You asked which school districts are eligible for the new school readiness slots, family resource centers, and school-based health clinics required by the 2012 Education Reform Act (PA 12-116).

The 2012 act requires the education commissioner to provide funding in FY 13 for 1,000 new school readiness slots and at least 10 new family resource centers (FRCs). It also requires the public health commissioner to fund at lease 20 new or expanded school-based health clinics (SBHCs) for FY 13. The act specifies that these services must be located in educational reform, priority and former priority, certain competitive, and alliance districts. 

SCHOOL READINESS SLOTS 

The Education Reform Act (PA 12-116, § 1) requires the education commissioner to provide funding for 1,000 new slots in school readiness programs in FY 13. The slots must be allocated as follows:

1. 500 in the educational reform districts,

2. 250 in priority or former priority districts that are not educational reform districts, and

3. 250 in school readiness program competitive districts.

The governor announced the distribution of the school readiness slots on July 10, 2012.

Educational Reform Districts 

The educational reform districts are the 10 school districts with the lowest performance on statewide mastery tests, according to a district performance index the act establishes. Table 1 lists these districts and the new slots allocated to each.

Table 1: Educational Reform Districts

Priority and Former Priority Districts 

Priority districts are designated using a statutory formula that includes population, concentration of school-aged children receiving Temporary Family Assistance, and academic performance on by state mastery test scores (CGS § 10-266p). PA 12-116 allocates 250 new slots to priority and former priority school districts that are not educational reform districts. Table 2 shows the nine districts that fall into this category and their new slot allocations.

Table 2: Priority and Former Priority Districts

Competitive Districts

The competitive districts are those that do not fall into either of the two foregoing categories but that either (1) are among the 50 poorest districts in the state or (2) have at least one school where 40% or more of the school lunches served are to students eligible for free or reduced price lunches (“priority school”) (CGS § 10-16p(d)).

Of the districts in this category, 19 received new slots from the 250 allocated to such districts in the act. These districts and their slot allocations are listed in Table 3.

Table 3: Competitive Districts Receiving New Slots

Table 4 lists the competitive districts that did not receive a new slot allocation.

Table 4: Competitive Districts Not Receiving New Slots

FAMILY RESOURCE CENTERS AND SCHOOL-BASED HEALTH CLINICS

The Education Reform act (PA 12-116, § 8) requires the education commissioner to establish at least 10 new FRCs and the public health commissioner to establish at least 20 new or expanded SBHCs in FY 13 in “alliance districts.” The alliance districts are the 30 school districts with the lowest performance on statewide mastery tests as determined under what is called the District Performance Index.

Table 5 lists the schools and alliance districts that the State Department of Education selected for new school-based FRCs. FRCs provide wraparound services for students and their families including: home visitations to screen for child development needs, before- and after-school care, summer camps, child-rearing skills classes, high school equivalency classes, English as a second language programs, and other services. The selections were announced on August 22, 2012.

Table 5: Alliance Districts and Schools Receiving New Family Resource Centers

The alliance districts that are not receiving new FRC are listed in Table 6.

Table 6: Alliance Districts Not Receiving Family Resource Centers – FY 13

As of the date of this report the locations of the new SBHCs have not yet been announced.

JM:ro