ongoing issue and it didn't just all of a sudden appear because the pandemic arose. Folks have been trying to address this issue for years," said Joshua Childs, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies absenteeism interventions in communities and states. "It's historically mainly impacted students from disadvantaged communities and underserved populations."

What's new about chronic absenteeism is that it now affects students from a variety of demographic backgrounds, from those in the suburbs and rural areas to those in cities.

"Before the pandemic [there were] high levels of chronic absence for students with high needs: special education, who have [individual education plans], English learners, or free and reduced lunch students," said Kari Sullivan Custer, an education consultant for attendance and engagement at the Connecticut State Department of Education. Though Connecticut has been lauded for its initiatives to track and address chronic absences, the pandemic still presented a significant roadblock. "The [state's] opportunity districts had higher chronic absence rates prior to the pandemic, but once the pandemic hit, we started to see chronic absence rates escalate everywhere."

The root causes of chronic absenteeism are vast. Poverty, illness, and a lack of child care and social services remain contributors to poor attendance, and some communities continue to struggle with transportation challenges; the pandemic has brought on a youth mental health crisis that has caused students to miss school; parents have reframed how they think about illness, ready to keep their children home at the slightest signs of sickness.

The evidence has long been clear that absences contribute to lower achievement and worsen long-term economic outcomes for individual students and the country. Poor attendance influences whether a child can read proficiently by the end of third grade. By sixth grade, chronic absenteeism signals that a student might drop out of high school.

"What we're seeing is a large-scale failure for a substantial number of our students to reengage," said Thomas Dee, a Stanford economist and the Barnett Family Professor of Education. "And it's a very serious problem because we're in the middle of a very important effort to try to address the educational harm that has unfairly fallen on this generation of students."

There is hope. Chronic absenteeism can be addressed with preventative measures at the school level and with targeted approaches that meet students and families where they are. The pandemic has laid bare the reality that schools need to engage students and families with lessons and facilities that make children want to be there.

"What we're seeing is a large-scale failure for a substantial number of our students to reengage"

"When we looked at the fall [2020] data and we realized that kids were not coming back to school and that they were falling behind in their learning, we knew we had to do something," said Sullivan Custer. "Families were isolated. Families in our urban areas and other places were doubled up and there were a lot of people in a house, getting sick or, unfortunately, passing away from Covid. People were scared. And we wanted to reengage families with the school and to find out what's happening with them. ... [So we] put boots on the ground to go out and reach out to these families to say, 'Hey, how are you? How can we help?'"

What exactly is chronic absenteeism, and why does it matter?

A student is considered chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason. The average school year for most schools across the country is 180 days long, which means that a chronically absent student typically misses at least 18 days of school or at least two days per month. Those absences can be for any reason.

Policymakers and researchers began using chronic absenteeism - rather than truancy, or unexcused absences - as a measure about 15 years ago. In a 2008 report, researchers found that students who miss nearly a month of school, or 10 percent of school days, are worse off academically. They also learned that absences in the early grades add up and have a negative effect on learning later on. Students who are chronically absent in kindergarten showed "lower achievement" in math, reading, and general knowledge in first grade, the researchers found.

"What we were trying to hit upon was a measure that predicted academic challenge," said Chang, who helped research and popularize the concept. "But it's also a common sense metric that people can use to notice early on when they can take action and prevent a child from becoming chronically absent for the entire school year."

Chronic absenteeism and truancy are not interchangeable. Truancy only measures unexcused absences while chronic absenteeism measures unexcused and excused absences.

It may seem obvious that missing days of school might lead to worse academic outcomes for students, but schools didn't draw causal conclusions about absenteeism until they were pushed to collect the data and analyze it. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which President Obama signed into law in 2015, states were required to publicly report on five measures of student success. By 2017, almost all states decided to collect and report on chronic absenteeism as a way to measure student success or school quality and continue to do so today.

According to Chang, used to collect attendance on paper and simply used the "average daily attendance" measure - how many students show up on a given day - or a tally of unexcused absences. These methods overlook chronic absences. With classes as large as 30 students, it might be easy for a teacher to miss attendance patterns earlier in the school year.

"People don't realize how easily absences can add up. ... When we think about a kid who misses school often, we might think about the kid who missed a week or two," said Chang. "What we're not always thinking about is the kid [who misses] one day here and another day here. And by the end of the year, you've added up to so much time lost in the classroom that you're actually academically at risk."

Paying closer attention to chronic absenteeism is not meant to be a scarlet letter for students but simply a way for educators to take note of the kind of outreach students and families might need.

