City's poverty rate appears to be escalating

Students in Bristol are more than 5 percent more likely to be living in low-income families now than they were in 2006.
In a side-by-side, citywide comparison of the same classes in school two years ago and this year, the percentage of students receiving free or reduced price school lunches rose for each of the four grades where comparisons were possible.
For instance, 36.8 percent of third graders in 2006 were eligible for cheap or free school lunches. This year, that same class, who are now in fifth grade, saw 40.9 percent of the students qualify.
The percentages of students who receive free or lower-priced school lunches is one of the breakdowns available to study the results of the Connecticut Mastery Tests that are given to nearly every student between third and eighth grade.
Because some students move, the makeup of classes changes from year to year, but the overall trend remains clear.
The fourth grade class in 2006, 34.9 percent of students were eligible for the lunch benefit. By the time they got to sixth grade this year, 37.9 percent of the class qualified.
The fifth grade class in 2006 had 33 percent of its students qualify. This year, 33.5 percent were eligible, the smallest increase among the group.
The sixth grade class two years ago had 33.6 percent of students eligible. This year, 35.7 percent of students made the cut.
The increasing rate of poverty has implications for the city's economy as a whole as well as for the educational system.
Students who come from low-income families are much less likely to score well on tests and educators say it takes more money to teach them because they are often lacking the skills that peers from richer homes possess.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Rising poverty may be a reflection of inflation, stagnant paychecks

City officials are worried that Bristol’s poverty rate may be rising more than 1 percent a month, a rate that would leave the community devastated within a few years.
Spurring the concern is the percentage of low-income elementary school students receiving free or reduced-price school lunches soaring by nearly 7 percent just since October.
But that number may be deceptive, say those on the front lines of the fight against poverty.
“I don’t know that Bristol is becoming a magnet for low-income people. I’m just not sure that is actually happening,” said Tom Morrow, director of the Bristol Community Organization.
What may be occurring instead, some say, is that struggling families are taking advantage of the opportunity to get cheap or free lunches for their children because they’re facing rising costs but stagnant paychecks.
“Families are having a harder time making ends meet,” said Linda Rich, director of the Family Resource Centers at three city schools.
“If they were just making it, they’re not making it anymore,” Rich said. “That’s very real.”
But having working parents who are scrambling to pay for heating oil, gasoline, milk, bread and other necessities whose costs have soared is not the same as having the poor flocking to town, overburdening existing social services, schools and other institutions on the front lines.
It doesn’t appear, at least not yet, that those on the front lines of dealing with poverty are seeing a crush of newcomers.
“We’re getting the same number of requests for help with rent” and other assistance, said Kit Plourde, the city’s social services director. “I can’t really say that we’ve had an increase.”
Morrow said, “There are, probably, more poor kids. The economy is certainly not doing as well as it has been.”
But he suspects the reason the school lunch program is seeing a dramatic rise is twofold: the squeeze that inflation has put on workers’ salaries and the use of electronic swipe cards at school cafeterias that has eliminated any stigma for students on the program.
“On the face of it, more kids are getting free and reduced lunch,” Morrow said. “But you have to look beyond the actual figures.”
The figures themselves certainly look scary.
Among Bristol’s elementary schoolchildren, 38.9 percent got a cheap or free lunch in February – up from 36.6 percent as recently as October.
“We hit the tipping point,” said John Smith, a member of the Board of Finance.
He said the city has to take steps “to begin to change the people who want to move into this community or we may never get out of the box” with efforts to revive Bristol.
Ron Messier, another finance commissioner, said it’s going to take a real commitment by the city to tackle the issue – and it’s likely to take years to solve.
What some officials fear – and Board of Education member Tom O’Brien has trumpeted – is the danger that Bristol could slide into more widespread poverty on the scale of New Britain or East Hartford if it can’t hold the line soon.
But it’s at least as likely that most of the increasing poverty is tied to slipping living standards among people who are already in Bristol.
While Plourde said “the numbers don’t lie,” she added that the poverty levels they show are probably an indication that working people are having a harder time paying for necessities and are searching for ways to cut costs.
Morrow said that last year, the applications for heating assistance rose almost 15 percent and are likely to go up as much this winter, too. That’s a clear sign that rising costs are crimping family budgets, he said.
Rich, too, said she’s seeing more requests for help with heating bills.
Working families that didn’t need help in the past, she said, are having a hard time making ends meet.
“Whether you are the working poor or living at or below the poverty level, when those basic things go up in price, it effects all of us, but it effects them more. Their income can only cover so much,” she said.
Rich said that those who have more income can cut back by eating out less or not catching the latest blockbuster, but for those with less money, there’s nothing to cut.
Searching for ways to stretch their money, Rich said, some are probably applying for the federal lunch program who wouldn’t have done so in the past.
In tough times, Morrow said, people do look for areas they can get assistance, including school lunch aid.
“They wouldn’t necessarily have done that before,” he said, “but now, with things being a little tougher, they will look into it.”

