When a stubborn pain in Nick van Terheyden’s bones would not subside, his doctor had a hunch what was wrong.

Without enough vitamin D in the blood, the body will pull that vital nutrient from the bones. Left untreated, a vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis.

A blood test in the fall of 2021 confirmed the doctor’s diagnosis, and van Terheyden expected his company’s insurance plan, managed by Cigna, to cover the cost of the bloodwork. Instead, Cigna sent van Terheyden a letter explaining that it would not pay for the $350 test because it was not “medically necessary.”

The letter was signed by one of Cigna’s medical directors, a doctor employed by the company to review insurance claims.

Something about the denial letter did not sit well with van Terheyden, a 58-year-old Maryland resident. “This was a clinical decision being second-guessed by someone with no knowledge of me,” said van Terheyden, a physician himself and a specialist who had worked in emergency care in the United Kingdom.

The vague wording made van Terheyden suspect that Dr. Cheryl Dopke, the medical director who signed it, had not taken much care with his case.

Van Terheyden was right to be suspicious. His claim was just one of roughly 60,000 that Dopke denied in a single month last year, according to internal Cigna records reviewed by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum.

The rejection of van Terheyden’s claim was typical for Cigna, one of the country’s largest insurers. The company has built a system that allows its doctors to instantly reject a claim on medical grounds without opening the patient file, leaving people with unexpected bills, according to corporate documents and interviews with former Cigna officials. Over a period of two months last year, Cigna doctors denied over 300,000 requests for payments using this method, spending an average of 1.2 seconds on each case, the documents show. The company has reported it covers or administers health care plans for 18 million people.

Before health insurers reject claims for medical reasons, company doctors must review them, according to insurance laws and regulations in many states. Medical directors are expected to examine patient records, review coverage policies and use their expertise to decide whether to approve or deny claims, regulators said. This process helps avoid unfair denials.

But the Cigna review system that blocked van Terheyden’s claim bypasses those steps. Medical directors do not see any patient records or put their medical judgment to use, said former company employees familiar with the system. Instead, a computer does the work. A Cigna algorithm flags mismatches between diagnoses and what the company considers acceptable tests and procedures for those ailments. Company doctors then sign off on the denials in batches, according to interviews with former employees who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We literally click and submit,” one former Cigna doctor said. “It takes all of 10 seconds to do 50 at a time.”

Not all claims are processed through this review system. For those that are, it is unclear how many are approved and how many are funneled to doctors for automatic denial.

Insurance experts questioned Cigna’s review system.

Patients expect insurers to treat them fairly and meaningfully review each claim, said Dave Jones, California’s former insurance commissioner. Under California regulations, insurers must consider patient claims using a “thorough, fair and objective investigation.”

“It’s hard to imagine that spending only seconds to review medical records complies with the California law,” said Jones. “At a minimum, I believe it warrants an investigation.”

Within Cigna, some executives questioned whether rendering such speedy denials satisfied the law, according to one former executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because he still works with insurers.

“We thought it might fall into a legal gray zone,” said the former Cigna official, who helped conceive the program. “We sent the idea to legal, and they sent it back saying it was OK.”

Cigna adopted its review system more than a decade ago, but insurance executives say similar systems have existed in various forms throughout the industry.

In a written response, Cigna said the reporting by ProPublica and The Capitol Forum was “biased and incomplete.”

Cigna said its review system was created to “accelerate payment of claims for certain routine screenings,” Cigna wrote. “This allows us to automatically approve claims when they are submitted with correct diagnosis codes.”

When asked if its review process, known as PXDX, lets Cigna doctors reject claims without examining them, the company said that description was “incorrect.” It repeatedly declined to answer further questions or provide additional details. (ProPublica employees’ health insurance is provided by Cigna.)

Former Cigna doctors confirmed that the review system was used to quickly reject claims. An internal corporate spreadsheet, viewed by the news organizations, lists names of Cigna’s medical directors and the number of cases each handled in a column headlined “PxDx.” The former doctors said the figures represent total denials. Cigna did not respond to detailed questions about the numbers.

Cigna’s explanation that its review system was designed to approve claims didn’t make sense to one former company executive. “They were paying all these claims before. Then they weren’t,” said Ron Howrigon, who now runs a company that helps private doctors in disputes with insurance companies. “You’re talking about a system built to deny claims.”

Cigna emphasized that its system does not prevent a patient from receiving care — it only decides when the insurer won’t pay. “Reviews occur after the service has been provided to the patient and does not result in any denials of care,” the statement said.

“Our company is committed to improving health outcomes, driving value for our clients and customers, and supporting our team of highly-skilled Medical Directors,” the company said.

PXDX

Cigna’s review system was developed more than a decade ago by a former pediatrician.

After leaving his practice, Dr. Alan Muney spent the next several decades advising insurers and private equity firms on how to wring savings out of health plans.

In 2010, Muney was managing health insurance for companies owned by Blackstone, the private equity firm, when Cigna tapped him to help spot savings in its operation, he said.

Insurers have wide authority to reject claims for care, but processing those denials can cost a few hundred dollars each, former executives said. Typically, claims are entered into the insurance system, screened by a nurse and reviewed by a medical director.

For lower-dollar claims, it was cheaper for Cigna to simply pay the bill, Muney said.

“They don’t want to spend money to review a whole bunch of stuff that costs more to review than it does to just pay for it,” Muney said.

Muney and his team had solved the problem once before. At UnitedHealthcare, where Muney was an executive, he said his group built a similar system to let its doctors quickly deny claims in bulk.

In response to questions, UnitedHealthcare said it uses technology that allows it to make “fast, efficient and streamlined coverage decisions based on members benefit plans and clinical criteria in compliance with state and federal laws.” The company did not directly address whether it uses a system similar to Cigna.

At Cigna, Muney and his team created a list of tests and procedures approved for use with certain illnesses. The system would automatically turn down payment for a treatment that didn’t match one of the conditions on the list. Denials were then sent to medical directors, who would reject these claims with no review of the patient file.

Cigna eventually designated the list “PXDX” — corporate shorthand for procedure-to-diagnosis. The list saved money in two ways. It allowed Cigna to begin turning down claims that it had once paid. And it made it cheaper to turn down claims, because the company’s doctors never had to open a file or conduct any in-depth review. They simply denied the claims in bulk with an electronic signature.

“The PXDX stuff is not reviewed by a doc or nurse or anything like that,” Muney said.

The review system was designed to prevent claims for care that Cigna considered unneeded or even harmful to the patient, Muney said. The policy simply allowed Cigna to cheaply identify claims that it had a right to deny.

Muney said that it would be an “administrative hassle” to require company doctors to manually review each claim rejection. And it would mean hiring many more medical directors.

“That adds administrative expense to medicine,” he said. “It’s not efficient.”

But two former Cigna doctors, who did not want to be identified by name for fear of breaking confidentiality agreements with Cigna, said the system was unfair to patients. They said the claims automatically routed for denial lacked such basic information as race and gender.

“It was very frustrating,” one doctor said.

Some state regulators questioned Cigna’s PXDX system.

In Maryland, where van Terheyden lives, state insurance officials said the PXDX system as described by a reporter raises “some red flags.”

The state’s law regulating group health plans purchased by employers requires that insurance company doctors be objective and flexible when they sit down to evaluate each case.

If Cigna medical directors are “truly rubber-stamping the output of the matching software without any additional review, it would be difficult for the medical director to comply with these requirements,” the Maryland Insurance Administration wrote in response to questions.

