Early Head Start seeks classrooms
DANBURY — The bad news for 32 infants and toddlers looking for a new home for their Early Head Start program is that Danbury already has a classroom shortage crisis.
The good news is that the nonprofit which runs the city's federally funded health and readiness program has room in a cityowned building it leases to accommodate the 32
kids, if Danbury gives its permission.
The caveat is alterations are needed at the building in question — the 1872 Old Jail, a distinctive red brick structure in a section of downtown Main Street that's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“Classroom space in Danbury is in very short supply, which is why, for example, the Danbury public schools are struggling so hard to find and build new classrooms for their use,” said James Maloney, the president and CEO of the Danburybased social services nonprofit, Connecticut Institute for Communities, in a letter to the City Council. “Early childhood space, which has even more restrictive licensing and facility requirements than do public schools, is even more difficult to locate.”
The problem, Maloney said, is that the nonprofit CIFC is being asked to move its four Early Head Start classrooms out of the community building at Laurel Gardens — a federallyfunded housing community next to the police department's Main Street headquarters, where the nonprofit has served one and twoyearolds for three decades.
The solution Maloney has proposed is to move the 32 infants and toddlers to the Old Jail building at 80 Main St., where CIDC already has a lease with Danbury to run one Early Head Start class and to run its Women's Infants and Children Nutrition program.
“The WIC program can be easily relocated to other office space,” Maloney wrote to the City Council. “In turn, the then former WIC space can be conveniently converted into classroom space.”
Maloney noted that the renovations would not alter the integrity of the historically designated Old Jail, a Napoleon IIIstyle structure with a threestory watch tower, which was a working jail as late as 1969, before Danbury converted it to a senior center in 1983.
The city will consider the proposal during a committee meeting of council members and department heads.
On Wednesday Maloney said his preference would be to keep the four Early Head Start classes where they have been for decades.
“All we have been told is that the Danbury Housing Authority is interested in doing some revamping of that community house, and we don't want to get in the way of that progress,” Maloney said. “If we can work this out with the city in a way that makes sense, then everybody can win.” Mayor Joe Cavo agreed.
“He wants to get the ball rolling and I don't blame him,” Cavo said on Wednesday. “I don't have a problem with it.”
Early Head Start is not to be confused with Head Start — an older federal school readiness program for three and fouryearolds. The Early Head Start program, launched in the early 1990s is based on studies that the earlier atrisk kids get health and readiness support, the better they perform in school.
In addition to the four Early Head Start classrooms CIFC runs at Laurel Gardens and the one class it runs at the Old Jail, CIFC runs four other Early Head Start classes at its Foster Street complex, for total of 72 infants and toddlers.
“This is a tremendously important program that has shown to be tremendously effective,” Maloney said.