Click here for an earlier story about concerns about poverty rising

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

West End study underway

Press release just issued by Mayor Art Ward:

Mayor Arthur J. Ward announced today that an in-depth planning study of the City’s West End neighborhood has begun, under the direction of the Bristol Planning Commission and assisted by The Capstan Group and its partner the Yale Urban Design Workshop. The city recently awarded an $80,000 contract to the New Haven-based consultants to conduct this study. ”The West End has always been a vibrant factor in the history of Bristol and should retain that significance in the future,” Ward said. “The West End Neighborhood Study will seek out and identify the means for revitalization of this area.”

As part of the West End Neighborhood Study – expected to take between 12 and 15 months to complete – The Capstan Group and the Yale Urban Design Workshop will undertake extensive data collection, research and analysis of the West End; reach out to the community for its input and feedback; and work closely with the neighborhood to develop a practical, working document to guide future revitalization efforts there. Work on this study will also take into account the City’s ongoing downtown revitalization efforts, as well as activities associated with the extension of Route 72 into Bristol. The City and The Capstan Group are actively seeking West End residents, business and property owners, and community leaders to participate in this project on all levels.

Just west of downtown Bristol, the West End neighborhood encompasses a 40-block area slightly less than half a square mile in size. Park Street, Divinity Street, Gridley Street, and West Street serve as the major thoroughfares within the study area, which also contains Rockwell Park, Muzzy Field, and a portion of the Pequabuck River. In addition to a highly urbanized residential area, the neighborhood is home to several churches, an elementary school, and a number of small businesses.

In 2006, the city’s focus on the importance of the long-term stability of the West End neighborhood sharpened, and the city identified the need for a comprehensive study of the neighborhood as a critical first step in this effort. The city issued a Request for Qualifications in September 2007 and received ten proposals in response to this request. A selection committee interviewed four firms and recommended the partnership of The Capstan Group and the Yale Urban Design Workshop (YUDW) as the firms to bring the community together to develop a vision and plan for the neighborhood.

Both The Capstan Group and YUDW bring their significant experience with neighborhood planning projects to the West End study. The Capstan Group (www.cpstn.com) specializes in economic and community development, and works with municipalities, non-profit development community-based organizations, and private developers to bring economic development projects to completion. Recent and current projects include the redevelopment of 750,000 square feet of former industrial space in Science Park in New Haven; the Shartenberg Project in New Haven, a $160 million new mixed-use project with more than 400 residences in a 31-story tower; and planning processes in two Bridgeport neighborhoods to develop neighborhood revitalization zone plans.

The Yale Urban Design Workshop (www.architecture.yale.edu/UDW) is a community design center founded in 1992 and based at the Yale School of Architecture. The YUDW has worked with communities all across Connecticut, providing planning and design assistance on projects ranging from comprehensive plans and community visions to the design of public spaces, streetscapes, and individual community facilities. It has led recent community planning processes in New Britain, North Branford, Bridgeport, Old Saybrook, Bethany, Ansonia, and the Dwight neighborhood in New Haven.