Medicare and Medicaid have a system that automatically prevents improper payment of claims that are wrongly coded. It does not reject payment on medical grounds.

Within the world of private insurance, Muney is certain that the PXDX formula has boosted the corporate bottom line. “It has undoubtedly saved billions of dollars,” he said.

Insurers benefit from the savings, but everyone stands to gain when health care costs are lowered and unneeded care is denied, he said.

Speedy reviews

Cigna carefully tracks how many patient claims its medical directors handle each month. Twelve times a year, medical directors receive a scorecard in the form of a spreadsheet that shows just how fast they have cleared PXDX cases.

Dopke, the doctor who turned down van Terheyden, rejected 121,000 claims in the first two months of 2022, according to the scorecard.

Dr. Richard Capek, another Cigna medical director, handled more than 80,000 instant denials in the same time span, the spreadsheet showed.

Dr. Paul Rossi has been a medical director at Cigna for over 30 years. Early last year, the physician denied more than 63,000 PXDX claims in two months.

Rossi, Dopke and Capek did not respond to attempts to contact them.

Howrigon, the former Cigna executive, said that although he was not involved in developing PXDX, he can understand the economics behind it.

“Put yourself in the shoes of the insurer,” Howrigon said. “Why not just deny them all and see which ones come back on appeal? From a cost perspective, it makes sense.”

Cigna knows that many patients will pay such bills rather than deal with the hassle of appealing a rejection, according to Howrigon and other former employees of the company. The PXDX list is focused on tests and treatments that typically cost a few hundred dollars each, said former Cigna employees.

“Insurers are very good at knowing when they can deny a claim and patients will grumble but still write a check,” Howrigon said.

Muney and other former Cigna executives emphasized that the PXDX system does leave room for the patient and their doctor to appeal a medical director’s decision to deny a claim.

But Cigna does not expect many appeals. In one corporate document, Cigna estimated that only 5% of people would appeal a denial resulting from a PXDX review.

“A negative customer experience”

In 2014, Cigna considered adding a new procedure to the PXDX list to be flagged for automatic denials.

Autonomic nervous system testing can help tell if an ailing patient is suffering from nerve damage caused by diabetes or a variety of autoimmune diseases. It’s not a very involved procedure — taking about an hour — and it costs a few hundred dollars per test.

The test is versatile and noninvasive, requiring no needles. The patient goes through a handful of checks of heart rate, sweat response, equilibrium and other basic body functions.

At the time, Cigna was paying for every claim for the nerve test without bothering to look at the patient file, according to a corporate presentation. Cigna officials were weighing the cost and benefits of adding the procedure to the list. “What is happening now?” the presentation asked. “Pay for all conditions without review.”

By adding the nerve test to the PXDX list, Cigna officials estimated, the insurer would turn down more than 17,800 claims a year that it had once covered. It would pay for the test for certain conditions, but deny payment for others.

These denials would “create a negative customer experience” and a “potential for increased out of pocket costs,” the company presentation acknowledged.

But they would save roughly $2.4 million a year in medical costs, the presentation said.

Cigna added the test to the list.

“It’s not good medicine”

By the time van Terheyden received his first denial notice from Cigna early last year, he had some answers about his diagnosis. The blood test that Cigna had deemed “not medically necessary” had confirmed a vitamin D deficiency. His doctor had been right, and recommended supplements to boost van Terheyden’s vitamin level.

Still, van Terheyden kept pushing his appeal with Cigna in a process that grew more baffling. First, a different Cigna doctor reviewed the case and stood by the original denial. The blood test was unnecessary, Cigna insisted, because van Terheyden had never before been found to lack sufficient vitamin D.

“Records did not show you had a previously documented Vitamin D deficiency,” stated a denial letter issued by Cigna in April. How was van Terheyden supposed to document a vitamin D deficiency without a test? The letter was signed by a Cigna medical director named Barry Brenner.

Brenner did not respond to requests for comment.

Then, as allowed by his plan, van Terheyden took Cigna’s rejection to an external review by an independent reviewer.

In late June — seven months after the blood test — an outside doctor not working for Cigna reviewed van Terheyden’s medical record and determined the test was justified.

The blood test in question “confirms the diagnosis of Vit-D deficiency,” read the report from MCMC, a company that provides independent medical reviews. Cigna eventually paid van Terheyden’s bill. “This patient is at risk of bone fracture without proper supplementations,” MCMC’s reviewer wrote. “Testing was medically necessary and appropriate.”

Van Terheyden had known nothing about the vagaries of the PXDX denial system before he received the $350 bill. But he did sense that very few patients pushed as hard as he had done in his appeals.

As a physician, van Terheyden said, he’s dumbfounded by the company’s policies.

“It’s not good medicine. It’s not caring for patients. You end up asking yourself: Why would they do this if their ultimate goal is to care for the patient?” he said.

“Intellectually, I can understand it. As a physician, I can’t. To me, it feels wrong.”

This story was originally published March 25, 2023, by ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.

A new bill is generating support from Hartford’s North End advocates who are seeking systemic changes after what they’ve described as years of sewage and flooding problems in their community.

Activist Bridgitte Prince says the proposal under consideration in the Connecticut legislature has bipartisan support and was introduced by state Rep. Tom Delnicki, R-South Windsor.

The bill, in its initial draft, calls for a number of actions, including forming a task force to examine the operation of the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC), requiring annual audits by the Auditors of Public Accounts and enforcing of a code of ethics.

In public testimony earlier this month, MDC’s district counsel, Christopher R. Stone, opposed the legislation. He said many of the measures are redundant, noting that MDC is already independently audited annually and has an established code of ethics. He described the legislation as generally unnecessary and said it could cause harm.

The legislative action comes as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) met with North End residents in February.

After several community meetings with officials and complaints from the community, the Greater Hartford NAACP demanded the city of Hartford, the MDC, the state Department of Public Health, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the EPA take “necessary actions to right these wrongs.”

“We cannot continue to ignore the fact that these issues are not isolated incidents but rather the result of a long history of systemic discrimination and neglect,” the NAACP said.

Advocates said the sewage and flooding issues in the North End are due to discrimination and inaction. J. Stan McCauley, president of the Greater Hartford African American Alliance, said these are known and ongoing issues of racial and environmental justice.

“The Black and brown community in North End Hartford winds up being the community that is discriminated against because someone made the decision to put them last on the list,” McCauley said. “But the sewage separation from the clean water has more to do with ensuring that nitrogen is not discharged into the Connecticut River.”

Prince said the sewage and flooding problems have been exacerbated by climate change and extreme weather events, further compounding the harm inflicted on these communities.

“We are bracing ourselves because of the storm season, which comes in the spring and the summer, to see what happens because climate change is not only coming, it’s here,” she said.

The proposal has received bipartisan support, including from state Rep. Geraldo Reyes Jr., D-Waterbury.

“I am backing a bill proposed to expand the existing law’s scope and strengthen the language,” Reyes said. “We are all aware that power plants, sewage treatment centers, waste incinerators and landfills are disproportionately causing harm to low-income communities and communities of color throughout Connecticut.”

Meanwhile, in Hartford, Councilman Thomas “TJ” Clarke II said a city resolution has been introduced to create a sustainability plan and implement new environmental measures.

The EPA, which has been inspecting the MDC, told Connecticut Public it expects to complete its report this month.

This story was first published March 20, 2023 by Connecticut Public.

