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Newark Kids Count 2024 Community Conversations in Spanish- Conversaciones Comunitarias

Posted on September 16, 2024

Conversaciones Comunitarias sobre el informe Newark Kids Count, Los Niños de Newark Cuentan

Escuche de que se trata el informe, porque es importante para la comunidad y las reeacciones de tres lideres comunitarios en esta conversaciones. Sea parte del cambio para mejorar la ciudad de Newark, y que sea un lugar donde todos los niños tengan la oportunidad de crecer protegidos, saludables y educados.

Vea la grabacion de la conversacion culminante que se llevo acabo por Facebook Live. Escuchen las reacciones de nuestros invitados sobre temas preocupantes del bienestar de nuestros niños.

¿Porque se tradujo el Newark Kids Count en Español? Vea synopsis e introduccion de las conversaciones.

Nayibe Capellan, Program for Parents

Andrea Martinez-Mejia, Greater Newark Health Care Coalition

Peter Rosario, La Casa de Don Pedro.

Did you know that chronic absenteeism is still an issue of concern in New Jersey?

Posted on September 10, 2024

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By Keith Hadad
Staff Writer 

For more information on this topic, contact Keith at khadad@acnj.org.

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In New Jersey, a student is considered chronically absent if 10 percent or more of the school days are missed in the school year. This is the equivalent of 18 missed days or more based on a 180-day school year.

As we head into a new school year, it is important to understand the issue of chronic absenteeism and why it is still a major problem in New Jersey. In 2014, the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) asked ACNJ to examine the state’s chronic absenteeism problem. Upon investigation, ACNJ learned that in the 2013-14 school year, 125,000 K-12 students, or 10% of the state’s total student population, were identified as chronically absent. 

The NJDOE shared data with ACNJ which revealed there were 177 districts with at least 10% or more of chronically absent students. This was a staggering 30% of the total number of districts educating more than 470,000 students statewide. With the aid of the NJDOE, ACNJ published their findings in a report, which named the 177 districts to raise awareness to their specific chronic absenteeism issues. The report garnered a great deal of attention and additional reports, all of which together ushered the issue to the forefront at the state and local levels. 

The release of these statewide reports helped school districts and legislators to understand the severity of the issue. Eventually, a bill was drafted to define chronic absenteeism, ensure that residents were more well informed on their districts’ chronic absenteeism numbers, and require districts that are struggling with high percentages of chronic absenteeism to develop corrective action plans to counteract the issue. Governor Phil Murphy signed the bill into law in 2018.

Prior to the pandemic, the state’s chronic absenteeism rate was at 10.6%, which rose to 13.1% in the 2020-2021 school year, and eventually climbed to 18.1% by 2022. So even though New Jersey recently improved its chronic absenteeism problem and developed one of the lowest rates in the country at 16.1%, there are far too many students missing out on essential class time.

The aftermath of the pandemic left its toll on the public, and as the NJDOE suggested, the increase in absenteeism in New Jersey could be a result of more students opting to stay home due to pandemic-related trauma, sickness, or exposure to COVID-19. While the main direct causes of chronic absenteeism can vary school by school and district by district, there is no doubt that the pandemic has left students feeling more anxious and disaffected about being at school. 

Chalkbeat.org states that the root causes for absenteeism include barriers to attendance, aversion to school, and disengagement from school, while more specific causes could include family responsibilities, anxiety, lack of academic support, and the false assumption that attendance only matters in older grades. To address these varied causes, it’s important to investigate the background of those causes and find out why a student may feel inclined to disengage or be dissuaded from going to class.

Aversion to school could partially be due to an increased number of incidents of bullying, violence, and suspension, which rose from 36,791 to 44,262 in New Jersey between the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school year. Additionally, there are high levels of unaddressed anxiety and depression in both students and faculty as a result of the pandemic, which could lead to burnout and a lack of motivation. To address chronic absenteeism, we must first work to improve the environment of our communities and schools, in addition to the mental well-being of the youth, their families, and their teachers. This is where programs such as New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services (NJ4S) come in.