Chronic absenteeism worsens existing problems and can lead to poor academic and long-term economic outcomes for students at all grade levels. Students who are chronically absent in early grades can set off a domino effect of negative consequences: Chronically absent preschoolers are more likely to have difficulty reading on grade level by the second grade.

And if they still can't read on grade level by fourth grade, they are more likely to drop out of high school, which decreases their earning potential later on in life. For older students, each week of absences per semester in ninth grade is connected to a more than 20 percentage-point decline in the probability of graduating from high school, University of Chicago researchers observed about Chicago students. By comparison, "college-ready students," those who are likely to enroll and persist in college, have average attendance rates of 98 percent, meaning they miss less than a week over the course of an entire school year.

Constant absences create chaotic classroom environments, with teachers needing to help students make up missed work or missing students disrupting the balance of classrooms that might be necessary for certain lessons. Chronic absenteeism increases educational inequality since it has risen more among disadvantaged students, particularly those with disabilities and those from lower-income households.

There are other less explored areas when it comes to the impact of absences. "We need to talk more about what this means for the trajectory of students beyond their time in K-12," said Childs. "What might their post-secondary education look like or how will this affect their ability to get and keep a job?"

What the latest chronic absenteeism numbers tell us about attendance

The latest data point to a rise in chronic absenteeism that won't rebound without concerted efforts to get students back into classrooms each day.

Dee collected data from 40 states and Washington, DC, which collectively serve more than 92 percent of all K-12 public school students in the country. He examined changes between the last school year before the start of the pandemic, 2018-19, and the last year for which comprehensive data is available, 2021-22, and found that chronic absenteeism increased in every state between 4 to 23 percentage points.

The overall chronic absenteeism rate was 14.8 percent in 2018-19 and jumped to 28.3 percent in 2021-22, as students returned to in-person learning.

Between those school years, the number of students who were chronically absent grew by 13.5 percentage points, with an additional 6.5 million students considered chronically absent, according to Dee's research.

New Mexico experienced the highest increase, a 22.5 percentage-point jump, from about 18 percent to 40 percent between those two school years. Alaska, which had the highest chronic absenteeism rate at about 48.5 percent in 2021-22, experienced a similar rate of increase. Washington, DC, had the second highest rate of chronic absenteeism at 48 percent.

Dee also found that this increase in absenteeism occurred outside of enrollment loss, Covid-19 case rates, and school masking policies. According to Dee's analysis, the growth in chronic absenteeism was on average similar across states with different masking rules and the spike in chronic absenteeism can't all be explained by Covid-19 illness and a delay in students returning to in-person learning.

When Dee analyzed data at the district level, he determined that the increases in chronic absenteeism, though similar for male and female students, were larger for low-income students as well as Black and Hispanic students.

"I looked across a number of states and chronic absenteeism was consistently larger among minoritized students, and also among economically disadvantaged students," said Dee. "That being said, it was also quite broad, even among students who were not economically disadvantaged and among white students, where we saw substantial increases."

Chang found similar patterns in the data.

"High levels of chronic absence are especially concentrated in places that are economically challenged," she said. About 69 percent of schools in which 75 percent of their students take free and reduced price lunch now have extreme levels of chronic absence whereas only about a quarter did before the pandemic, according to Chang.

"chronic absenteeism was consistently larger among minoritized students, and also among economically disadvantaged students"

When it comes to race and ethnicity, Native American, Pacific Islander, Latino, and African American kids are disproportionately affected by chronic absenteeism.

There has also been a shift for English learners, 36 percent of whom are now chronically absent, Chang said.

"In California, for example, it used to be that young English language learners, let's say kindergarteners, were actually not really more likely than English-speaking peers to be chronically absent. And in some communities they actually showed up more often," Chang said. "That is no longer the case. Something happened [in] the relationship between English learner families and schools. I think it is connected to who got heavily affected by the pandemic. They were essential workers."

In addition, there were changes by grade level. There have typically been higher levels of absences in middle and high school, and they remain heavily impacted, but the largest increase in absences is happening in elementary schools. Before the pandemic, there were about 3,550 elementary schools with extreme levels of chronic absence, meaning 30 percent or more of their kids were chronically absent. Now, close to 20,000 elementary schools have 30 percent or more of their students deemed chronically absent.

High levels of chronic absenteeism don't just affect the children who are absent. "The churn is affecting the learning experience [and] the teaching experience of everyone in the school," Chang said.

What's behind the chronic absenteeism surge

By many measures, the pandemic has been education's most substantial disruption for the way it i mpacted students of all backgrounds. When it comes to attendance, the pandemic disrupted habits, exacerbating traditional causes of chronic absence and introducing new ones.