Connecticut lawmakers are considering a bill that would establish safe injection sites and more accessible mental and physical health services in the state. This harm reduction approach looks to prevent further overdose deaths.

Safe injection sites, also known as supervised injection sites, are places where people can inject opioids like heroin while under medical supervision to remove the risk of overdose or the spread of disease from shared needles.

State Senator Dr. Saud Anwar (D-East Hartford), who chairs the legislative Public Health Committee, led a roundtable Wednesday with Mark Jenkins, executive director for the Connecticut Harm Reduction Alliance, John Lally, nurse practitioner and executive director for Today I Matter Inc., and Traci Eburg, community engagement specialist at McCall Behavioral Health Network.

“Even one more death is too many,” Anwar said, “and we have to intervene.”

He noted that overdose deaths have overtaken gun violence, car accidents and suicides as a cause of death in the state — and across the country. He also said Connecticut is losing over 1,000 people annually and four people daily to opioid overdoses.

Connecticut would be the third state to implement these harm reduction sites after New York and Rhode Island. Advocates in New York City said the measure has prevented thousands of opioid overdoses and saved taxpayers $35 million after the opening of their safe injection sites.

“We are asking you all to think outside the box,” Jenkins said. “These are all things that are proven, that are credible, that have data behind them.”

Lally highlighted that it’s important to focus on the people who make up the statistics about overdoses, not just the numbers themselves. Lally lost his son Timothy to an overdose in 2016.

“Today when you hear people who will be hesitant about this policy, ask them how many more? Because if there’s a number they are waiting for I would like to know what that number is,” Anwar said.

This story was first published March 22, 2023 by WSHU.

A bill that would remove the legislature from the process of approving charter schools in Connecticut, which advocates say will allow these institutions to open more quickly, was approved by the Education Committee on Friday despite a Thursday evening email from two teacher’s unions that several lawmakers viewed as a “threat.”

The bill would reverse a 2015 law that requires approval from the state Board of Education and the legislature before a charter school can open.

Before voting, several lawmakers made reference to the email to committee members, in which the Connecticut Education Association and AFT CT expressed their opposition to the legislation.

“This is one of the bills CEA will be scoring as part of our 2023-24 legislative report card,” the email read in its opening sentences.

According to AFT CT‘s website, the union represents approximately 30,000 teachers and school staff. CEA represents over 43,000 teachers, school support staff and higher education faculty throughout Connecticut.

“I’ll just simply say, whether or not you agree or disagree, that this is your decision to remain today, and hopefully that is not swayed or influenced by any sort of attempt at veiled threats of whether or not this vote is going to be counted as any sort of way, with any sort of organizations, that may or may not have been appropriately addressed to the committee in such a manner,” said Committee Co-chair Rep. Jeff Currey, D-East Hartford, before the vote.

The email highlighted several reasons for the unions’ opposition to Senate Bill 1096, including that the current process “provides necessary checks and balances between administrative and legislative branches.”

“This bill would be an abdication of legislative control over tens of millions of dollars for public education, setting a bad precedent for public school funding in Connecticut,” the email said.

Sen. Doug McCrory, D-Hartford, who is also a co-chair on the committee, said in 19 years of serving as a state legislator, he had never received an email like that.

“You all read the letter, and they’re going to take score of how you all vote on this one piece of legislation,” McCrory said. “That letter that came from CEA and AFT was very, very — I don’t even want to use the word — and unfortunately, that has placed a bull’s-eye on each and every single one of our backs.”

For nearly 20 years, Connecticut charter schools only needed approval from the state Board of Education before being built and funded. Charter school proposals have to undergo an extensive process before approval, including an analysis of the school’s curriculum, model and community need. There also must be public hearings to determine if there’s a demand and local support from constituents. Applications often take over a year to be considered.

Legislation in 2015 instituted a two-tier approval system, where the state Board of Education grants initial approval, but lawmakers grant the school’s funding.

Since the change, no charter school has been built in the state, although two — based in Danbury and Norwalk — received state Board of Education approval in 2018 but have been waiting in limbo for funding ever since.

Earlier this month, the state Board of Education also approved two more charter schools — one in Middletown and another in New Haven.

“I’m supporting this bill today, not that it solves for the travesty that has been Danbury struggle, but because no community should ever have to go through what we’ve been through,” Rep. Rachel Chaleski, R-Danbury, said. “This is about choice … and in Danbury, we have the largest high school in the state, and while it’s a phenomenal school … not everyone can thrive at such an environment and … if we could help a small percentage of students get what they need, why wouldn’t we help them?”

Similar to Chaleski, many lawmakers voiced their experiences with charter schools, including emotional testimony from McCrory, who recalled his time as a teacher in Hartford and how parents in the late 1990s were begging for other educational options beyond traditional public schools.

Residents of color across the state continue to demand more school choices, McCrory said.

“These communities … who are underserved, marginalized, underrepresented and under-resourced … these [communities are] largely Black and brown children and families, and they’re poor, and they want another option,” McCrory said. “It’s time for us in this state to give our parents a choice and give these children a chance.”

The vote on SB 1096 split party lines but ultimately passed.

At the committee meeting, legislators also voted on another 18 bills, including House Bill 5003, which would accelerate ECS funding to schools across the state. HB 5003 passed unanimously.

Engaging in debates over policy and process, legislators split along party lines Friday as the Environment Committee sent to the floors of the House and Senate two bills addressing Connecticut’s struggle to manage solid waste disposal and curb climate change.

Both bills were rewritten in recent days to shed or sweeten controversial provisions, but the ultimate fates of the legislation still will turn in part on how lawmakers who stand for reelection every two years weigh near-term risks of market disruptions against long-term risks of moving too slowly.

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House Bill 6664 is the Lamont administration’s ambitious attempt to end the annual export of 860,000 tons of trash to Midwest landfills by increasing recycling, removing food from the waste stream and pressuring manufacturers to reduce packaging, among other things.

Senate Bill 1145 is a legislative initiative supported by the administration to give the commissioner of energy and environmental protection more authority to press individual sectors of the economy to meet Connecticut’s existing goals of reducing greenhouse gases to 80% of 2001 levels by 2050.

Both bills passed Friday afternoon.

The vote on the climate bill came in the same week that the United Nations warned in an alarming new report that only an immediate shift from fossil fuels will save the planet from crossing a dangerous global warming threshold in as little as a decade.

“I have no doubt in my mind that we need to discuss ways we can curb our carbon emissions or carbon footprint. We should be doing it,” said Sen. Stephen Harding of Brookfield, the ranking Senate Republican on Environment. “But let’s have a debate as a committee, actually a real discussion like we had about TCI, about whether or not this is good policy. What this is doing is saying, ‘Let the commissioner do it.’” 

TCI is the Transportation and Climate Initiative that failed in the 2020 legislative session after Republicans branded its funding source from an increase in gasoline prices as a tax. Republicans claim the climate bill would allow the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to unilaterally implement TCI.

Democrats and advocates say that is false. 

“The idea that somehow this bill gives Connecticut the authority to unilaterally implement TCI is just not based upon the facts,” said Charles Rothenberg, a lobbyist and lawyer for Save the Sound. “It’s giving the agency the tools to do what the legislature has told them to do.”

TCI is a regional policy that would require reopening multi-state talks, and any measure with a significant fiscal impact would be subject to legislative review, he said.

“A lot of this framing is about distrust of the administration,” Rothenberger said.