NJ4S is a preventive approach to mental wellness for youth. Initially proposed by the New Jersey Department of Children and Families, this initiative provides wellness services and referrals for youth by distributing mental health professionals and other staff across communities. With staff connecting and working directly with schools and other members of the community, the social, emotional, and mental health of students and their parents/caregivers could be focused on with a holistic approach. This way, the factors that lead to bullying, youth violence, and insufficient academic support could be mitigated on the ground level before they happen, making schools a more inviting and safe place for students.

Headed by the organization’s staff attorney, Nina Peckman, ACNJ's KidLaw Resource Center, works to assist parents of students with attendance issues to address the reasons behind excessive absences and to help them and school staff develop education plans to ensure that the children attend school. Through her work, Peckman found many of the causes of chronic absenteeism stated earlier, as well as several common misunderstandings between parents and schools. For example, many parents don’t realize an absence with a doctor's note still counts as an absence. Peckman worked with several parents who weren't aware of the serious ramifications of missing instructional time and how difficult it could be to make up for that lost time. Lastly, she saw many cases where parents weren’t aware that they have a right to home instruction from their school district for chronic health issues, and that there are procedures in place to receive it. This way a student could keep up and avoid an absence. This lack of understanding shows how parents and schools need to improve communication and eestablish better relationships.

The intervention and integration of groups like NJ4S, or even a community school model, would create engagement between families and schools. The positive engagement can lead to a decrease in, or prevention of, many misunderstandings so students can get the most out of their education. This integration, where members of the community, parents, and schools intersect, could also work towards providing resources and support to help students academically and to overcome other barriers to arriving at school, like transportation challenges. 

There are NJ4S hubs across the state, and each one hosts info sessions and other events throughout the year that are open to the public. These events are done both in person and virtually, and range from workshops and events for study skills to conflict resolution and coping skills, targeting specific age demographics.

For more information on NJ4S and how to access their services, visit https://nj4s.nj.gov/s/. To find the NJ4S hub nearest you, download the list here.

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TESTIMONY: ACNJ recommends NJ State Board of Education creates a Taskforce to Evaluate Public Preschool and Expansion

Posted on September 7, 2024

Read testimony from Cindy Shields
shadaya-head-shot

ACNJ recommends a taskforce to evaluate New Jersey's public preschool system and expansion.

TO:       Members of the New Jersey State Board of Education

FROM: Shadaya Bennett, Senior Legislative Analyst, Advocates for Children of New Jersey

DATE:  September 4, 2024

RE:      New Jersey’s Public Preschool System 

Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on New Jersey’s public education system as it relates to the well-being and success of our youngest residents. ACNJ is committed to ensuring that all children have access to high-quality education in safe and enriching environments as their fundamental right. We aim to ensure that systems serving children uphold standards that support healthy development and provide pathways to academic, economic, and social success.

New Jersey prides itself in being ranked among the top states for public education, a distinction closely tied to our substantial investment in the education system. Such investments demonstrate a collective commitment to providing quality education to students statewide. However, it is not just about the amount we invest but also how resources are utilized. To truly uphold our educational standards, we must ensure that investments are strategic to prevent inequities and avoid adversely impacting our educational ecosystem, including early childhood education.

As the state invests in expanding access to free public preschool, ACNJ emphasizes the need for a robust system that supports the entire continuum of care and education for all children. Quality early childhood education is essential for brain development and preparation for K-12 education. While we fully support universal pre-K, we also recognize that the current expansion process has created unintended consequences that affect our already fragile child care system. Therefore, New Jersey must strategically expand public preschool while ensuring the sustainability of the child care infrastructure. This approach will prevent reduced availability of infant and toddler care, which could lead to child care center closures and restricted access for working families. Such consequences would not only impact private provider programs, staff, and the families they serve but also other vital systems that serve our society, such as the K-12 system.

