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Volume 26, Number 15
GIVING GARDEN RETURNS The Giving Garden of Durham-Middlefield, conceived years ago by Coginchaug Area Transition, broke ground in the fall of 2018, and its first crop resulted in some 800 pounds of produce being donated to the Durham and Middlefield food banks and senior services and to Middletown soup kitchens. The garden, located behind the community center on Main Street in Middlefield, is back for year No. 2 (see Page 5 for an update). Pictured: Chad and Atticus Reddick stand with Tina Gossner after planting a welcoming redbud tree at the Giving Garden donated by Country Flower Farms in Middlefield.
Door-knocking will begin in Aug. Over the next decade, lawmakers, business owners, and many others will use 2020 Census data to make critical decisions. The results will show where communities need new schools, new clinics, new roads, and more services for families, older adults and children.
In short, your response matters. Currently, the national rate of response is 61.9 percent, while 65.3 percent of Connecticut residents have responded.
Meanwhile, both Durham and Middlefield are well ahead of the national and The results will also inform state rate, as 74 percent of how hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding are Durham residents and 73.9 percent of Middlefield resiallocated to more than 100 dents have responded to the programs, including Medicensus. caid, Head Start, block grants for community mental health services and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.
Your answers are so important that the Census Bureau will come knocking on your door to count people living
in your household. Because of the pandemic, the Census Bureau is adapting or delaying some operations to protect the health and safety of staff and the public while still making sure the population is counted. See Census, A16
Friday, July 10, 2020
Effectiveness of distance learning hard to measure By Michael Gagne Record-Journal staff
True cohesive measures of how much learning was lost and the extent of student participation during remote learning will be difficult to ascertain.
The likely toll of distance learning on the well-being of students, through social isolation and loss of learnIn Southington, school ofing, was not lost on some ficials had leaned on members of the Cheshire classroom teachers to Board of Education. check in with students to The board, meeting remake sure they were logmotely during a virtual ging into remote learning meeting last week, disprograms and participatcussed state officials’ ing in their academic plans to fully reopen lessons throughout the schools this fall, and the spring, according to Steve impact of distance learnMadancy, the district’s asing over the last months sistant superintendent for of the school year that had curriculum and instrucjust ended. tion. Board member Tim White If teachers were unable to cited a report issued by reach families, then the American Academy of school administrators and Pediatrics that remote counselors would make learning was likely to reattempts to follow up with sult in students experienc- families. ing severe learning loss “In most cases you need and social isolation. to follow up through the Board colleague Anne Har- lens of support, not rigan, in response, suggest- through the lens of you’re ed board members and the truant,” Madancy said. public need to be mindful of what schools provide for By taking a supportive, rather than punitive aptheir community. proach, educators learned “It’s not just education, it’s that some students were health, it’s social emotional not logging on because of well-being, it’s safety, it’s a range of difficulties. many, many things that our Some were as simple as public schools do for our technology. While others children,” Harrigan said. were because families The conversation came as faced economic and other Cheshire and other school hardships that were more pressing than academics. districts in the Meriden area assess the effective“School wasn’t a priority, ness of the distance learn- because their families ing programs they rolled were enduring a hardout last spring and preship,” Madancy said. pare for the physical reopening of their school buildings in September. See Learning, A9