Reasons for missing school fall into four categories, according to Attendance Works: "barriers," "aversion to school," "disengagement," and "misconceptions about the purpose of attendance."

Barriers include illness, poor transportation, neighborhood violence, housing and food insecurity, and responsibilities at home. Asthma, which is more prevalent among low-income and racial and ethnic minority students and students in urban areas, is the leading chronic illness that forces kids to miss school. Some studies have found that students who take the school bus have fewer absences while another linked long bus rides to chronic absenteeism.

Low-income parents with young children lack access to affordable child care and sometimes resort to having older children look after younger siblings at home. These students deprioritize school to meet family responsibilities.

"Students missing in urban areas might be working jobs or having health care issues like asthma and obesity. Students in suburban areas may be considered chronically absent but they're missing school for reasons like college visits and family vacations," said Childs. "What it means to be chronically absent can be different based on where students live, the type of school they're in, and the resources that they have access to."

Students who are school averse struggle with academic or behavioral challenges; they might not feel like they fit in socially and face anxiety as a result. The NIH found that young people reported greater anxiety and depression after the pandemic. An EdWeek Research Center survey conducted between August and September 2023 of more than 1,000 high schoolers found that anxiety, aside from bad weather, was a top reason they missed school. Bullying may create an unwelcoming school environment and force kids to stay home. Students with undiagnosed disabilities and unmet disability needs are also likelier to stay home.

Studies have found that when students find classroom lessons to be boring, unchallenging, or culturally unresponsive, they might stay away from school.

Ultimately, if families don't understand the impact of even a few absences, the importance of school attendance won't be prioritized at home. Some parents might think that missing two days of school each month is no big deal or that attendance only matters at higher grade levels. Others might believe that excused absences don't matter, unaware of how broader absence patterns form.

Some education leaders warn that the pandemic changed the way parents and students think about school. Attendance is now viewed as optional for some parents, while others have grown more sensitive to the slightest signs of illness in their children.

In August, the chief medical director for the Los Angeles Unified School District posted an online notice to parents stating that it is "not practical for working parents to keep children home from school for every runny nose" and that it is not "in the best interest of children to continue to miss school after pandemic school closures." The district, which has seen a large spike in absenteeism related to student medical issues, instructed parents to send kids to school if they test negative for Covid-19, where they can wear a mask if they have mild symptoms.

District leaders have recognized that because there are so many different reasons why students miss school, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving chronic absenteeism. When the Connecticut State Department of Education conducted a summer 2023 survey of families and received 5,400 responses in English and Spanish, they realized the full extent of the challenges families faced, from RSV and the flu to allergies and mental health roadblocks. "Kids had kind of gotten used to not having to go to school every day for all of these reasons," said Sullivan Custer. "And a lot of parents stay home for work now, too. We fell out of that habit and practice of get up, get ready, and go. Getting everybody to come back has been part of the challenge."

States are already putting new initiatives to the test

Experts fear that federal, state, and local investments in academic recovery won't work if students aren't there to benefit from them. Through the American Rescue Plan, the federal government has invested nearly $190 billion to support academic recovery efforts across all states. The education relief package is intended to help bolster pandemic response efforts, provide fiscal relief to state and school budgets, and support student academic and mental health recovery efforts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. States reported that they planned to use most of the money on academic interventions such as tutoring and hiring more educators and other staff.

"Educators are facing these challenges at a time when the resources available then for them to do this may be vanishing due to the so-called fiscal cliff," said Dee. "This is a critique of states and districts that have had these resources for years and have been slow to spend them or to spend them with transparency. But we're now in a position where these very serious educational challenges remain, but the resources available to meet those challenges are going to disappear."

Some states and localities are already responding to the rise in chronic absenteeism. Connecticut used $10.7 million in Covid-19 relief money to develop a home visit program that addressed more than 8,600 students in 15 opportunity zones. An analysis found that the home visits increased individual students' attendance rate by about 4 percentage points in the month right after the visit and continued to increase in the months after. Connecticut's chronic absenteeism rate shot up from 10 percent in 2018-19 to 24 percent during the 2021-22 school year. It slightly decreased to 20 percent in 2022-23.

"we're now in a position where these very serious educational challenges remain, but the resources available to meet those challenges are going to disappear"

A core purpose of the home visits was to build relationships with students and their families to understand their barriers, find solutions, and not place blame. Leaders expect the absenteeism rate to continue to decrease in the coming years.

Other states, including Maine and New Jersey, are launching similar efforts and setting up attendance teams in schools to analyze attendance data and develop solutions to meet student needs.