The Republican minority objected to the climate-change bill with a flurry of failed amendments directed at what the GOP insisted was a delegation of legislative authority that would almost certainly result in actions moving the state away from fossil fuels and likely increasing the cost of energy, at least in the short term.

“It’s going to be devastating to our economy if it goes further,” said Rep. Patrick Callahan of New Fairfield, the ranking House Republican on the committee. “And I certainly will go back to my my district and tell them I voted no on increasing all their energy costs.”

Some of the opposition was directed at Katie Dykes, the environmental commissioner whom they faulted for seeking dramatic change, especially in the waste-and-recycling industry, without laying the groundwork through negotiations and outreach. 

The waste bill would commit Connecticut to embracing EPR, or “extended producer responsibility,” which would shift the costs and potentially control of recycling from municipalities to industry stewardship programs.

In a thinly veiled jab at Dykes, Rep. Thomas O’Dea, R-New Canaan, said, “I think what you’re hearing here today is a desire to have more open communication with those that are being affected by such drastic policies coming coming from our government.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Sen. Rick Lopes, D-New Britain, co-chair of Environment.

The waste bill was rewritten to strike a $5 a ton fee on municipalities for every ton of waste shipped to out-of-state landfills. The EPR section was amended to delay implementation until at least four other states with an aggregate population of 20 million did so, including at least one bordering Connecticut.

Even with the change, Republicans objected, saying its benefit was unclear and its potential for upending the state’s single-stream recycling was real. A Republican amendment to strike the EPR provision failed.

Rep. Christine Palm, D-Chester, said the EPR provision would provide a necessary push on manufacturers to use more environmentally sensitive packaging or take responsibility for its recycling.

“I believe that some of us have been waiting all our lives, all our lives, for industries to do the right things voluntarily,” Palm said. “And if they do not want the heavy hand of government coming down and telling them what to do, then they should self-police and pivot their business model the way so many other parts of our society have had to do because of changing times.”

The climate bill was amended to strike requirements for improvements to small gas engines. But Republicans said its reach still was too great, especially its demand that agriculture share in the responsibility for reducing carbon emissions.

“I don’t think it’ll come as a surprise to anybody on the committee or in this room: Cows fart. They produce methane when they fart,” said Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican lawyer from the rural eastern Connecticut community of Chaplin. “They also burp. So do pigs.”

Dubitsky interpreted that to mean agriculture could be banished by an order of the commissioner of energy and environmental protection, an assertion that drew more laughs than serious rebuttal.

Lopes took a moment to say he was envisioning how the environment might be protected from animal flatuence.

Dykes has not suggested cows or pigs be banished from Connecticut.

In 2017, the Connecticut legislature passed a law that required towns to submit affordable housing plans every five years.

By the time the deadline came around on June 1, 2022, fewer than half of the state’s municipalities had finished their plans. Data updated in January show that 36 towns have still not submitted their plans.

By making the plans, towns were supposed to provide evidence that they were working on a problem that experts say has escalated to a crisis: the lack of affordable housing in Connecticut.

Connecticut lacks nearly 90,000 units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest-income renters, according to the latest estimates from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The 2023 estimates show that the problem is worsening. Last year’s numbers showed a lack of closer to 86,000 units.

The legislature is considering a few measures to increase the stock, including a couple of statewide zoning reform measures. Experts have said that much of the problem in Connecticut stems from restrictive local zoning ordinances, while many local leaders and legislators say statewide reforms impose a one-size-fits-all solution and dilute local control.

The city cops who have been arrested and are on the brink of being fired for mishandling Richard ​“Randy” Cox said they thought the now-paralyzed 36-year-old arrestee was drunk, intentionally noncompliant or otherwise faking his injuries, according to an internal police investigation.

The investigation’s findings, detailed over the course of a 70-page Internal Affairs (IA) report written by Sgt. Rosa Melendez and Lt. Manmeet Colon on March 6, pertain to the June 19, 2022 arrest, transfer, and detention of Cox.

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The report provides the first public look at how the police officers involved in this nationally controversial case explain their actions over the course of a night that left Cox paralyzed from the chest down, living at a rehabilitation facility, and seeking $100 million from the city for alleged violations of his civil rights.

The Independent obtained a copy of the IA report via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request one day after Police Chief Karl Jacobson announced that he has recommended that the Board of Police Commissioners fire Sgt. Betsy Segui and Officers Oscar Diaz, Jocelyn Lavandier, and Luis Rivera for their actions that June night. The four officers, along with recently retired former Officer Ronald Pressley, have also each been arrested and charged with one misdemeanor count of second-degree reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of ​“cruelty to persons.” All five arrested cops have pleaded not guilty to those charges.

Click here to read a redacted version of the 70-page IA report in full.

The IA report comes roughly nine months after police arrested Cox on weapons charges without incident at a Lilac Street block party on June 19, 2022. En route to the police station, Officer Diaz, the driver of a prisoner conveyance van, slammed on the brakes to avoid crashing into another vehicle at the intersection of Division and Mansfield Streets. That abrupt stop sent Cox flying head first into the wall of the van, injuring his neck and spine. The driver of the van later called for medical help but, instead of asking for an ambulance to come to the scene, the driver proceeded to take Cox to the detention center at 1 Union Ave. There, rather than waiting for a medical crew to attend to Cox’s crumpled and paralyzed body, officers at the police lock-up accused Cox of lying, demanded he stand up, pulled him out of the van, placed him in a wheelchair, then dragged him across the floor into a cell.

At least three of the officers interviewed in the IA report — Lavandier, Rivera, and Segui — told investigators they did not know that Cox was actually seriously injured when they dragged him out of a police van and into a detention cell last June. 

Instead, those three officers claimed, they thought Cox was intoxicated and intentionally going limp so as not to comply with the cops’ orders. Lavandier and Rivera also reported smelling the odor of an alcoholic beverage from the van in which Cox was transported.

In a follow up phone interview with the Independent Thursday, Chief Jacobson remained unconvinced by that excuse.

“Even if they are drunk or sick, you shouldn’t treat them that way,” Jacobson said about how the involved officers handled Cox that night nine months ago. 

Some of the core tenets of “legitimacy” policing, he continued, are giving people a voice, treating people with dignity, and ​“neutrality in decision making. You have to be neutral. Even though Randy’s a felon who got caught with a gun,” you have to be neutral in decision-making, he said. He means, if ​“he says he’s hurt,” police have to take that claim seriously and treat him accordingly.

“Even if he is drunk,” Jacobson repeated, ​“you don’t treat him that way.”

“They thought he was highly intoxicated, faking, or exaggerating”

Nevertheless, time and again in their interviews with investigators, the involved officers offer that explanation for their actions.

For example, a section of the IA report detailing Lavandier’s Feb. 9 interview with police investigators states that Lavandier didn’t learn about the extent of Cox’s injuries until the next day after his arrest and detention.

“At the conclusion of [Lavandier’s] statement, she stated if faced with the same situation and having no additional information, she wouldn’t have changed anything,” the IA report reads.

“Ofc. Lavandier stated she has dealt with countless uncooperative or drunk individuals. While dealing with Cox they had to make him move because, in her mind, they thought he was highly intoxicated, faking, or just exaggerating. However, if she had more information about what happened or how Cox had been hurt, she would have done things differently and wouldn’t have touched him.

“At no point in any of her interactions with Cox did she ever think he was actually hurt. Ofc. Lavandier ended her statement by saying she loves her job and is good at her job, and she would have never done anything to anybody or to Cox to injure him.”

