Hartford, CT

Overview

With a legacy and commitment for early childhood success, the City of Hartford was the first municipality in Connecticut to implement a citywide Early Childhood Blueprint and establish a department dedicated to early childhood education. Through an intentional lens, the City of Hartford continues to build on its historical roots through using data-driven practices to guide their work, engaging with and incorporating city and community voices, and supporting the early childhood workforce across all settings. The City of Hartford approaches the work of early learning with the understanding that it is never static and consistently remains open to learning and growing from their experiences.

The City of Hartford’s commitment to early childhood education centers around three key themes:  

• Data-driven Practices: Through building relationships with the community stakeholders to collect continuous data and conduct evaluations on the early childhood landscape, the City of Hartford has broken down silos to make impact within the early childhood sector and improve quality for children and families
• City and Community Voices: The City Hartford has intentionally incorporated the city and community into decision-making processes. Through community roundtables, workgroups and the Mayor’s Cabinet Hartford has engrained a commitment for the future through a comprehensive lens.
• Supporting the Early Childhood Workforce: The City of Hartford has been intentional about both building the pipeline of the early childhood workforce through pilots with local institutes of higher education and ensuring the well-being and professional development of the current workforce.

City & Community Voices

One of the central pillars of the City of Hartford’s early childhood approach is the inclusion of community voice in decision-making processes. As early as 1992, Hartford was at the forefront of parent engagement efforts through the development of the Parent Leadership Training Institute (PLTI), a project which was later adopted by the Connecticut General Assembly and made available to parents statewide. The city has made an intentional effort to ensure that families, parents, and community stakeholders from various sectors have a seat at the table. This commitment was further demonstrated with the development of the citywide Hartford Blueprint for Young Children, a collaborative effort undertaken by a team of community stakeholders under Mayor Eddie Perez. Through the Blueprint, the City of Hartford created clear guiding principles and an action plan that would shape early childhood initiatives for years to come.

Starting with just four staff members at its inception in 2004, the original Office of Early Childhood cemented its roots in valuing community engagement through innovative approaches. A cornerstone of their transparency efforts was the creation of “report cards” that used a simple but effective color-coding system (green, yellow, or red) to clearly communicate where the City of Hartford’s children and families were progressing or needed additional support. This visual approach made complex data accessible to all community members and demonstrated the Office of Early Childhood’s commitment to honest communication about both successes and challenges. Mayor Perez played a crucial role as a “cheerleader,” actively participating in community meetings, demonstrating how mayoral support could legitimize and strengthen community engagement efforts. This early commitment to transparency and data-driven decision-making set the foundation for the City of Hartford’s approach. The office has since evolved, from becoming the Department of Families, Children, Youth, and Recreation to the now Department of Families, Children, and Youth, reflecting its expanded scope while maintaining its core commitment to community engagement.

Over the subsequent decades, the City of Hartford has continuously evolved and strengthened its community engagement structures, while maintaining consistent, significant commitment and support from its municipal leaders to the early childhood cause. The Mayor’s Cabinet for Young Children, created at the same time as the department, serves as both an advisory body to the Mayor and the local School Readiness Council, allowing for streamlined decision-making while maintaining strong community input. The cabinet’s diverse membership includes parents, community organization representatives, city staff, and the superintendent of schools, ensuring that multiple perspectives inform policy decisions affecting young children and their families. The development of six cross-sector working groups that meet on a monthly basis further demonstrates the City of Hartford’s commitment to deepening community involvement, breaking down silos, and fostering collective impact.

The city’s commitment to community voices is reflected in its inclusive governance structure, which brings together parents, community organizations, city staff, and education leaders. This collaborative approach acknowledges that no two families are alike, and solutions must be tailored to individual needs rather than following a one-size-fits-all model. Through multiple pathways for community input and leadership, Hartford ensures that policies and programs remain responsive to the actual needs of families.