New Mexico state guidance requires school districts to create an attendance plan that includes tiered interventions, starting with prevention efforts for all students and shifting to intensive ones that target students facing severe challenges. One Detroit school paired chronically absent students with adult mentors in the school building, developed a home visitation system, tracked attendance patterns, and provided incentives such as trips to the movies for students and food shopping gift cards for parents. Previous reports identified transportation challenges as a leading cause of chronic absenteeism in Detroit.

Experts agree that punitive responses to chronic absenteeism only damage school relationships with students and families. Fines alienate families and suspensions only cause students to miss more days.

It's also about meeting families where they are. "As researchers we can point to the high numbers and shout about all the kids who are missing and how this is bad and problematic," said Childs. "But to a family that's got to make a decision about whether you can put food on the table or attend school, there are some clear choices around that."

Despite these efforts, chronic absenteeism still plagues school districts - a sign that battling it will take time and consistent effort. Leaders in Santa Fe hired new attendance coaches and offered students incentives, such as a pop-up science exhibit, to improve their attendance in response to their 2021-22 rate, yet just over half of students remained chronically absent in the 2022-23 year, according to Chalkbeat. After the start of the pandemic, New Mexico's absenteeism rate rose to 40 percent and remained at 39 percent the following school year. Before the pandemic, it was at 18 percent. The results prove that there is no immediate fix to chronic absenteeism. "We know we still have work to do," Crystal Ybarra, the Santa Fe school district's chief equity, diversity, and engagement officer, told Chalkbeat. "We're still trying to figure out the steps post-pandemic. Everybody wants to see a quick fix, and that's just not how initiatives work."

Schools have also tried a number of other creative ideas, from increasing teacher pay to upgrading facilities. Others have increased correspondence with families by sending postcards and text messages, which has proven effective.

To address transportation issues, some schools are adding bus stops for various neighborhoods or arranging chaperoned walking groups. Other schools have recognized how food insecurity affects their students and that free breakfast is necessary. Laundry rooms at schools is a novel strategy that has helped some chronically absent students who don't have access to washing machines at home. Some community schools have beaten chronic absenteeism by giving families access to the resources they need, all on one campus.

There are so many crises in education, researchers told Vox, and it's key to not lose sight of progress.

"[We need] celebrations, [for] who's doing well, those students who have improved attendance ... those schools that are seeing a difference," Sullivan Custer said. "Just seeing that it can be done, it's not hopeless ... We definitely have the ability to turn this around. It might take a little while, but we're just going to keep right at it, being positive and focusing on the successes."

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Why so many kids are still missing school

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What it means to be "chronically absent" - and why it matters.

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Statewide school attendance rates for the current school year through January 2024 have increased over previous school years according to recent data from the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE).

As of January 2024, the statewide attendance rate for all students was 93.1 percent, up from 92.6 percent for the 2022-2023 school year. Attendance rates for all measured student groups remain below the 2019-2020 school year, although attendance rates for that year are based only on in-person school days through mid-March 2020, when schools closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Attendance rates for school years between 2020-2021 and 2022-2023 were calculated using both in-person and remote learning days. The rate for the current school year to date is based on in-person learning.

For all student groups measured by the CSDE's data, including students with high needs, students without high needs, English learners, students with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, and students eligible for free and reduced price meals, attendance has increased each school year since 2021-2022.

Across all groups, the attendance rate for students experiencing homelessness has recovered the least from pre-pandemic attendance records. During the first part of the 2019-2020 school year, attendance for the group was 88.8 percent. For the current school year to date, it is 85 percent. The group also experienced the biggest decline in attendance numbers between 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, falling from 88.8 percent attendance to 80.4 percent.

Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing at least 10 percent of the days for which a student is enrolled, for the current school year to date has also declined. For all students, and across all student groups measured by the CSDE, chronic absenteeism peaked during the 2021-2022 school year. For all students, the rate of chronic absenteeism for the current school year to date is 19 percent, down from 20 percent during the 2022-2023 school year and 23.7 percent during the 2021-2022 school year.

Chronic absenteeism rates have declined for all students groups except for students without high needs for the school year to date. During the current school year, chronic absenteeism among students without high needs has increased from 10.2 percent in 2022-2023 to 11 percent.

Students experiencing homelessness continue to have a higher chronic absenteeism rate than all other student groups. During the 2021-2022 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate peaked at 60.2 percent. While that rate has fallen over the past two school rates, it remains at 48.4 percent for the current year.

For all student groups, chronic absenteeism remains above pre-pandemic levels but students experiencing homelessness have recovered the least.

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Student attendance is up for this school year

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Statewide school attendance rates for the current school year through January 2024 have increased over previous school years.