The section of the report detailing Rivera’s Feb. 10 interview with police investigators strikes a similar note. 

“At the conclusion of his statement, Ofc. Rivera wanted to clarify that his mindset throughout this incident was that Cox was intoxicated, he was kicking, he was uncooperative, and he did not want to be arrested. He initially thought Cox lost his balance and he fell, but it never entered his mind that Cox sustained a serious [redacted] as he did. In hindsight, knowing what he knows now, he would not have moved Cox at all. He stated it is not their intention in Detention to cause any harm or exacerbate anyone that enters the facility. looking back now there was nothing obvious to him that presented he was seriously [redacted.]”

And in the section of the report detailing Segui’s Feb. 17 interview with police investigators, Segui describes how she did not think anything was wrong with Cox — even after the officers pulled him out of the van at the detention center and he fell to the floor. 

“Sgt. Segui stated she still didn’t see anything abnormal in what was going on because she’s dealt [with] drunk people all the time and sometimes, they get people that just act in a passive-aggressive manner, and they don’t cooperate with what is asked of them. Sgt. Segui figured Cox knew he had a gun charge, and Cox already knew his bond was going [to] be high. So when he dropped to the floor, he was a dead weight which, again, is normal behavior for someone who doesn’t want to be in Detention.”

That part of the report continues: ​“Sgt. Segui stated Cox kept saying ​‘Ahh, ahh, ahh,’ but again, she didn’t see anything wrong with him and didn’t think anything of it. She stated there was no possible way she knew what was wrong with him because she didn’t know he was injured. According to Sgt. Segui, ​‘He didn’t say he was hurt.’ And she only had the information that Ofc. O. Diaz gave her.”

And still later in describing Segui’s interview with police investigators, the report states that, after Pressley and Rivera took Cox into the holding tank, ​“Sgt. Segui stated they were talking to Cox, and Ofc. Pressley started joking with him because he was winking and smiling at Sgt. Segui while there. She started they were joking with him because she wanted him to realize — and they actually said to him ​‘We know this is about the accident and a lawsuit,’ followed by ​‘You can pretend if you want, but at some point you have to tell AMR what’s really wrong with you.’ Sgt. Segui said Cox’s response to their comments was ​‘I wouldn’t lie, I wouldn’t lie,’ but he was winking and smiling at them.”

Both Segui and Lavandier also claim that one of the EMTs who responded to the detention center that night said that Cox was ​“faking” after that EMT allegedly took a pen, rubbed it against Cox’s foot, and saw him hyperextend it.

A fourth interviewed officer, Diaz, told police investigators that he told Segui upon arriving at the detention center that Cox had claimed to have fallen and to be hurt. He said he told Segui that the cops shouldn’t move the transported arrestee ​“just in case.” 

The fifth officer involved in this case, Pressley, did not agree to be interviewed for this IA investigation, as he had already retired by the time the investigators reached out to him.

Ultimately, the IA report finds that Diaz, Pressley, Segui, Rivera, and Lavandier each violated a number of a number of department general orders, including rules of conduct that require city cops to be law abiding and work with integrity, trustworthiness, courtesy, and respect. 

Two other cops found at fault

The IA report also found that Sgt. Steven Spofford, who was the supervisor in charge of the area where Cox was arrested that night, violated department general orders regarding police sergeant responsibilities and radio communications. The IA report states that Spofford ​“failed to monitor the radio transmission and or intervene when Ofc. Diaz notified the dispatcher that Cox had fallen inside the van and could not move.”

And it found that Officer Robert Ortiz, who was also working at the detention center that night, violated a department general order about rules of conduct, courtesy and respect. That’s because Ortiz ​“made an insensitive, obscene comment towards Cox while Cox claimed he was injured and appeared to be in pain which was unprofessional.”

This story was originally published March 24, 2013, by the New Haven Independent.

Branford resident Alex London uses cannabis to help with lingering back pain and migraines that stem from a car crash.

London said he used to buy it from medical marijuana dispensaries near his home. But now, because of changes in how Connecticut regulates cannabis, he’s back to using his “local guy” — a grower in Maine.

“At least with him, I’m aware of where it comes from,” London said.

That matters for London because he’s worried about the amount of mold in the marijuana he smokes.

Mold is present wherever we go: It’s in our food, our medicine and our air. Because avoiding mold entirely is impossible, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows for small amounts of it in lots of consumer products. But because marijuana isn’t legal at the federal level, it’s up to states to decide how much mold in the product is too much.

And in Connecticut, that limit has been in flux. It’s currently set at 100,000 colony-forming units per gram of cannabis (a measurement expressed as CFU/g). A review by The Accountability Project found that that’s 10 times higher than the threshold in most other states that have a numeric limit for mold in marijuana.

London said his decision to procure medical marijuana elsewhere was driven by his desire to protect his own health. Mold poses a bigger risk for medical marijuana patients who are older or have compromised immune systems.

“I feel like there’s still a lot of people that aren’t aware of the fact that these standards have changed,” he said.

When medical marijuana was legalized in Connecticut in 2012, the acceptable standard was less than 10,000 CFU/g. But, in 2021, the state Department of Consumer Protection approved a request from one of the state’s testing facilities, AltaSci Laboratories, to increase the threshold to 1 million CFU/g.

State regulators have since rolled back the limit to 100,000 CFU/g, where it now stands.

Meanwhile, Northeast Laboratories, the only other lab that tests for mold in marijuana in the state, kept its standard 10 times lower. Neither lab responded to requests for comment.

DCP did not address the reasoning behind its shifting guidelines, but the agency said in a statement that the most recent change was drafted in consultation with independent microbiologists and regulators in other states and that it represents industry best practices from across the country.

Connecticut is joined only by Florida and Maryland in setting the mold limit as high as 100,000 CFU/g. But safety standards vary widely across the nation. Some states don’t measure mold levels at all, and some look only for specific, dangerous molds, operating on a pass-fail system.

“[Connecticut’s standard] isn’t as rigorous as some would like, but it is a modest level,” said Michael White, a distinguished professor at the UConn School of Pharmacy. “It can give people a moderate sense of security when they're using these types of products.”

Patients should consult with their doctors about risk associated with mold, said Cassin Coleman, vice chair of the scientific advisory committee at the National Cannabis Industry Association, an industry group. But in general, most mold in marijuana is not more dangerous than other common mold exposures.

“If a medical patient in Connecticut can have pain as the reason that they they’re getting cannabis, unless they have some other underlying immune compromising [condition], you’re not talking about things that are going to be any worse off than if you were walking down the street,” Coleman said.

As part of The Accountability Project’s research, we asked MCR Labs in Massachusetts to test a sample of marijuana from a dispensary in Connecticut. It came back showing 100 CFU/g of mold — well below the cutoff in both Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Michael Kahn, CEO of MCR Labs, said it’s evident that the marijuana safety regulatory system is piecemeal.

“We really do have a state-by-state-by-state experiment, I guess, in public health,” he said. “I just wish that the states would talk to each other more and adjust their regulations based on each other’s data.”

This story was originally published on March 22, 2023, by Connecticut Public.

On Tuesday, the human services committee passed a bill that would provide the broadest increases to the state’s Medicaid reimbursement rates for physician services in over 15 years.

