Kindergarten Summit Looks at Inequities
By Chris Seymour | Correspondent at April 9, 2024 | 6:30 pm | Print
Open to the entire community, a “Kindergarten Summit”, meant to be both informative and a call to action to address statewide inequities will take place next month at New Britain High School.
The summit which is being planned by the Board of Education and the school district’s Department of Academics is scheduled for Thursday May 21, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at New Britain High School’s lecture hall.
According to New Britain Board of Education President Sharon Beloin Saavedra, the summit will examine “statewide inequities, highlight what New Britain is doing to mitigate those inequities and look to the immediate future to enhance our kindergarten experience throughout the district.”
The inequities Beloin Saavedra referred to were highlighted in a recent study from CT Voices for Children. Unequal Schools: Connecticut’s Racial, Socioeconomic, and Geographical Disparities in Class Size and Teaching Experiences “highlights the issue of residential segregation and the concentration of students of color and low income students in a small number of school districts,” according to Beloin Saavedra.
For the study, CT Voices for Children examined two factors of the kindergarten experience statewide: class size and teacher experience in poor/minority communities versus wealthier communities, Beloin Saavedra noted.
According to that report, “As the percentage of white students in a school decreases, teachers tended to become less experienced on average and kindergarten class sizes tended to grow larger.”
In New Britain, minority student enrollment at the elementary level is 79.5 percent, pointed out the BOE President.
According to the Connecticut Voices for Children’s Analysis of SDE and U.S. Census ACS Data, schools that are 10-25 percent white—which were dubbed “moderately segregated”—had teachers with an average experience of 12 years, compared to schools considered “hyper segregated” (over 90 percent white), where teachers had an average experience of 14.1 years.
The study also found that “Towns with very little taxable property tend to have schools with the largest kindergarten classes even though these towns charge some of the highest property taxes in the state.”
New Britain currently has 926 children in kindergarten, with 82 percent of those kids receiving free/reduced lunch. “Our current kindergarten class sizes varies throughout the district from a low of 19-21 at Vance, DiLoreto, Northend and Jefferson to 24-25 at Lincoln and a high of 26-29 at Smalley,” explained Beloin Saavedra.
“When the school district was flat funded several years ago, the administration and the Board of Education had to eliminate para educators from the kindergarten class rooms to financially sustain the full day program for all students,” added the BOE president. “Since then, it has been one teacher in our kindergarten classrooms without the additional support from paras.”
A variety of other topics will also be addressed at next month’s summit, according to Beloin Saavedra.
“Other factors that we will explore during this summit are the impact of health and attendance issues as well as curriculum requirements and the need for intentional play and community experiences as a natural environment to use and practice language and interpersonal skills,” she stated.