We must recognize the interconnection between the child care system and the K-12 education system, both of which play vital roles in developing and educating our children. Child care not only lays the foundation for early learning but also serves as a critical support system for the K-12 workforce, where women make up roughly eighty percent of public-school teachers. Educators, administrators, and school staff rely on accessible child care for their own children which enables them to fulfill their professional responsibilities. This exemplifies the need for collaboration between these systems, particularly where their roles intersect—such as in early childhood education. For New Jersey, this means our public preschool system and what that looks like for our broader educational continuum. The success and sustainability of these systems depend on their mutual support, making it imperative that they function as complementary pillars within a comprehensive educational strategy.

To address structural issues within our public preschool system, we recommend that New Jersey adopt a strong, well-conceived mixed-delivery system. This means the provision of public preschool across multiple educational settings and includes fostering collaboration between school districts and private child care providers, utilizing the framework and benefits of the existing infrastructure, and would support equitable access for all children and families. As an initial step towards establishing such a system, which is also endorsed in the State Fiscal Year 2025 Budget, we propose creating a task force to evaluate the landscape of the public preschool system and the expansion process. This task force should assess the benefits of partnership between school districts and private providers and would serve as a practical step towards improving the current system.

The task force could examine several key areas including:

  • Barriers to collaboration between districts and private providers, such as facility standards which limit opportunities for private providers because of differing space requirements for serving three and four-year olds in public preschool versus serving the same population in private child care settings.
  • The system by which school districts and private providers contract to deliver public preschool. Private providers are often left at a financial disadvantage because they are bound to contracts that are limited to one-year. This hinders their ability to secure financial support for essential long-term investments and does not provide any assurance of continued collaboration beyond the current school year. Multiyear contracts would promote stability, equity, and sustained quality in early childhood education.
  • The funding mechanisms used by districts to allocate funds to private providers partnering for public preschool. Statewide, participating providers experience funding cuts if they fail to meet enrollment targets for public preschool slots. In contrast, districts receive state funding for a set number of contracted slots, regardless of whether those slots are filled. This type of funding instability can negatively impact private providers, many of which are small businesses, potentially threatening their program sustainability and quality

If New Jersey is truly committed to a sustainable public preschool system for three- and four-year-olds, we must ensure that commitment is matched by strategic planning and thoughtful consideration of all factors. This includes safeguarding every system that serve young children, ensuring they are not compromised as we expand public preschool. The state's investment must be guided by a holistic approach that supports the entire early childhood education ecosystem.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Should you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to reach me at sbennett@acnj.org.

Testimony to NJ State Board of Education on New Jersey’s Public Preschool System

Posted on September 7, 2024

Read testimony from Shadaya Bennet
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Cindy testifies on New Jersey's preschool mixed delivery system.

TO:        Members of the New Jersey State Board of Education

FROM:  Cindy Shields, Senior Policy Analyst for Early Care & Education

             Advocates for Children of New Jersey

DATE:  September 4, 2024

RE:       New Jersey’s Public Preschool System

Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on New Jersey’s public education system as it relates to the well-being and success of our youngest residents. ACNJ is committed to ensuring that all children have access to high-quality education in safe and enriching environments as their fundamental right. We aim to ensure that systems serving children uphold standards that support healthy development and provide pathways to academic, economic, and social success.

New Jersey has been a national model of Preschool education for decades, and has since strengthened and built the program to include over 200 school districts in the state. Some of the most robust programs include a mixed delivery model that includes private providers as well as public schools as the educational home for 3- and 4-year-olds. Mixed delivery is a national best practice and has numerous advantages, parental choice and family circumstances as a deciding factor in a child’s education being the most important.