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More Information on how Animals are effected

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More Information on how Animals are effected

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Topic:
MUNICIPALITIES; PROPERTY TAX;
Location:
TAXES - PROPERTY;

OLR ISSUE BRIEF

An Informational Brief Prepared for Members of the Connecticut General Assembly by the Office Of Legislative Research

98- R-1164
IF EVERYONE COMPLAINS ABOUT PROPERTY TAXES, THEN WHY DOESN ' T ANYONE DO ANYTHING ABOUT THEM?
In 1978, California voters revolted against escalating property tax bills by approving a constitutional amendment limiting the extent to which municipalities could increase property taxes. Since then Connecticut and other states have wrestled with the tax, but few have radically changed it. Why is it so hard to reduce or eliminate this tax?

WHICH TAX DO PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT THE MOST? SURVEY SAYS...

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STILL, CITIES AND TOWNS RELY MAINLY ON PROPERTY TAXES TO PAY THEIR BILLS

Despite the unpopularity of the property tax, cities and towns nationwide continue to raise most of their revenue from it. Historically, land was the first measure of wealth. The property tax evolved as the local tax when state governments began levying other types of taxes to pay their bills. State legislatures eventually formalized this division of taxing powers by enacting laws allowing municipalities to assess and collect property taxes and precluding them from levying other types of taxes without explicit state legislative authorization.

A different story emerges if we measure property taxes as a share of all locally generated revenue, excluding state and federal aid. Nationally, the tax ' s share of local revenue rose from 70% in 1954 to 87% in 1964, before dropping to 75% in 1984. It continued to generate 75% of local revenue through 1994. While this trend also suggests that municipalities are turning to other local revenue sources, it shows that the property tax is still municipalities ' major revenue generator.

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WHY DO PEOPLE COMPLAIN ABOUT THE PROPERTY TAX MORE THAN OTHER TAXES?

The answer may have more to do with the way municipalities collect and assess the tax than with the amount of tax people actually pay. People and businesses pay the tax in a lump sum. For many homeowners, this means writing a big check to their town, usually twice a year. On the other hand, people pay a sales tax only when they buy something, and the tax is part of the purchase price. They pay their income taxes in small sums that usually come directly out of their pay.

Both groups feel they have to shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax when towns give special tax breaks to certain groups, such as developers constructing new office towers or manufacturers buying new machinery. On the other hand, taxpayers literally see everyone paying the same sales tax, even though legislatures exempt certain groups from paying it. Perhaps the difference has to do with proximity. Since municipal governments are closer to voters than state governments, voters are more likely to notice local tax breaks than state ones.

Low Income and elderly taxpayers also dislike the property tax because it usually takes a bigger bite of their income than it takes from their more affluent neighbors.

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IF EVERYBODY COMPLAINS ABOUT PROPERTY TAXES, THEN WHY DON ' T MUNICIPALITIES CUT THEM?

Most states have studied the property tax to death, but all have shied away from overhauling or repealing it. Connecticut alone created at least five commissions and task forces since 1972, but none have led to significant changes in the way the tax is assessed and collected. Eliminating the tax is easier said than done because:

1. Property tax revenue is stable in economic good times and bad, and it grows roughly in line with population and inflation.

2. People pay property taxes in proportion to their property ' s value. And, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the tax is not regressive when you compare the tax a family pays over time on its property with the amount of income it earns over time. In other words, the share of a family ' s income going toward property taxes fluctuates over time as its income rises and falls.

3. Property taxes, when part of a broad and diverse mix of taxes, reduce the degree to which governments depend on those other taxes and help minimize their negative aspects.

5. Voters feel the pinch of property taxes more than other taxes. For this reason, they are more likely to hold those officials who rely on this tax more accountable than those who rely on other taxes.

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WHY DON ' T WE REDUCE THE PROPERTY TAX AND INCREASE THE SALES AND INCOME TAX

This is certainly an option, but it overlooks the downside of increasing these other taxes. No tax is perfect, but for different reasons. Choosing one tax over another solves one problem but poses others. This dilemma reflects the fact that each tax taxes different things, and in the process shifts the burden from some taxpayers onto others.

The sales tax taxes businesses and people based on their ability to consume. The tax is the same for everyone since it is based on a percentage of the purchase price. This seems fair, but the tax takes a relatively bigger bite out of the revenues and incomes of small businesses and low-income people who spend a relatively bigger share of their income for necessities, such as housing, food, and clothing.

Income and corporate business taxes, on the other hand, tax people and businesses based on their ability to earn. But many state tax codes define income and profits in a way that allows high-income people and large corporations to pay less tax.

