Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
One Day More…
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 10/06/2008 - 15:10This afternoon, I received an email highlighting an amazing video. As I watched the video, I received a phone call from my eldest daughter Mairead. Mairead is a student at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA. Last February, she turned 18, and next month, she will get her first opportunity to vote, and it will be in an incredibly important election.
Today is the last day to register to vote in many different states, and I texted messaged her to ask if she had registered yet. So, on her way down to town hall, she called me, letting me know she was on her way down, and then she called me back after she was registered.
I had hoped she would be able to get some friends to go with her and they could all take pictures of each other as the registered to vote, but this didn’t happen. So, sorry, no pictures.
Please, if you haven’t registered to vote, do so today.
Also, today, I received an email from Jen Just, the CT Field Organizer for the Obama campaign. Tuesday evening, the Obama / DeLauro Headquarters will have their grand opening at 900 Chapel Street in New Haven from 5:00 to 6:30 PM. Congresswoman DeLauro will be the featured speaker and refreshments will be served. This will be followed by phone banking and then a Debate Watching Party starting at 8:45. If you are anywhere near New Haven, you should try to attend.
The Citizen Elections Program
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/29/2008 - 09:45Over the past few days, I’ve been receiving more and more emails from State Legislative candidates trying to reach the Citizen Elections Program (CEP) goals. To quality for funding State Representative candidates need to raise $5,000, with at least 150 of the donations, ranging from ten to a hundred dollars coming from people living in towns in their district. The hurdle for State Senate candidates is similar, except it is $15,000 from at least 300 people. Some of the panicked emails talked about the deadline being early October.
Since Kim is a registered Lobbyist here in Connecticut as a result of her current role as Senior Organizer for Common Cause in the State, the regulations about spouse’s of lobbyists apply to me. This means two things. First, I cannot contribute. So, to any of you that have contacted me, sorry.
In addition, I cannot help in fundraising activities of these candidates. Otherwise, I would post something here talking about candidates that I would like people to support.
However, I also have another role. I am a citizen journalist. I can, and feel compelled, to write about what is going on with the State Legislative races in Connecticut. In this role, I downloaded data from State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) about the status of the CEP program.
As of this morning, their site listed 299 candidates. 263 of these candidates, or 88% of the total candidates are participating in the CEP. Massaging the data, it appears as if 241 of all the candidates are in competitive races and 58 are not. For those candidates in competitive races, 219, or 91% are participating. 44 of the remaining 58 candidates, or 76% the candidates in non-competitive races are also participating.
Of the 263 candidates, 136, or 52% have already qualified. When you break this down by House and Senate, we have 204 candidates running for the House and 114, or 56% have qualified. On the Senate side, there are 59 candidates, but only 22, or 37% have qualified.
It appears as if the $15,000 hurdle is proving to be larger than people had anticipated. My hypothesis, based on anecdotal evidence is that the hurdle is also tied to how wealthy the district is. The candidates that I’m have already easily met the goal come from fairly wealthy districts and the candidates that I’m hearing are having problems are coming from fairly poor districts with some obvious exceptions.
This isn’t surprising. The difference between the median income in the riches communities in Connecticut and the poorest communities is close to ten to one. When I have more time, I hope to cross reference the data with census data for median income by zip code.
However, before I do that, I hope to clean up the data that I have a little bit. It appears as if the data from the SEEC is incomplete as I’m finding examples of races where no competition is listed that I’m fairly sure are contested districts.
Nonetheless, the data should be looked at more closely to better understand what is working and what isn’t working with the Citizen’s Election Program.
Participation
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/18/2008 - 13:2090% of success is just showing up.
It has been hard to stay on top of my blog here. There is so much going on. On Monday, I attended the Woodbridge Board of Education meeting which inspired my blog post, No Parent Left Behind.
Tuesday, I attended the Election Day Registration forum at Yale. Kim helped organize it and provided her thoughts about it on the Common Cause Blog.
Wednesday, I went to the Beecher Road School Parent Teacher Organization meeting at Fiona’s school. There was a lively brainstorming session about how to make the school ‘greener’.
With that, when I get a free moment, I try to read and reply to emails, blog posts and various messages on assorted microblogging sites. All of this comes back to the same thing, participation.
We need parents to participate more in their children’s educational experience. We need more voters to participate in our electoral system. We need more people to work together to find ways to address issues our communities and our countries face.
No Parent Left Behind
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 09/16/2008 - 15:08Last night, I attended the Woodbridge Board of Education meeting where many interesting issues were discussed. A key issue was how Woodbridge students did on the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT). The teachers and administration were particularly concerned to make sure that the board and any members of the public present, understood how Woodbridge could be one of the highest performing schools in the district reference group (DRG), and still not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) with regards to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). There was a long discussion about this, which reinforced my belief that NCLB is fundamentally flawed. No only on its focus on standardized testing and being an unfunded mandate, but in the way the test results are understood, and many other ways.
