By CHRIS POWELL
Teachers in Connecticut, especially those in the poverty factories that are the state’s cities, long have lamented that many of their youngest students arrive in school grossly unprepared even for kindergarten, unable to identify things as simple as letters and colors because of a lack of parenting.
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But child neglect is getting worse, as was indicated last week when Connecticut Inside Investigator took note of a state labor board decision involving Hartford’s schools.
Hartford’s school system used to require that children in its pre-kindergarten program be toilet-trained. In case of an “accident,” teachers were told to “coach” the kids about how to use the bathroom.
But two years ago the school superintendent removed the toilet-trained requirement and made teachers responsible for cleaning up after accidents and changing diapers. Predictably enough, more children who were not toilet-trained entered the pre-K program and many more teachers got stuck cleaning up accidents and changing diapers. The teachers union complained and the labor board has ruled that the new policy is void because it should have been negotiated with the union.
Even so, Connecticut Inside Investigator says, the school system’s internet site still asserts that children who are not toilet-trained are welcome in the pre-K program and school staff will help children “to acquire this skill at school.”
The labor board decision suggests that no union contract would be violated if cleanup and diaper duty was assigned to classroom “para-educators,” the euphemism for teacher aides who help keep incorrigibles under control. So much for “solidarity forever.”
Another indication that child neglect is worsening in Connecticut came the other day in Governor Lamont’s welcoming address to the new session of the General Assembly. The governor proposed appropriating enough money to provide free breakfast to students in all the state’s public schools. Some schools already provide it as well as free lunches, and there are even occasional free dinners for students as well. Some schools also maintain food pantries from which students can take food home.
Meanwhile some state legislators want a new law to facilitate early parole for young people who were imprisoned for serious crimes committed before they were 26.
These things scream social disintegration and yet there is no official curiosity about its causes, much less any official inquiry, only proposal after proposal in the legislature for more remediation via welfare benefits. Connecticut seems to think that children don’t need two competent parents, just a social worker and a probation officer. Maybe the next remediation will require teachers and “para-professionals” not just to toilet-train and diaper their neglected students but also to take the kids home with them at night.
If Connecticut ever wants to undertake such a parenting program, other recent investigative journalism suggests that state government might fund it amply by eliminating obvious inefficiencies elsewhere in its workforce.
Connecticut Inside Investigator’s Marc E. Fitch reports that while 13,000 state employees have been approved to work at home by internet and telephone, they are still getting “snow days” off with pay. The only thing preventing them from working at home in bad weather is the master state employee union contract and the arbiters who almost always construe it against the public interest.
Governor Lamont is said to want state employees to come back to their offices more often and to be planning to negotiate this with the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition. He could also try to negotiate the “snow days” issue. But the governor is a Democrat and is seeking re-election this year, and the state employee unions are his party’s campaign army. So he may not negotiate too hard.
And as the Yankee Institute’s Meghan Portfolio noted the other day, while most state governments have consolidated Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday into a single paid holiday for their employees — Presidents Day — Connecticut maintains those two separate paid holidays in February for its state employees.
So it seems to be time to change the state’s motto, “Qui transtulit sustinet,” to “Pecunia tantum est.” That is, “It’s only money.”
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 