For more information on the West End Neighborhood Study or to get involved, contact The Capstan Group at (203) 785-0130 or the Bristol Land Use Office at (860) 584-6225. A project website, which will be updated regularly with the latest study information, is expected to be online by March 1, 2008; it will be located at www.cpstn.com.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Closing in on the "tipping point"

Poverty rates are soaring in Bristol.
In just the past four months, 5 percent more elementary school children in Bristol have successfully applied for free or reduced-price school lunches because their families don't have much money.
Susan Moreau, the assistant school superintendent, said that applications are coming in daily. Many of them are the result, she said, of mothers or fathers getting laid off in the slowing economy.
In all, officials said, 37 percent of the city's elementary school students are getting discounted or free lunches.
To Tom O'Brien, a Board of Education member, the numbers are alarming.
O'Brien said that studies show that once the poverty rate hits 40 percent in a community, it's almost impossible to slow the slide. He said that "it almost always jumps to 60 percent within five or six years" after reaching that tippoing point, the result of the spiraling impact of rising taxes to cope with the cost and a middle class fleeing for greener pastures.
The community should be "very, very concerned" that poverty keeps going up, O'Brien said. "This is a very scary thing," he said.
Unless city leaders find a way to attack blighted housing and crack the whip on out-of-town landlords and slumlords, O'Brien said the trend is clear.
Without a change, he said, "We will be New Britain. We will be Meriden. We will be East Hartford."
"The city cannot just sit here and hope it goes away," O'Brien said.
School Superintendent Philip Streifer said that rising numbers of poor children make it tough on educators, too.
He said he was shocked to see how many of the incoming kindergarten students in Bristol last fall didn’t know the kinds of basic facts, from colors to letters, that they should have learned beforehand.
“These kids are unprepared to learn,” he said, adding that perhaps a third of the incoming youngsters didn’t have the backgrounds they should.
Starting off “so far behind” their peers in more affluent communities and families, it’s tough for them to catch up, officials said.
He said that poverty is also the main reason that 40 percent of the students in an average elementary school class in Bristol move during each school year, half of them out of the town and half to another school district.
That puts a burden on both teachers and students because of the loss of continuity.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Number of poor kids rising fast? Maybe not.

Looking solely at the numbers, it appeared that the number of schoolchildren in Bristol who receive free or reduced price lunches had gone up by 1.5 percent just since Oct. 1.
That would be "pretty frightening" and "staggering," said Tom O'Brien, a school board member who has a better grip on statistics than most politicians.
Nearly every school saw the same trend, with only Edgewood nudging down slightly.
But it turns out, officials said, that the rise may show nothing more than some kids are kind of slow about returning the necessary paperwork. If they brought it in after Oct. 1, then they show up as newly poor, when all they really are is less than speedy when it comes to getting forms filled out and returned.
In any case, nearly one third of Bristol's students are eligible for cheap or free lunches now, a big rise over what it was a decade ago. And even more alarming is that the percentages are highest in the lowest grades, which likely means that the numbers are going to go up for a long time to come.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Poverty on the rise in Bristol

The number of children living in poverty in Bristol has increased more than 50 percent in the past decade.
Slightly less than a third of the city’s students now qualify for a free or reduced price lunch based on their family income. It was a bit over 20 percent a decade ago.
That amounts more than 1,000 extra students coming from impoverished backgrounds, said Tom O’Brien, a Board of Education member.
“This is not the Bristol of 10 or 20 years ago,” he said.
What’s more, the rate of increase is rising, with the number of poor students up 8 percent in just the past year, school lunch statistics show.
O’Brien called it “a tremendous increase” in the past year.
“I was pretty taken aback,” O’Brien said.
He pointed out that it is particularly alarming because the poverty rates are highest among grade school students, which could mean that the overall figures will keep on rising.
“The percentage of children in poverty is going up,” said Philip Streifer, the school superintendent.
There are “very large” numbers of students who qualify for lunch aid “in every school now” rather than having them concentrated in a few elementary schools as in the past, O’Brien said..
At the same time that poverty rates have risen, school statistics show that the percentage of students who come from homes where English is not the main language is up 20 percent over the past 10 years. A bit less than 8 percent of students don’t speak English at home.
The number of minority students is also way up.
A decade ago, they made up 13.6 percent of the student population, or about 1,000 students in all.
During the last school year, minority students constituted 23 percent of the student body as a whole, or 2,078 students. That’s twice as many minority students.
O’Brien said that educating students from poor homes is tougher – as a rule – than teaching children from more affluent homes. It takes more money and more effort, he said.
O’Brien said that the increase in poverty is directly tied to the changing housing stock in town, where more and more rental properties are owned by out-of-state investors who may not have much interest in the impact their renters have on the community.
O’Brien said the school board can only work out the best way to educate the students who walk in the door.
But, he said, City Hall had better begin to address seriously the reasons that the city’s population is growing increasingly impoverished.

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com