Furthermore, taxpayers will quickly notice abrupt increases in sales and income taxes. In the subsequent election, they may accuse incumbent candidates of sneaking in a tax increase and ignore claims that it was part of a "revenue neutral plan."

And replacing local revenues with state revenues poses political and economic challenges. State funds sometimes come with strings that compromise local autonomy and control. Local officials will feel short-changed if the state revenue source fails to replace current and expected local growth. If the state addresses both, it could jeopardize its own fiscal position since its revenue sources might not grow fast enough to meet both its needs and those of municipalities. Of course, states can restrict the extent to which property tax revenues can grow each year, but local officials might counter that such restrictions simply force them to raise other taxes or cut spending.

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PROPERTY TAX RESTRUCTURING IS A DEVIL ' S BARGAIN

Cutting or eliminating property taxes is simple until one considers the broader implications. The property tax is part of larger multi-tax tax system. Changing one tax affects the other taxes that make up this system. For example, since people can deduct property taxes from their federal income taxes, reducing property taxes could actually increase their federal income tax payments.

Each tax affects some taxpayers more than others do. Eliminating or reducing one tax puts more pressure on the other taxes and those groups that are burdened more than others by those taxes.

There are indirect ways to reduce property taxes, but these pose other complex questions. The legislature could reduce or eliminate costly mandates it imposes on towns, but many of these mandates often address broader social issues such as preventing environmental hazards or providing education to disabled students. Towns can save money by creating regional bodies to deliver certain services such as public works, but this could reduce the degree to which these bodies are accountable to the voters.

FURTHER READING

The following Office of Legislative Research report on this topic may be of interest. Call the Legislative Library at 240-8888 or visit our Intranet web page at http://cgalites/olr/

98-R-0047

Property Tax Initiatives, Office of Legislative Research (1998), summarizes five types of recent property reform initiatives from16 states (8 pages).

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If Everyone Complains About Property Taxes, They Why Doesn't Anyone Do Anything About Them?

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If Everyone Complains About Property Taxes, They Why Doesn't Anyone Do Anything About Them?

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In 1855 Fredrick Douglas said, "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." Over 150 years later, this quote is still poignantly relevant, as the mental challenges confronting American teens have slowly escalated into a national health crisis.

Put simply, adolescence is a transitional period of psychological and physical development in children 10 to 19. Growth during this period often influences the future trajectory of adolescent lives. With today's youth sleeping, exercising, and socializing less, the associated cognitive and adaptive challenges are leading to future mental health problems on a massive scale.

Despite the problem and its current lack of solutions, there are state-level measures that can be implemented to ensure that Connecticut's adolescents receive the care they deserve.

While I could take the time to share several unsettling statistics that elucidate the severity of the adolescent mental health crisis, I believe a better use of this platform is to outline potential solutions to this problem. That being said, a single statistic stands out to me when viewing Connecticut's standing on this problem.

According to data collected by Mental Health America (MHA) in 2022, the percentage of youth aged 12 to 17 experiencing major depressive episodes but not receiving medical attention was 65.6% in the state of Connecticut. Nearly two-thirds of young people in our state that needed help did not get any last year. With so much media attention hovering around mental health amongst youth, how could we be failing so egregiously to even provide basic assistance?

On a broader scale, getting teenagers to talk about their mental health is difficult. Our schools --where young people spend most of their active hours in a day--are not equipped with adequate resources to properly address every student's needs. Staffing shortages and budget cuts in large school districts such as my old hometown, Milford, puts added pressure on resources.

One approach for addressing the lack of intervention resources while simultaneously getting young people to be more vocal about their mental challenges comes directly from the MHA. The MHA recommends investing in student training to ensure that all young people learn the skills needed to promote mental health and support their peers. After all, teenagers are more likely to open up to their peers than to adult figures. Additionally, if every student in a school is trained to be a mental health advocate, then the magic in the power of numbers can be extraordinary.

This idea is the basis for the training that my peers and I attended through our high school recently. The skills-based training called "Teenage Mental Health First Aid" clarified attributes of mental health issues and potential cues for mental illness and substance use disorders. The five-hour class focused on three key actionable attributes that all students could learn: identify, understand, and respond.

First, we were taught how to look for and identify subtle changes in the behavior of our peers. If we saw changes that lasted over a few days, we were then instructed on methods we could use to understand the cause of the change in the behavior. A central message to trainees was to strive to be good outlets to listen to struggling peers. Finally, we were instructed on various forms of response, including speaking with the school nurse or counselor.

