Christopher Peak Photo
The Partnership for Connecticut’s board meets on Monday morning.
If you’re a school superintendent, non-profit director, micro-finance lender, business executive, city mayor or academic researcher, a new public-private partnership wants to hear from you about how $300 million could decrease the number of high-school dropouts.
Public-school teachers and students? State social workers? Prison inmates? As an afterthought, the billionaire-backed state education initiative said you too can send in your ideas.
The Partnership for Connecticut, an initiative aimed at supporting teenagers who are struggling to complete their studies and enter the workforce, asked for that input at a Monday morning meeting in a conference room at Yale’s School of Management.
The initiative says it wants to reach 39,000 “disengaged and disconnected” youth. Those kids, who range from 14 to 24 years old, have failed a class, gotten suspended, stopped showing up for school or can’t find work.
The public-private partnership plans to invest $300 million over the next five years to support them. That will be paid for by $100 million in state funds, $100 million from Bridgewater hedge-funder Ray Dalio’s foundation and $100 million from other donors.
Andrew Ferguson.
The board members said that, if they get it right, the results could be transformative.
“If half of the 39,000 Connecticut youth were to re-engage or stay engaged in their high school education, the state’s graduation rate would be the highest in the nation. There would be 8,000 more jobs created that would significantly reduce the unemployment rate for young people. And with that success, it would likely reduce incarceration for young people,” said Andrew Ferguson, the partnership’s senior advisor.
“If the partnership could (1) start to sharpen its focus, (2) start to find particular areas that it’s focusing on, and (3) those areas become successful, there’s huge positive effect that could result from your leadership,” he added.
The board members are trying to figure out the answers to Ferguson’s three questions now. They unanimously voted to release an “RFI,” a “request for information.” That should help the partnership’s incoming CEO figure out what they wants to see before issuing an “RFP,” a “request for proposals.”
Lawmakers listen to Sheena Graham.
During the meeting, they talked about a few of their own ideas.
Wraparound services for students who don’t know when they’ll eat next or where they’ll sleep, said Sheena Graham, a Bridgeport teacher.
Mentorship for students who need someone else to count on them to do well, said Erik Clemons, the director of Connecticut Center for Arts & Technology.
Supports for students who’ve entered the juvenile-justice system, said Martin Looney, the state senate president.
The RFI is meant to show whether those ideas were on the right track. The partnership said that it’s looking for feedback on which communities have “early momentum” on this issue, what needs are still unmet, and what “promising programs” are already out there.
An initial draft was aimed at five main groups: education or workforce development program providers, economic opportunity program providers, employers, community leaders, and researchers.
Yvette Meléndez, at left.
At the meeting, board members added more to the list.
Teachers, said Gov. Ned Lamont.
Students, said Jan Hochadel, the president of the state’s teachers union.
Prisoners, said Joe Aresimowicz, the state House of Representatives’ majority leader.
Youth in foster care, said Yvette Meléndez, a consultant.
Several members suggested that the board might need to hold town halls in school districts across the state to get the input they’re looking for.
Erik Clemons.
After the public had been shut out of their first meeting, did the board members think that they were going to get that engagement? Exempt from the state’s transparency and ethics laws, the Partnership for Connecticut has been hounded by critics for completing its work in private.
Barbara Dalio said the partnership is doing as much as possible to be transparent, without having a CEO yet to really keep the public informed.
“We always wanted to be transparent and have everything online,” Dalio said. “We have to start building. We need to get a CEO, hire the people. It’s so much work now. We don’t have anyone. We’ll be able to make things available in a better way, maybe, but right now we’re just trying our best to survive and put a little structure in place to start off.”
On Monday, the board took the first steps toward changing the perception that it’s going to be operating in private.
Unlike at its first organizational meeting, which was mostly held in secret (behind a closed door whose window had been papered over), the board members discussed everything in public for two hours.
They passed a new conflict-of-interest policy, heard LPA Search Partners had forwarded eight finalists for CEO, and hired Shipman & Goodwin as their outside counsel, BlumShapiro as their accountant, Insperity as their human resources manager and Web Solutions as their developer. They also budgeted spending about $325,000 to get up and running by next July.
Was this the new way of doing business? All out in the open?
Clemons, the board’s chair, said he’d like it to be.
But Ferguson said that the board still hasn’t decided how it would approach the fundraising and grant-making processes. He said prospective donors, which could include corporations, might be anonymous. And he said that the full list of applicants for funding might not be released.