Here’s What They Did

• The Early Learning Parent Cabinet, established in 2022, was created to provide parents with a dedicated platform while ensuring they have access to city resources. This parent-led group supports the Mayor’s Cabinet for Young Children and meets regularly to address key issues including child care, home visiting, and early intervention. This group exemplifies the City of Hartford’s dedication to ensuring parent voices are central to decision-making processes.

• The City of Hartford’s commitment to data-informed community engagement is demonstrated through partnerships like the one with the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. This dedication is evident in projects such as the federally funded North Hartford Ascend initiative, a cradle-to-career effort focused on improving outcomes for children in the North Hartford Promise Zone. As part of this initiative, the city supports monthly community conversations to gather community input. They gather stakeholders to discuss topics such as CTData survey results about post-COVID student enrollment trends and facilitate small group discussions where community stakeholders, parents, providers, and city staff collaborated to address enrollment challenges and early intervention services, showcasing how the City of Hartford actively combines data with community voice to drive solutions.

Your Next Steps for Getting Started

• Map key stakeholders and community leaders in your city. This includes identifying parents, community organizations, education leaders, and other potential partners who should have a voice in early childhood decisions.
• Create a structure for regular community input and feedback.
• Establish parent leadership opportunities. Consider creating formal bodies like a Parent Cabinet where parents can directly influence policy and program decisions.
• Design inclusive meeting formats and schedules. Think carefully about meeting times, locations, and support needed (like child care, translation, parent compensation) to ensure all community members can participate.

Helpful Tips for Ongoing Success

• Prioritize transparency in all communications and decision-making processes
• Ensure diverse representation in all decision-making bodies, including voices from different neighborhoods, cultural backgrounds, family circumstances, and community organization types.
• Create multiple pathways for community input. Not everyone is comfortable speaking at formal meetings, so it’s important to provide various ways for community members to share their perspectives.
• Maintain regular meeting schedules with consistent follow-through
• Close the feedback loop when incorporating community suggestions into decision-making. When community members see their input reflected in actual changes, it builds trust and encourages continued participation.
• Maintain flexibility and demonstrate agility to new challenges.
• Enable parents to take the lead by, for example, assisting them in understanding professional jargon and recognizing that the skills they acquire locally can be applied regionally, statewide, and nationally.

“The approach is holistic and integrated. These data are shared in the Mayor’s Cabinet, these data are shared in the Hartford Opportunity Youth Collaborative, when talking to industry partners. Bringing everyone to an awareness perspective and then identifying what resources look like.”
– Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez

Data Driven Practices

The City of Hartford has placed a significant emphasis on data-driven practices to guide its early childhood initiatives. The city recognizes that effective early childhood systems require robust data collection, analysis, and application to inform decision-making and drive continuous improvement. Through strategic partnerships, innovative data-sharing agreements, and dedicated working groups, the City of Hartford has created a culture where data serves as the foundation for successful and effective program development, resource allocation, and supporting the early childhood workforce.

The city’s commitment to data-driven decision-making extends across its early childhood ecosystem, from classroom-level assessments to city-wide planning. This approach enables Hartford to identify gaps in services, measure program effectiveness, and make targeted adjustments to better serve children and families. At the center of this work is the City of Hartford’s Early Childhood Data System, which contains comprehensive information on all the City of Hartford child care centers receiving School Readiness Grants or Child Day Care Contract funding from the state. This robust system includes data on children enrolled in state-funded slots and, with parental permission, children in non-state-funded slots at sites receiving state funding. The system’s comprehensive approach allows the city to follow a child’s progress over time, creating valuable longitudinal data for program evaluation and planning as well as shaping professional development for the early childhood workforce.

The City of Hartford’s data infrastructure continues to develop, with each strategic working group meeting monthly to execute goals and strategies, using key data to inform their work and adjustments. These groups function as collaborative learning communities, fostering innovation and continuous improvement. The city acknowledges ongoing challenges in data collection, particularly around family child care providers, but is actively working to enhance data gathering in this area to better understand outcomes and strengthen quality improvement efforts.