The larger goal of this training is to make mental health assistance as common as CPR while reducing the stigma associated and highlighting recovery and hope. If high schools in the state of Connecticut organize Mental Health First Aid training for their student population, some of the challenges with access to care and illness identification can be mitigated. Please visit the Teen Mental Health First Aid Kid for more information on the training.

If you are someone battling a mental illness, please seek professional help and know that you are not alone in your battle. In urgent cases, text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or call 800-273- 8255.

Shikhar Motupally is a rising senior at Avon Old Farms School.

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Opinion: Teach mental health first aid in CT high schools

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CT should invest in student training to ensure that all young people learn the skills needed to promote mental health and support their peers.

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Note: This story mentions sexual assault. If you or someone you know is struggling, help is available through the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence 888-999-5545.
At Kennelly School in Hartford, Lia, 11, has an unusual job. She works to de-escalate high emotions and fights that started on social media the night before.

"Next day, verbal fights turn physical in hallways, in classrooms," she said. "We're scared that people are taking our images, photographs and stuff. Everybody blames each other for it and then I try my best to comfort them in a way that could calm them down."

Children and teens are struggling with their mental health in school - and teachers and parents point to a major stressor; bullying on social media. In response, lawmakers are working to pass legislation aimed at protecting children from bullying and sexual exploitation on social media platforms.

Lia said student bullies hide behind anonymous accounts - things can get so bad that one of her friends stopped coming to school. "They posted very mean comments and she didn't want to come to school; she kept making up excuses," Lia said. "That went on two months or so."

Lia herself was bullied. Someone posted nasty comments about her appearance. And that's why we're not mentioning her last name - her parents fear more bullying.

Now, she's helping her peers regulate theiremotions as she navigates bullying on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat because a "lot of people on social media have been very negative about each other and it causes people's mood to drop," she said.

June Cahill, principal of Kennelly School, said the staff is overwhelmed by the number of conflicts starting on social media. So they recruited students like Lia to help.

This year, the school banned cell phones during the school day. But Cahill said that only helps in class.

"Seventy to 80% of those situations didn't occur during the school day," she said. "It's nothing that happened in math class. It's actually from the night before while they were on social media. We're very concerned about how preoccupied our students are with social media, and we are very worried about their mental health."

Parents in Connecticut, and beyond, share those concerns.

Deb Schmill from Massachusetts sat in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., about to meet with lawmakers. Over Zoom she pulled up photos of her daughter Becca on her phone - a beautiful teen with a warm smile.

"We were visiting the University of Richmond where she was planning on going to college," Schmill said. "Becca was just full of life. She was funny. She was sweet. She was a big hugger. She was so excited to go to college. I know I can't be objective, but I adored her. I adored her."

When Becca was 15, she and some friends met a few 18-year-old boys online.

"They were excited that 18-year-old-boys were paying attention to them," Schmill said. "So when the boys invited them to get together, they did. The boys gave them alcohol. My daughter's drink was drugged, and she was raped."

It didn't end there.

"Then some girls at school cyberbullied her," Schmill said. "It was a very serious incident and it was devastating to her. Between these two traumas, she eventually turned to drugs ... as she said it, 'to fill the emptiness she felt inside.'"

A few years ago, Becca bought drugs on social media. The batch was laced with fentanyl and she died of an overdose. She was 18.

Lia in Hartford said a friend of hers, too, was propositioned for sex online. The adult man wanted to meet with her in person, and when the 10-year-old refused he threatened to track her down.

Now, Schmill and Cahill are working with Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and attempting to change the way social media companies allow minors to engage on their platforms.

The Kids Online Safety Act is a bipartisan legislation and has the backing of Republican senators including Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee.

Blumenthal recently met in Washington, D.C., with Schmill and other parents who've lost their children.

"How many more kids have to die?" he said to them. "You know, these are all beautiful children. Any one of them could be one of my four children."

The legislation would require social media companies to protect minors' information and disable features that are believed to attract children to their platforms.

Melissa Santos, head of pediatric psychology at Connecticut Children's, pointed to the addictive algorithms of social media.

"For a lot of our kids that have depression, that have anxiety, we oftentimes will hear from them that they are on the phones a whole lot, that they're on various social media outlets; kind of can't turn it off," she said. "So we know that one of the concerns for social media is that it really can suck kids in."

In the U.S. senate currently, the proposed legislation would provide enforcement through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and states - but the FTC is already encountering resistance. Meta - the parent company of Instagram and Facebook - currently has a lawsuit against the FTC to block the regulator from imposing new restrictions concerning child privacy. The company did not respond to Connecticut Public's request for a comment.

Back in Hartford, Lia, the student leader, and a group of friends talked about their recent trip to Washington, D.C., where they met with lawmakers to talk about online bullying.