“This might be one of the most important things we’re talking about right now in this entire legislative session,” said Rep. Michelle Cook, D-Torrington, during the committee vote on the measure. “We’ve heard begging and pleading on the increase of rates, and if we do not increase rates, people are going to go without services, people are going to go without care that they need.”

Medicaid, known as HUSKY in Connecticut, provides health coverage to people with incomes below certain thresholds. Over a quarter of Connecticut residents currently receive coverage through the Medicaid program.

The proposal, House Bill 6885, would, among other measures, increase the payment that physicians receive for services they deliver to patients on Medicaid by, eventually, bringing them in line with the rates paid by the Medicare program. Medicare is the federal program that provides health coverage for people 65 and older, as well as others, and, in general, pays providers much more than Medicaid. 

Specifically, the proposal would increase the rates for physician services to 70% of the Medicare reimbursement rate by June 2024 and then up to 100% of Medicare by June 2028. 

“This, to my knowledge, would be the first time the state has not only done an across the board, all physician and other practitioner rates [increase], but also the first time that they’ve proposed legislation to get to 100% of Medicare,” said Mark Schaefer, a vice president with the Connecticut Hospital Association, in an interview with the CT Mirror. 

“That is a major policy change,” he added.

“To the extent that we’ve provided adjustments, it’s been based on who’s had the most persuasive lobbyists, which seems like a really bad way of making the adjustment,” said Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, in an interview. Lesser drafted the bill with his co-chair on the human services committee, Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford. 

Even though Medicaid is a federal program, it’s managed at the state level, and each state has different rules dictating who qualifies and how much to pay providers.

Connecticut’s reimbursement rates paid to most specialists, like cardiologists and dermatologists, rank among the lowest in the nation, meaning that doctors and other care providers here receive less than most of their peers in other states to treat patients with Medicaid. 

In 2007, Connecticut set the Medicaid reimbursement rates for most physician services at 57.5% of the Medicare rate at the time. The rates have not been broadly adjusted since, meaning that many practitioners in the state receive Medicaid payments that are pegged to Medicare rates from 16 years ago, though certain providers, including primary care physicians and OBGYNs, have received rate increases.

“Low rates paid to providers are starving the care delivery system of essential resources,” Schaefer told legislators during a public hearing on the bill last week.

‘I predict disaster’

During the bill’s public hearing, several physicians also testified to explain how the low reimbursement rates can force them to see fewer patients on Medicaid or, in some cases, stop seeing them altogether.

Cara DeBenedictis is an ophthalmologist specializing in pediatric eye care. One of her offices is located in Waterbury, where, last year, nearly 90% of the population was enrolled in Medicaid. DeBenedictis said she is the only pediatric eye specialist accepting Medicaid in the area. 

“If I can’t see them, many of those children don’t get seen at all, or there is a huge delay in care that can cause significant problems for them later in life,” explained DeBenedictis. But she recently made the difficult decision to limit the number of Medicaid patients she sees because the low reimbursement rates made treating them financially unsustainable for her private practice. 

DeBenedictis said her situation is far from unique.

“If they haven’t already, most doctors are either going to stop taking Medicaid altogether or drastically reduce their numbers,” said DeBenedictis. “Within a few years, I predict disaster.”

But, she said, if the bill passes, she wouldn’t need to maintain restrictions around whom she can afford to treat.

“If the Medicaid rates were increased to at least the Medicare rates, I’d be able to see those patients now. I would just open the floodgates and let them all in,” DeBenedictis told legislators.

The bill would also increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for emergency transportation services, add five school-based services to the list of services covered by the program and require DSS to conduct a study on reimbursement rates for long-term acute care hospitals and methadone treatment centers. 

‘It’s a mess’

One of the few voices of opposition to the bill came from the Department of Social Services. 

The department would prefer that the state first conduct a study on current rates before moving forward on actually increasing the rates themselves.

A primary concern is that DSS doesn’t currently have a consolidated dataset of Medicaid provider types and their corresponding Medicaid reimbursement rates, and that would be necessary as a baseline “for a more comprehensive and well-informed approach to provider rates and fee schedules,” according to written testimony submitted by commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves.

During the bill’s public hearing, Gui Woolston, the Medicaid director at DSS, admitted that when he first joined the department about a year ago, he asked for a list of all provider types and the Medicaid reimbursement rates they receive as a percent of Medicare. He quickly learned that putting together that type of database is “more complicated than one might think.” 

“If I’m being totally honest, our process for setting those provider rates … is not systematic,” said Gui Woolston, Medicaid director at DSS. “Some providers have gotten increases, some haven’t. It’s a mess.”

The Governor’s recommended budget allocates $1 million in ARPA funding to hire a vendor to perform a “comprehensive Medicaid study” that would create a single source on all providers and the rates they receive, which DSS urged legislators to approve now and hold off on actually increasing rates until the study is completed. 

“If I had a fixed budget to spend on changing rates for Medicaid providers, I would want to think carefully and systematically across the whole program,” said Woolston when asked why the legislature should wait for a study instead of just increasing the rates immediately. Woolston said some provider types who may also be in need of rate increases would be excluded under the proposed legislation but could be included in future increases if a more thorough study were conducted first. 

Woolston raised other issues with the bill, including that several Medicaid providers may not have corresponding Medicare rates, which would complicate using Medicare as a benchmark for the increases. He also noted that most states pay less for Medicaid than they do for Medicare, and bringing the rates in line here in Connecticut would actually make the state an outlier.  

But Woolston agreed that current reimbursement rates have prevented some patients from getting the care they need.

Lesser asked Woolston about the impact on patients of using outdated Medicare as the benchmark for specialists’ Medicaid rates today.

“Have we seen access issues for folks accessing specialists due to the erosion of those rates?” asked Lesser. 

“We have, yes,” responded Woolston. 

I commend you for your recent coverage of the Connecticut bill which would allow “aid in dying” and which provides an outline of its salient features.

It is crucial for readers to know that a similar bill, despite its merits, has died in its infancy in the Judiciary Committee in recent years.  Yes, there are those who are opposed to such measures, but it begs the question, why should  “compassionate care” legislation be denied to suffering patients and families, simply because of the opposition of a few? 

In a democracy, we should have the freedom to make our own healthcare choices.  This bill is not frivolous.  It is intended for those who have a terminal illness, whose fate has already been sealed.  It allows them the choice to die with dignity, and on their own terms.  With their family, and authorized practitioners, the bill allows the dying to short-circuit their suffering and pass peacefully. 

The bill is written to safeguard against any potential abuse, with essential guardrails inserted into the legislation.  It has been carefully crafted to support and protect the dying patient, as well as to support and protect those who love them.  Contrary to some of the testimony presented in recent public hearings, “aid in dying” is not about suicide, neither does it promote it.  It is simply a measure to spare a dying patient from unnecessary pain and suffering, when it has been established that no further medical treatment is available to change the outcome. 

As a nurse and clinical social worker, I have worked with patients and families with end-of-life issues.  It is a profoundly sad time as patients confront the reality of their own death, and family members struggle to manage their loss with the myriad feelings that accompany the experience.  Family members are often exhausted, sleep deprived, and emotionally depleted in those final days.  They are torn apart by the painful reality of their loved one ravaged by illness, their powerlessness, and their excruciating grief. 

Is it not reasonable to provide the patient and their family a more gentle passage, one they can negotiate together with love and acceptance?  And would a passing agreed upon by all, assist in the grieving process for those who are left behind?  How many are left to question, in their grief, if they could have done more to assuage the suffering of their loved one? 