Here’s What They Did

• The City of Hartford’s partnership with CTData exemplifies the city’s commitment to leveraging external expertise for data analysis and community impact and sharing that information transparently with the community. This partnership which initially began through a COVID-related project, has since developed into an ongoing collaboration supporting multiple initiatives. CTData operates under a formal data-sharing agreement with the city, conducting sophisticated analyses including needs assessments of Head Start programs and factor analyses of assessment tools. This partnership is enhanced by the Hartford Data Collaborative, a data integration initiative that brings together institutions serving the city. The collaborative has created a formal governance structure with an advisory committee, data oversight committee, and request process that allows partners to submit proposals for data sharing that benefit the community. When data findings are presented to stakeholders, city leadership ensures continued conversations with providers, demonstrating how data becomes a tool for ongoing dialogue and improvement.

• The City of Hartford has leveraged several partnerships for their data collection and analysis efforts. For example, in collaboration with the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, school districts, and municipal leadership, the City of Hartford implemented UCLA’s Early Development Inventory (EDI) to assess the school readiness and school success of Hartford’s children. The City of Hartford’s transition to PowerSchool represents a significant investment in its data infrastructure and demonstrates the city’s forward-thinking approach to data management. This migration will allow for better alignment of early childhood data with K-12 systems, creating more seamless tracking of children’s educational journeys from preschool through later grades. The system will enable better coordination across schools and programs, providing a more complete picture of children’s development and learning experiences. By integrating early childhood data into the same system used by K-12 schools, the City of Hartford is better positioned to link early childhood education to K-12 and analyze kindergarten readiness trends, understand the long-term impact of early interventions, and make data-informed decisions about resource allocation and program improvements.

Your Next Steps for Getting Started

• Conduct a data inventory to understand what information is currently collected and where gaps exist. This assessment helps identify redundancies and missing elements in your data ecosystem. Consider creating a visual map showing data flows across your early childhood system.
• Establish data-sharing agreements with key partners including schools, healthcare providers, and community organizations. Clear agreements that address privacy concerns and technical compatibility are essential foundations.
• Develop a common data framework with shared definitions, metrics, and quality standards. Consistent terminology and measurement approaches enable meaningful comparison and analysis. Engage the early childhood workforce in developing this to ensure it reflects program realities.
• Invest in user-friendly data systems and staff training to ensure accessibility and utilization.

Helpful Tips for Ongoing Success

• Balance quantitative metrics with qualitative insights to gain a comprehensive understanding of data and integrate community voice into data interpretation and application. Create regular opportunities for community members to review and respond to data findings.
• Create feedback loops so data findings lead to program improvements and policy changes. Regular review cycles help ensure data actually influences practice.
• Make data accessible and meaningful to different audiences through varied visualization and communication strategies, including technical reports, infographics, and community presentations serve different purposes.
• Acknowledge and plan for challenges in data collection, particularly with vulnerable populations. Privacy concerns, language barriers, and technology access can affect data quality. Develop culturally responsive data collection methods that build trust with families.

“The approach is holistic and integrated. This data is shared in the Mayor’s Cabinet, this data is shared in the Hartford Opportunity Youth Collaborative, in talking to industry partners. Bringing everyone to an awareness perspective and then identifying what resources look like.”- Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez

Supporting the Early Childhood Workforce

The City of Hartford recognizes that a well-prepared, stable early childhood workforce is the foundation of quality early learning experiences. As the first municipality in Connecticut to establish a dedicated early childhood division, the city has consistently prioritized workforce development as a key element of its comprehensive approach to supporting young children and families. Through strategic partnerships, innovative support systems, and responsive programming, the City of Hartford has maintained a steadfast focus on building professional capacity among educators who serve the city’s youngest and most vulnerable residents, understanding that the quality of early learning experiences directly impacts children’s long-term outcomes.

The city’s approach to workforce development is rooted in a philosophy of community responsiveness and strategic partnership building. Rather than implementing top-down mandates, the City of Hartford engages directly with educators to understand their challenges and co-create solutions that address real-world needs. This collaborative approach extends to partnerships with higher education institutions, workforce development boards, and community organizations that collectively strengthen the early childhood ecosystem. By positioning itself as a convener and facilitator rather than simply a regulator, the City of Hartford has fostered a culture of continuous improvement and professional growth across its early childhood settings.