People spoke at the meeting about townspeople being highly concerned with the CMT scores. I must admit, any concerns that I have about CMT scores are about what may be lost in the educational process by too much focus on the CMT scores.
After the meeting, I asked a few school board members if anyone had done any research on how concerned townspeople really are about CMT scores. One person mentioned that there is a small group of people very vocal about these scores. Another mentioned that the PTO had done a survey where CMT scores did not end up being a major concerned. She went on to note that this was a skewed sample, since it was only getting data from parents there were involved in the school through the PTO.
It struck me at this point that there might be a logical explanation of this. Parents of students who perform well on the CMTs are perhaps less concerned about the CMT scores. Since, it is well known that students perform better whose parents are more involved in the school, it would all fit together. The parents who took the survey were involved in the school. As a result, their children performed better, and the parents were less concerned about CMT scores.
So, what is the best way to improve CMT scores? Perhaps it isn’t in altering the curriculum, or spending more time on test preparation. Perhaps the answer is in getting more parents involved in the school and their children’s education.
I was pleased to see that the school board seemed to have this as a focus in other issues as well. The first issue, which had a long presentation and discussion was about creating a quarter mile loop around the sports fields that would be used for exercise, not only by students, but also by parents and members of the community. Apparently, this is a topic that has been kicking around for some time, but they have made significant progress, thanks to a grant from the State, obtained by Sen. Joe Crisco, to do a study of putting in such a loop. The Woodbridge Recreation Department has been working with the school the Beecher Road School PTO to help bring this about.
Wellness is a concern expressed for the children at Beecher Road School, and by encouraging parents to become involved in recreation events at the school, the school is helping the students perform better in these areas as a result of this involvement. There was discussion about naming the quarter mile loop after Kevin Kucinskas, the well beloved fifth-grade teacher who died over the summer.
The other big issue was the school budget. Beecher Road School burns about 66,000 gallons of fuel oil a year. With the sharp increase in oil prices, this is expected to require an additional $50,000 for the school year to keep the building heated. It is hoped that savings in other areas will be able to offset this. There was a discussion about whether or not the 66,000 gallons was a recent figure, perhaps skewed by year-to-year temperature variations, or if it was averaged out over a longer period.
The schools business manager explained that it was based on longer term averages and the discussion went to methods of reducing the amount of fuel used. It was suggested that getting the students and the parents involved in efforts to reduce fuel consumption might be beneficial. Yet again, I come back to the idea of parental involvement. The more involved the parents are in efforts to conserve fuel, the better off the school will be, and hopefully, this will spill over into people’s homes. Families could save money and be more energy efficient by learning how to conserve through programs with the school.
It was a long, and interesting meeting, and it brought home the importance of parental involvement in all aspects of the school. Let’s hope that Beecher Road, and other schools, start spending a little more time on No Parent Left Behind as a better way of dealing with the testing issues for No Child Left Behind.
Why I Support a Constitutional Convention in Connecticut
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/13/2008 - 12:05This November, voters in Connecticut will be asked, "Shall the state Constitution Convention be convened to revise or amend the state Constitution?" Many of my friends oppose such a convention, noting that the mechanisms are not well defined and that it opens up all kinds of potential issues for abuse. I take a contrary view, with a few important caveats.
We have a representational democracy. Many of us are too busy to be involved in drafting and lobbying for legislation that matters to us, so we have elected representatives to handle this task for us. This works well, if the representatives are doing their jobs effectively. Yet as Internet communications makes it easier for people to be better informed and more involved, I believe we should move towards more direct participation in our legislative processes.
In addition, another key aspect of our constitution, both in the Constitution State, and across our country, is the notion of checks and balances. If our elected officials are not doing their job, we should have recourse through checks and balances.
Granted, the electoral process is a key check and balance, but there are some that think our current electoral process is so flawed that we need something stronger, like a constitutional convention.
This takes me to the caveats that I have. If you feel that your representative is not doing the job that they should be doing, and the electoral process is so flawed that there is no other way of addressing this, then you should vote for the constitutional convention.
However, if you don’t even know who your state representatives are, then you should learn how your state reps are before voting for this. Likewise, if you haven’t followed any legislation through the General Assembly, and contacted lawmakers to express your opinion about pending legislation, then you shouldn’t vote for this. If your state representative hasn’t responded the way you like, and that representative has run unopposed, you should not vote for this, but you should run for state office yourself, instead.
If calling for a constitutional convention will get more people to know who their state representatives are, follow closely the legislation working its way through the General Assembly, get involved in discussion the legislation with the representatives and run for office if the representatives are not responsive, then I think the constitutional convention is a great idea.
However, my understanding is that 85% of people do not know who their state representatives are, of those, only a handful ever contact their state representatives, and even fewer even consider running for state office.
So, if you want a constitutional convention, work to get everyone you know to become more involved, and perhaps when a constitutional convention rolls around on the ballot next time, people can vote for it with a clear conscience. On the other hand, if enough people truly get involved, we may find that the electoral process can provide the checks and balances we need.