Finally, where is it written that it is more noble to live with protracted suffering or to die a painful death?  I would like to believe that our society has evolved beyond these simplistic  narratives so rooted in our cultural stoicism.  

As the “aid in dying” bill has ceremoniously passed to the House Judiciary Committee, I urge that our legislators take appropriate action to evaluate the details of this important legislation, conservative by all measures, and deliberately restrictive in its implementation. 

This is not the same bill that has “died in committee” in the past.  It merits a fresh, more enlightened, and more comprehensive assessment than it was allowed in the past.  It should not be stifled by those who oppose it for personal or religious reasons.  A tenet of governance is to represent the will of the people.  Those who oppose “aid in dying” can simply choose to reject it, but should not stand in the way of those who consider it a compassionate measure to ease the passage of a loved one. 

We cannot stand in judgment of those who seek a more gentle passage.  In the wise words of Bob Marley, “He who feels it, knows it more.”

Claire Walsh of Killingworth is Chair of Democratic Women In Action.

In his State of the Union speech, President Biden urged Congress and the states to “finish the job” – a call to confront and solve the various critical issues facing our nation.

But as we all know, you can’t finish a job that you’re haven’t even started. And right now, when it comes to filling any of the 11 million job openings in America, too many students across our country and right here in Connecticut leave high school without the qualifications they need to get a good-paying job.

Today, 80 percent of good-paying jobs require something beyond a high school education, and more than 50 percent require a bachelor’s degree or higher. Not only that, but people with advanced degrees are far less vulnerable to being laid off during any economic downturn. During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the unemployment rate for people with a bachelor’s degree or higher never exceeded 5 percent. At the height of the COVID-10 pandemic, it never went much beyond 8 percent. But people with a high school degree, or no college at all? Their unemployment rates during the COVID-19 pandemic hit 17.6 percent.

Unfortunately, a new report by the non-profit education equity group “All4Ed” shows that enrollment rates and college completion rates are persistently low, especially for students who have been historically marginalized when it comes to earning a postsecondary degree. All4Ed found that, compared to their white peers, Black and Latino students are less likely to be college and career ready, and therefore less likely to enroll in college. They also found that different states take wildly different approaches to measuring whether students are ready for postsecondary education in the first place.

There is hope, however.

This year, I’d like to expand Connecticut’s P-Tech program. P-TECH is an education model created by IBM to prepare young people with the academic, technical, and professional skills they need to land a 21st Century job in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.

Working together in previous sessions, Gov. Ned Lamont and legislators added seats to Norwalk’s P-Tech program for both local students and students from the surrounding communities. I’d like to see Connecticut add even more P-Tech programs in alliance districts.

Connecticut is doing what U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona (whom we all know as Connecticut’s former commissioner of the state Department of Education) recently called for when he touted “career pathways in high school that can lead to micro credentials for the jobs of today and tomorrow.”

Secretary Cardona also emphasized the need to change an ingrained belief in so many parents and high school students: “that it’s four-year-college or bust.”  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Under the leadership of Secretary Cardona, the U.S. Department of Education has launched its first Career-Connected High School program. Congress provided $25 million for grants that will be allocated later this year for partnerships among school districts, employers, and colleges to create stronger pathways from high school to higher education.

As a member of the NewDEAL Leaders (an organization of Democrats across the country), I’ve taken part in NewDEAL’s work to develop and elevate national education policy, and what I’ve seen impresses me.

Massachusetts offers students an Early College program that blends high school and college: students earn college credits, save money, and increase their likelihood of earning a college degree. What began with six programs in 2018 has now grown to 39 programs serving 6,000 students. In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis is funding workforce development grants to provide free training for high-demand job fields. California is putting half a billion dollars into competitive grants to promote pathways to high-wage, high-skill, high-growth areas, including technology, health care, education, and climate-related fields.

President Biden has laid out the challenge to America: let’s “finish the job” he started two years ago to move our country forward on several public policy fronts, including capping the cost of insulin, expanding Medicare benefits, investing in our national infrastructure and bringing more technology jobs back to America so we’re not at the mercy for foreign computer chip manufacturers.

We have the young students here in Connecticut and across our great country to get that done. All we need are more opportunities like the P-Tech program and other high school to career pathways programs that other states are investing in. Now is indeed the time to “finish the job.”

 Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) is the Connecticut State Senate Majority Leader

I am writing in support S.B. 1105,– An Act Concerning The Percentage of Courses Taught by Part-Time Faculty At the Regional, Community-Technical Colleges — a bill that has the potential to become historic legislation.

S.B. 1105 would dramatically improve teaching and learning on our college campuses. It would also address the longstanding, dishonorable overreliance on exploited part-time labor to teach the vast majority of students on community college campuses.

SB 1105 would require the Board of Regents to permit no more than 45% of courses taught by part-time faculty after July 1, 2025, no more than 35% after July 1, 2026, and no more than 25% of such courses after July 1, 2027.

At the moment, approximately 75% of all classes taught on community college campuses in Connecticut are taught by adjunct faculty. The state of Connecticut currently has the fourth highest ratio of part-time to full-time faculty in two-year public institutions in America.

Strategic use of adjunct faculty is a way to provide diversity and expertise that is not available from full-time faculty. Adjunct faculty also provide flexibility for administrators when they need to add additional sections of a class or help build a program until full-timers can be hired.

It is not a way to run an entire system that serves our most diverse constituencies and communities.

Our current teaching workforce at community colleges in Connecticut is overwhelmingly staffed by an exploited, underpaid, precarious faculty underclass that does not have the supports and resources needed to best serve our students in our colleges.

A recent survey of adjunct faculty by A Better Connecticut Institute and our higher education unions (AFT, 4Cs, CSU-AAUP) found many adjunct faculty in our system face significant financial struggles and hardship. These survey findings, the Institute notes, “paint a picture of a higher education system in moral crisis.”

Over 1,000 adjunct faculty responded to this survey, and the findings were troubling:

• 28% of survey respondents reported difficulty affording necessities, including utilities and health care

• 15% reported applying for government benefits programs including HUSKY and SNAP

• 10% reported currently experiencing housing precarity

• 50% reported struggling financially

Equally troubling is this fact: students attending predominantly white campuses in Connecticut have a greater chance to study with full-time professors than those who attend much more diverse community colleges.

What we see at UConn, ECSU and MCC, for example, is that as Hispanic/Latino and Black student population increases from 16% to 22% to 41% respectively, the utilization of part-time, non-tenure track faculty also increases from 33% to 59% to 78%.

SB 1105 would end racialized austerity in Connecticut public higher education.

SB 1105 would give students at our state’s community colleges the same opportunities to study with full-time professors as students attending state universities and UConn.

U.S., Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona recently called for “a culture change in higher education.” Cardona has suggested that we pay less attention to so-called “elite,” wealthy institutions and focus, instead, on “institutions that serve the most students with the most to gain from a college degree.” These institutions include community colleges, HBCUs, tribal colleges, and Hispanic-serving institutions. Secretary Cardona critiqued the current state of affairs in higher education very bluntly. He noted that “institutions that serve the most students with the most to gain from a college degree have the fewest resources to invest in student success.”

This bill would address that inequity directly.

Adrianna Kezar and Daniel Maxey, nationally recognized authorities on labor issues in higher education, report that recent research suggests the rising numbers of part-time faculty, their working conditions, and the lack of support they receive from their institutions are having an adverse impact on various measures of student success.