A true mixed delivery system has numerous benefits, some of which are:

  • Private child care providers have extensive experience providing early care and education services in their respective communities. Communities that they are often deeply rooted in and well respected by;
  • Private child care centers can effectively address the needs of working parents who may need full-day, full-year services for their children. Providing preschool in child care centers can be more convenient for parents and less disruptive for children, because they do not have to be moved from one location to another each day and during the summer. If a parent also has an infant or toddler, private centers may also provide care in the same facility, thereby strengthening the family unit and offering even more supports to the family as a whole;
  • Utilizing space in existing child care centers can facilitate the rapid expansion of classrooms and will also reduce tax-payer investment by eliminating the need to expend funds for renovation of current classrooms or the construction of additional rooms in public school buildings;
  • Successful involvement of child care centers in preschool initiatives aligns preschool programs within a birth-through-third-grade continuum of services and creates sustainable programs by coordinating existing early learning funds. It also promotes collaboration among schools, child care providers, other early care and education programs and parents, enabling them all to take advantage of the expertise each partner brings and to make effective use of early childhood resources. Such collaboration can lead to joint efforts not only on preschool expansion but also on the full array of supports and services that children and their families require;
  • Avoids the serious, negative financial impact on child care of centers of losing three & four year olds, which threatens the availability and quality of local early care and education for children from birth through age 3. We have already seen the system (as it stands) create “Infant Toddler Care deserts”, areas in which there is not sufficient licensed child care to meet the needs of the community. This leads to children being in unregulated, possibly hazardous and inconsistent, care, as well as, inhibiting the parents’ ability to fully and reliably participate in the workforce. Early care and education programs are the backbone of our economy, the workforce behind the workforce, supporting many industries, including the PK-12 system in NJ. Without it, the economy suffers, along with the child and their family.

I often speak with providers in Abbott and Expansion districts across the state, in my role at ACNJ as well as sitting President of the New Jersey Association for the Education of Young Children (NJAEYC).  As Preschool Expansion in New Jersey has grown, expanded, and evolved, we have seen several barriers to the successful implementation of mixed delivery appear. In Abbott Districts, enrollment in private providers and Head Start programs decreased by 25% from fall 2009 to fall 2022, dropping from 25,121 to 18,704 students. In the fall 2010, 51% of Abbott preschoolers were enrolled in private providers or Head Start programs; by 2022, this had declined to only 38%. In Preschool Expansion Districts, in fall 2022, of the nearly 20,000 preschool students in districts funded through Preschool Expansion, only 3,300 (or 17%) were enrolled in private providers or Head Start programs. Some barriers that are leading to this include:

  • Square footage requirements exceed what our child care infrastructure was built on. Department of Children and Families, Office of Licensing regulations mandate a minimum of 35 square feet per child, or a minimum classroom size of 525 square feet for 15 children.  950 square feet is a stretch, even the minimum, with a waiver, of 700 square feet puts many classrooms out of reach of districts as possible classroom space. As a side note, NJ is only one of two states that does not use their licensing requirement for square footage as a basis for classroom size for state-funded preschool;
  • Educational requirements often exceed those of teaching staff in private child care centers. We recognize the importance of teacher preparation and certification and suggest a pathway and time frame to achieve the proper degree and certification required for preschool teachers in NJ. This was applied successfully in the early days of Abbott implementation, as well as in other states. Knowing that we are in a crisis-level teacher shortage, we need to implement multiple strategies to close the gap and preserve the integrity of our educational system;
  • Even with the “due diligence” language in PEA funding application requirements, there seems to be an unwillingness on the part of some school districts to collaborate with private providers. While there are many success stories (Sayreville, Passaic, Paterson and many more), we hear from Providers weekly that have tried repeatedly to connect with representatives from their local school district only to be ignored, or worse, told that it is only a matter of time before they go out of business because the district will be educating all of the 3- and 4-year olds in the district. I’m sure that this is not in the spirit of collaboration that this Board intended.

The rapid and necessary expansion of preschool programming for younger learners has laid bare some unintended, unfortunate consequences that can no longer continue unchecked, or it will further fracture the system. We must remind ourselves that preschool can be a child and family’s first interaction with the public school system. We must work to create collaborative partnerships between school districts and private providers to educate our children and serve the families they come from. If the relationship starts off positively, it will end with a proud graduate and successful citizen.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Should you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to reach me at cshields@acnj.org.