Developing a path forward for CT’s disconnected youth

We have a statewide crisis in Connecticut where 119,000 young people are at-risk of not graduating high school or have already disconnected from education and the workforce.

More than 40,000 young adults have high school diplomas, but they are not connected to meaningful employment at a time when Connecticut’s labor market has more than 90,000 unfilled jobs. This crisis impacts every town and costs an enormous amount of money: the annual cost to taxpayers is $750 million.

In 2023, more than 5,000 young people experienced homelessness. Connecticut’s graduation rate declined for the first time in recent history last year, and almost 20 percent of ninth graders were off-track to high school graduation. Clearly, attempts to date to address housing insecurity, learning loss, chronic absenteeism, and youth disconnection have not been commensurate with the scale of Connecticut’s crisis.

So, what would it take to get tens of thousands of young people back on track while preventing others from becoming off-track in the first place?

The 119k Commission launched in March 2024 to answer this question. The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) convened the commission after hosting several regional forums in the fall of 2023. CCM heard from residents across the state about how the crisis impacts youth, families, communities, and businesses.

Compelled by what they heard, CCM organized the commission by bringing together a dozen municipal CEOs, including six Democrats, five Republicans, and one independent. Reflecting the statewide nature of the crisis, the municipal CEOs represent a diverse range of towns, from Hartford to Stonington, from Stamford to Canterbury, from Torrington to New Haven. What these municipal CEOs have in common is their shared desire to surface pragmatic, non-partisan solutions.

The commission’s mission is to reduce the statewide crisis by half over the next 10 years. We have two objectives to that end. By October, we will publish an actionable, multi-year strategy for Connecticut to get 60,000 young people back on track. And we aim to achieve this first objective by leading a process that hopefully results in stakeholders organized to advance the strategy’s local implementation, recognizing everyone must work together.

Our strategy development process draws on the experience, knowledge, and commitment of diverse stakeholders across Connecticut. The process is organized around eight different methods for engagement to ensure stakeholders have multiple ways to share ideas with the commission.

Over the past five months, the commission has hosted regional public meetings in New Haven, Mansfield, Trumbull, Meriden, and Hartford. Each meeting has focused on an underlying cause or driver of the crisis, such as poverty, housing insecurity, and inadequate education. We have heard from 29 panelists, including superintendents, chiefs of police, nonprofit leaders, and state agency leaders, as well as 61 residents who have shared their ideas through public comment. These meetings have been live streamed and recorded, and thousands of individuals have watched the meetings through viewing the recordings on Facebook.

The commission has also gone directly to young people by meeting them in their communities to listen to their ideas and learn from their experiences. To date, the commission has met with young people in Stamford and Waterbury. Some young people have shared how they feel bored in school and unsafe in the communities in which they live, while others have talked about how difficult it is to find necessary resources through 211 and other existing services. Young people have underscored the importance of having trusting relationships with adults they admire. Additional youth roundtable discussions are scheduled for August.

More than 30 individuals have shared their ideas through the commission’s website, providing insight into challenges facing Connecticut residents as well as potential solutions. Their ideas have surfaced common themes, including the importance of geographic variation across the state, and the need for rural communities.

Testimony has also highlighted Connecticut’s overreliance on property taxes to fund education and the resulting inequities in funding. Individuals have implored Connecticut to move beyond reports and data dashboards to more tangible action. They have suggested solutions, such as: improved communication among agencies; need for streamlined referrals and coordinated service delivery in support of young people and their families; increased accountability for collaborative, cross-sector efforts; and improved, easier-to-access services.

If you’d like to share ideas with the commission, please visit 119kcommission.org to submit your testimony or join us at our next regional meeting to offer comments. The public meeting will take place in New London at City Hall on Aug. 27 at 5:30 p.m.

In addition, the Commission has hosted local forums, heard from municipal CEOs, engaged with Connecticut stakeholders, learned from national experts, and reviewed Connecticut research findings from the Boston Consulting Group, Community Science, and CT School + State Finance. You may watch these research briefings through CCM’s Facebook page.

We will complete our strategy development process by October and then publish an actionable strategy for Connecticut, incorporating input gathered from diverse stakeholders. The strategy will center around a north star goal for Connecticut: to get 60,000 at-risk and disconnected youth back on track within 10 years.

The strategy will emphasize the importance of building and sustaining coalitions that transcend public administrations. The strategy will make recommendations for establishing robust service coordination at all levels. The strategy will put forth ideas for increasing capacity in school communities, nonprofits, and research and public sector institutions. And the strategy will offer ways to create stronger conditions for this work, including ways to pay for the recommended actions.

The commission has a lot to accomplish before October. But we are hopeful and inspired because so many people and organizations have engaged in this process to shape the emerging strategy and indicate support for implementing it. It goes without saying that the hardest, most important work will happen after the strategy is published and that success will require everyone working together across local communities in a sustained, collaborative manner.

Together, we can build a Connecticut where every young person has equal opportunity to achieve their greatest potential; where families, schools, employers, public institutions, and communities support them along the way; and where people and systems help them get back on track when they struggle. When Connecticut leadership focuses its efforts and holds one another accountable, Connecticut’s success and economic growth will be advanced for generations to come.

Josh Brown is a youth development professional at Domus Kids ; Elinor Carbone is Mayor of Torrington; and Andrew Ferguson is Co-CEO of Dalio Education . They serve as Tri-Chairs of the 119k Commission.