The Memorial Fund’s 2001-2003 Triennial Report is now available
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Minding Our Business

"There have been moments when -- I have to confess -- I’ve referred to it as group therapy," laughs a member of Norwalk’s School Readiness Council in describing the process surrounding Norwalk’s involvement in the Discovery Initiative. "At other times I can say that it was a lengthy process of building consensus." For Norwalk, as for the other 48 Discovery sites, building consensus was essential. To encourage collaboration, the Memorial Fund accepted only one Discovery application per community; each application had to be signed by representatives of five specified groups. "Our Discovery steering committee spent much of its first year developing trust and defining a common purpose," notes a Board of Education member.

While community conversations about education had been taking place in Norwalk since 1999, the invitation to join Discovery spurred renewed activity. Open meetings in July and September of 2001 led to accepting Graustein’s invitation. Initial plans called for focus groups and for a community conversation on available services and unmet needs. At the same time, the Discovery steering committee was looking at existing research on the status of Norwalk’s children. "We also looked at data from other communities," says a school official. "We knew intuitively that early childhood care and support were not what they should be, but we needed more concrete information."

A city of 82,000 mid-way up the coast of Fairfield County, Norwalk has a great diversity of cultures, ethnicities and income levels. While most other Connecticut cities lost population from 1990-2000, Norwalk’s population grew by nearly 6 percent, almost twice the state average.

"We realized," says a Discovery steering committee member, "that part of Norwalk’s vitality is connected to our ability to retain and attract businesses. So if we wanted to have a healthy investment in early childhood, we had to get business interested and involved." Business input was elicited through a focus group, one of ten held between May and October of 2002. In addition, the president of the local Chamber of Commerce became a Discovery steering committee member in March of 2003.

The nine other focus groups provided forums for parents, preschool providers and elementary educators. The seven parent groups included one each conducted in Spanish and Creole. "Everyone was enthusiastic," says a parent member of the Discovery steering committee. "In the Haitian group, 31 parents with 10 children showed up on a Saturday, encouraged by their priest. In all the groups, we found a lot we expected and a lot we didn’t. People often had trouble getting children to day care, even if they could afford it. Who watches the kids of the parents who work nights? What about the kids who receive child care from family members who speak only Creole or Spanish and who then show up in a school room where only English is spoken?"

Parents also requested more information about services and programs. "We were committed to not duplicating resources and services," says a steering committee member. "We updated the existing Norwalk Family Resources Directory, and collaborated with a group at Norwalk Community College to develop a data base and Internet access to the directory, which is also available in print all over town." In addition, a town official notes: "Throughout the discussions, a primary theme was school readiness. We’ve been wrestling with an achievement gap between majority and minority populations, and many people felt that changing the preschool environment could have a major impact on helping children in their early years of school."

As a follow-up to the focus groups, a community conversation in November of 2002 brought together over 90 participants. Their input and that of the focus groups, along with research data, were synthesized into a report published in May of 2003. The report -- Norwalk’s Young Children: What They Need to Succeed -- was presented at an open meeting attended by nearly 100 people, and was printed by a local newspaper. Attendees were invited to participate in one of four task forces that grew out of the report’s "next steps"-- a variety of tasks to meet the stated goal of "helping all children be more successful in the early years of school."

The creation of the report offers another story beyond what is contained in its pages. "I saw a report from another town," says a Board of Education official, "and I thought, ‘This doesn’t say much without pictures.’ And then I wondered about getting Briggs High School involved. That’s where our kids go if they need help and an alternative education. What if we asked them to take the photos?"

As happened in Thompson, photographs became a vehicle for making connections. With the help of two professional photographers, the school turned the project into a social studies course designed around the idea of looking at the lives of Norwalk’s children.

Then the local paper ran articles about the project and Briggs received a grant from the Police Athletic League to buy equipment. "They had a show at the Norwalk Museum," the official continues, "and then they became the teachers for photography courses for middle school kids. Now the program is part of an English class. We’d been working for a while on how to change some of the dynamics at that high school. The project transformed how the Briggs students feel about the school and themselves. In a way, this is emblematic of what we hope the Discovery process can be. For those kids, that project changed everything."