There are 63,000 students and young adults at risk of quitting school or work, according to a report from Dalio Education that came out in October.
The report defined them as disconnected. Since it came out, lawmakers and community leaders agree something really needs to be done to address this crisis.
But it's a big problem, so where do you start?
Connecticut Conference of Municipalities took some of the first steps this week. NBC Connecticut's Mike Hydeck sat down with Joe DeLong, CEO of the CT Conference of Municipalities.
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Mike Hydeck: You represent so many cities and towns across the state in the capitol to make sure their issues are heard. You put together a really big panel this week to try to address this. Who's involved and where does it go now?
Joe DeLong: Well, we have mayors and first selectman, municipal CEOs from all over the state. Both our largest cities, our smallest towns, urban, suburban, rural, Democrat, Republican. This is an issue that impacts every town and city in Connecticut. So we put together this large coalition, it's called the 119K Commission in reference to the 119,000 at risk or disconnected youth that are represented in the Dalio report. And what they're really aiming to do is to take conversations out into the communities and develop recommendations by October of this year of how to address this population in a meaningful way.
Mike Hydeck: So having the deadline is meaningful, because other than that, it's just a wish, right? So what happens in October?
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Joe DeLong: Well, in October, there should be a report, that's a series of strategies that can be undertaken to address this population. The goal is to cut that population nearly a half or more meaningfully, put 60,000 kids back on track, you know, to graduating, back on track to employment, which by the way, Mike, not just from a perspective of what's morally or ethically right to do for these kids, but that increases the state's GDP if they accomplish this by about $5.5 billion.
Mike Hydeck: Recommendations in that report, improve things like data systems to track at-risk youth, publishing annual reports, designate a person in each town that can reconnect the disconnected youth. All that stuff costs money; cities and towns, the money to do this. How does that happen?
Joe DeLong: Well, I think that's part of the work of the commission, because we have pretty big budgets in this state. We already spend a lot of money, but are we spending it wisely? So this isn't really a report to the General Assembly to say, 'Hey, give us more, give us more.' This is more of a report to find out what's working, what's not working and where are the gaps. And we think that there's a lot of gaps, a lot of system gaps. So what this group will do is they'll look at each one of the individual drivers of this population, that could be things like food insecurity, it could be homelessness, it could be, you know, we could go on and on. But they'll have individual meetings on each driver. And then they'll have collective meetings on the cross functional things that go across those drivers, while they develop the strategies.
Mike Hydeck: Maybe there are little sub committees within this whole unit to try to address, if it's just food insecurity. Education really has to be a big part of this, too. CEA President Kate Dias, in response to the Dalio report, and I know she's on that commission, but these are some of her thoughts. Of what she thought she said, "we are hopeful that bringing attention to the issue and the need to involve education, business, and community-based organizations, all working together will allow educators additional support and effective programs they need to help their students reconnect with education and the workforce so they can have successful, productive lives." How does education fold into all of this? It sounds great in a quote, but how do you, is it because teachers are pressed now with the standardized testing and trying to be there as almost as an educator and a counselor? Like, that's a big hurdle.
Joe DeLong: Well, we put too much on teachers, when it comes to this population. Some of these kids will fall off track, and then they'll come back to school after not being there for two months, get dumped in the classroom. And the teacher says, 'What am I supposed to do with this kid?' I mean they're two months behind. So a lot of this is actually listening to teachers and finding out how we can support them better. Give the work, and truancy. Truancy is another issue where a kid just stops going to school, and we stop looking for him, you know. So there's all of those things that have to come into play. I will say this, if you go to the schedule on the new website, 119kcommision.org, it has the schedule. There are actually two of these monthly meetings that are right towards education, that are really developed around education, because education is such a critical component of this work.
Mike Hydeck: Now taking education to the next step. The Dalio report also talks about creating pathways to work. And as we know, we have 90,000 open jobs in Connecticut, across all spectrums, could be healthcare, could be defense contracting, could be education. How do prospective employers play in on this?
Joe DeLong: So the very last regional meeting that we're having in August is going to be held at electric boat. We're taking it to a major employer and it's going to be a whole discussion on workforce and hopefully we'll take all of the things that we learned between now and then and tie them into a very important workforce discussion to make sure that, you know, we can bring reality to these things and get these these disconnected young people off of the streets, maybe out of trap houses. and other things and actually enter the workforce.