The City of Hartford’s workforce development strategies reflect a sophisticated understanding of the complex challenges facing early childhood educators. The city has taken a deliberate approach to meeting teacher credential requirements, understanding that appropriate support structures must be in place before accountability can be effective. This philosophy acknowledges the economic realities facing many educators, particularly those from underrepresented communities, and seeks to remove barriers to professional advancement through targeted financial supports, accessible training opportunities, and individualized coaching. Through initiatives like its collaboration with Capital Community College, which provided tuition and textbook support for over 100 non-degreed early childhood professionals to attend credit-bearing courses, the City of Hartford demonstrates its commitment to creating viable career pathways in the field.

Here’s What They Did

• In 2018, the Mayor’s Cabinet for Young Children conducted a comprehensive workforce survey focused on educators and administrators serving children from birth to eight years old. With 277 respondents, this survey provided crucial insights that continue to inform the City of Hartford’s workforce development strategies. Key findings revealed that while professional development is highly valued by both workers and administrators, significant challenges remain in the field. These include finding qualified substitutes, addressing attendance issues, combating low wages, and confronting a misaligned workforce pipeline as current teachers retire or leave. Perhaps most notably, the survey highlighted a demographic mismatch between educators and the children they serve. This data-driven approach has allowed the City of Hartford to target its workforce initiatives to address the most pressing needs identified by the community.

• The City of Hartford’s Staffed Family Child Care Network demonstrates the city’s innovative approach to workforce support. Recognizing that the informal early childhood workforce is essential to the community, the City of Hartford created a network that provides resources to improve both the quality of care and the sustainability of their operations. The network offers support to providers taking the initial step to establish a family child care home, along with training, professional development, and individualized business support. This approach not only improves care quality but also creates a stable and professional early childhood workforce pipeline that can continue to serve families effectively while supporting the economic development of the city.

Your Next Steps for Getting Started

• In partnership with the agencies that support and employ the workforce, map the existing early childhood workforce in your community, including setting, demographics, qualifications, and needs. Understanding who makes up your workforce provides critical insights for targeted support strategies.
• Identify key partners, including higher education institutions, state and county offices of early childhood, and workforce boards. Building these relationships early creates opportunities for aligned credential pathways and funding.
• Develop a comprehensive professional development system with multiple entry points. Create financial incentives and support for credential attainment. Scholarships, wage supplements, and release time can make professional development accessible. Consider developing a graduated compensation scale tied to credential levels.
• Establish mentoring programs for new educators to improve retention. Pairing experienced educators with newcomers provides crucial support. Structure regular check-ins to make the mentoring relationship meaningful.

Helpful Tips for Ongoing Success

• Focus on both education credentials and business skills, including for home-based providers. Offering business training can improve both the quality and sustainability of the early childhood workforce.
• Collect and use data to continuously improve workforce support programs. Regular assessment helps identify what’s working and what needs adjustment. Create feedback loops where providers can share their experiences with program implementation.
• Consider the entire workforce pipeline, from recruitment to retirement. A comprehensive approach addresses challenges at every career stage.
• Ensure professional development is accessible, relevant, and culturally responsive. Offering training at various times, locations, and in multiple languages removes barriers to participation.
• Address compensation issues through creative funding mechanisms. Low wages drive turnover and affect quality of care. Explore public-private partnerships, tax incentives, and shared services models to improve compensation.

“For the City of Hartford, this work starts way before someone decides to take the early childhood job. We ask: What is our relationship to high schools, colleges, and universities; How do we provide educational opportunities or internship placements for those studying early childhood; What type of experiences should a potential childcare worker have before they even take a job in this field?  Just like we think about children from a developmental perspective, we think about professional development from a developmental perspective – a perspective that also recognizes that this work is embedded in an ever-changing landscape affected by a host of theoretical, political, contextual, and community factors.” – Richard Sussman