The students were invited to the capital by Blumenthal.

When asked what was the best part of her trip Lia said with a wide grin, "I was free from social media for so long." Honestly it felt good, being able to spend time with so many people I love and care about."

Now, she's back on TikTok and Instagram.

"I try to get off it, but it's very addicting," Lia said.

She said it's why lawmakers must do everything they can to help her and kids like her.

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Congress is trying to address online bullying. One Hartford school isn't waiting for Washington

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Educators, activists and children are urging lawmakers to pass legislation aimed at protecting children from bullying and sexual exploitation on social media platforms.

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Evidence of Light Pollution Effecting people

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Evidence of Light Pollution Effecting people

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By Donna Curran & Peter Spain

In 1922, Saint-Mary's-by-the-Sea was established as a city park closing at dusk. In 2003, 113 glaring blue-poled lights were crammed into a little less than a mile in the park, and they have been burning brightly and disruptively at St Mary's-by-the-Sea ever since. This year a group of more than 20 residents put forward a commonsense proposal to turn off the lights during bird-migration seasons, Aug. 15-Nov. 15 and April 1-May 31. The proposal now has evolved to set the lights on timers to go off by 11 p.m., year-round, following the "adaptive lighting" standard in the Connecticut State Building Code as of 2021. Supporters of this simple action include more than 90 percent of homeowners facing the park, more than 70 members of the Black Rock community, as well as the Ash Creek Conservation Association, Aspetuck Land Trust, Lights Out Connecticut, and Dark-Sky International CT.

Timers alone would save the city about $5,000 each year in electricity. Additionally, using timers would reduce the city's carbon footprint and mitigate widely reported adverse effects of excessive outdoor lights on human health, migratory birds, aquatic life, the environment, and public safety. This matters especially in a park that hosts close to 200 different species of birds and two species of special concern, diamondback terrapins and horseshoe crabs. As for public safety, as many nearby residents have witnessed, left on all night, the park lights attract unlawful gatherings, bringing with them noise violations, neighborhood disturbances, and calls to the police.

There is real concern from residents about the amount of glare and light trespass coming from these lights, which disturb their sleep and block views of Long Island Sound. Light pollution decreases and degrades property owners' ability to enjoy their own property. Plus Bridgeport's newest zoning regulations recognize the seriousness of this issue and stipulate that exterior lighting shall not create "glare, light trespass and excess site brightness" that is a "nuisance or a hazard."

We know from experience in 2018, when the Ganim administration turned off all the lights for three to four months to replace them at the cost of more than $650,000, there was no reported or observed deterioration of public safety due to darkness. Quite the contrary, homeowners facing the park reported more peace and quiet, and they could see the stars then.

Recently, state Rep. Steve Stafstrom (D-129) expressed support for reducing light pollution at St Mary's through the use of timers. He asked for the 113 park lights to be turned back on by no later than 5 a.m. His concern is that there are residents, including himself, who are exercising "out there very early, in order to make trains or get kids to school." This would also be a practical way to bring smart, adaptive lighting to the park.

In September, a licensed electrician from WC McBride Electrical, an approved city vendor, visited the site and provided a quote of $931.14 to install two timers for the 113 lights. The timers would reduce electricity costs enough in the first several months to more than pay for them. The same day that the electrician came out to meet with community members to examine an electric box for the lights, the mayor jogged by and showed no interest, leaving the matter to his now-retired director of public facilities.

In early November, after four months' more consideration of the park lights proposal and growing support in our community, the Parks Commission punted the matter back to the Ganim administration.

To date, no one in the Ganim administration has indicated a serious willingness to consider the option of installing timers at the two metered electric boxes that feed the 113 blue-poled lights in the park. In early December, during an appearance on "The Lisa Wexler Show" (WICC 600 AM), the mayor was asked about turning off the lights at St. Mary's park. He mentioned only that his administration has found that the police Department and the parks commission have had some issues with it. Nothing more.

While the Ganim administration continues to ignore the blinding lights, citizens persist. And the lights burn on.

Donna Curran is a former City Council member for the City of Bridgeport and currently heads the Lights Out Bridgeport Committee of the Ash Creek Conservation Association. Peter Spain is a former City Council member for the City of Bridgeport and currently serves on the Habitat Protection Committee of the Ash Creek Conservation Association.

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IN BRIDGEPORT, THERE'S TOO MUCH LIGHTING-BY-THE-SEA - Lights Out Connecticut

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Opinion piece on light pollution at Mary's-by-the-sea Park, written by Peter Spain and Donna Curran. Originally published in the Connecticut Post on December 28, 2023.