Examples include diminished graduation and retention rates, decreased likelihood of transfer from two- to four-year institutions, lower grade point averages, and greater difficulty with major selection and persistence; these outcomes were often disproportionately experienced by students who were beginning their postsecondary education, including those in developmental or remedial courses. (see also Childress; Kezar et al.; and Kezar and Maxey “Selected Research on Connections between Non-Tenure Faculty and Student Learning”)

Kezar and Maxey also report that “although interactions and relationships with faculty members are strong predictors of learning among nearly all groups of students, they have been found to be strongest for students of color.”

This is equity and social justice public policy.

This legislation has the potential to become a national model for rebuilding community colleges will full-time faculty who have the time, professional resources, and mandate to advise, mentor, teach, and support our amazing community college students.

This is brave and important legislation.

I urge the legislature to support this bill.

Patrick Sullivan teaches English at Manchester Community College.

In 2019, Black and Hispanic people accounted for 57% of abortions in Connecticut but only accounted for 19% of the overall population.

Experts partially ascribe the trend to lower access to quality contraceptive methods, resulting from cost barriers, as well as distrust of the medical system following a history of mistreatment.

Black feminists have long criticized the mainstream feminist movement for its narrow focus on abortion while ignoring issues like health care access, sexually transmitted infections, forced sterilization and child care.

Read more: 5 things to know about abortion in Connecticut

Lauren DiMassa, the wife of former state Democratic lawmaker Michael DiMassa, was sentenced Thursday to six months in prison and another six months of home detention for helping her husband to steal more than $147,000 from the city of West Haven.

U.S. District Judge Omar Williams handed down the half-year prison sentence in the fraud case despite the fact that DiMassa is 23 weeks pregnant with her fourth child.

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After announcing the sentence, Williams explained to DiMassa that her prison sentence would begin May 23, 2023, which means she will give birth behind bars.

After the judge delivered that news, DiMassa openly wept.

Francis O’Reilly, DiMassa’s defense attorney, had asked the federal judge to consider his client’s responsibilities as a mother and to deliver a more lenient sentence that would allow her to avoid giving birth while in prison.

“The only real support these children are going to have is Mrs. DiMassa,” O’Reilly said. “These children need their mother.”

“In this case, detention would do more harm than good,” O’Reilly added.

Williams, who was appointed to the federal bench in November 2021, said he was aware of the difficulties that a six-month prison sentence would present for DiMassa and her children. But he pushed back against the argument that she should avoid time in prison simply because of her parental duties and her current pregnancy.

The federal judge then noted the seriousness of DiMassa’s crime, to which she pleaded guilty.

Federal prosecutors charged her with fraud and conspiracy for helping Michael DiMassa, who was then her boyfriend, by creating phony invoices that were passed off in West Haven city hall.

She was also accused of cashing more than a dozen checks, which were paid using federal pandemic relief funds and a “youth violence prevention” grant that was awarded to the city.

That theft was part of an even broader embezzlement scheme, which was facilitated by Michael DiMassa, who previously served as an assistant to the West Haven city council. All together, more than $1.2 million was eventually stolen from the city’s understaffed finance department.

Williams said it “bordered on the offensive” that DiMassa would plead for mercy based on the needs of her family after she admitted to stealing money that was meant to help other children in West Haven.

“Imagine the good that could have come from those funds,” Williams said.

Williams also pointed out that her current pregnancy began after she pleaded guilty to the federal conspiracy charge last July.

In response, O’Reilly argued that the pregnancy was not intentional and was not meant to manipulate the judge. He said the court system can sometimes make judges and attorneys “a little cynical.”

Williams said he was not passing judgment on the circumstances of the pregnancy, but he said he had to take into consideration the precedent it would set if he lessened the sentence because DiMassa was having another child.

“Should a court always discount a sentence simply because a defendant comes before them pregnant?” he asked.

Williams explained that granting that request would send a “perverse message” to future defendants who are facing serious criminal charges in federal court.

Medical research shows that compared with the general population, incarcerated women are at higher risk for having premature delivery and low birth-weight infants. Still, it is estimated that thousands of women give birth while incarcerated every year.

The federal prosecutors in the case, who charged four different defendants as part of the public corruption probe, told the judge that they considered DiMassa the “least culpable” person in the entire scheme.

And they argued that her husband, who will also be sentenced next month, was “the engine” that drove the fraud.

Even so, Williams emphasized that DiMassa spent more than a year helping to steal taxpayer money, which is why he also ordered her to pay back more than $147,000 in restitution to the city.

“It took you less than a year to take this money,” Williams said. “I’m giving you five years to pay it back.”

After Williams handed down his sentence, DiMassa’s attorney asked the judge to delay the start of her incarceration until after she gives birth, explaining that doctors consider her pregnancy high risk.

Williams said he would consider that motion at a later date.

Connecticut plans to spend $10 million of COVID-19 recovery funds to create a math tutoring program, for students in sixth through ninth grade, in hopes of bridging a rift in learning achievement caused by the pandemic.

The Connecticut High-Dosage Tutoring Program is expected to launch next school year, and districts will be able to apply to the state Department of Education for grant funding to participate, the state announced Wednesday. The Department of Education also says it’ll provide an approved list of tutoring providers to help start up the programs.

“The need for robust accelerated learning interventions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has never been greater, and by dedicating this funding to create an intensive tutoring program, we can provide school districts with greater support to identify students who are struggling and connect them with the resources they need to succeed,” Gov. Ned Lamont said.

“High-dosage tutoring” involves at least three 30-minute sessions per week with students, capped at a student-tutor ratio of 3-1. The tutoring is relationship-based with student monitoring to track their “knowledge and skills,” alongside oversight of tutors “to ensure high-quality interactions,” according to Duke University. The intervention method is effective in bridging gaps of learning loss that were seen in remote learning.

“We know from established research and practice that high-dosage tutoring is one of the best investments we can make to elevate student achievement,” said Department of Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker. “Few interventions have had such an unequivocally positive impact on expanding learning opportunities and closing equity gaps. State and national assessment data have repeatedly demonstrated that middle school mathematics remains an area of significant challenge.”

State assessments released last August show that on average that all students’ math scores across the state lag the farthest behind target. 

Across English, math and science, the target for the Connecticut Performance Index, or average score of students in a subject area, is a score of 75.

Prior to the pandemic, in 2018-19, high-needs students were scoring an average of 50.5 in math, which is well below the state target. The number dropped to 47.7 during the 2021-22 school year.

For students without high needs, in 2018-19, they were scoring an average of 74.4 in math. That figure also declined, to 70.6, last year.

Both Lamont’s administration and the state’s Department of Education say they hope the tutoring program will bring student achievement back to pre-pandemic levels.

“Research has found that students can learn as much as one to two years of math beyond what they might typically achieve in the classroom and experience reductions in failure rates by more than 50%” [through this tutoring], a news release from Lamont’s administration said. “Elements of Connecticut’s model, which will be released in the coming weeks, will adhere closely to these research principles.”

Jennifer Mendez, a student in Stone Academy‘s licensed practical nurse program, was scheduled to take her exit exam on July 8.

Yet after nearly two years of hard work and sacrifice, she worries it was all for nothing as she waits to see if any of her credits will be counted toward completion of her LPN certification. 

Mendez, 35, is one of hundreds of students who were studying practical nursing at one of Stone Academy’s three Connecticut campuses when it abruptly closed in February and are now caught in the crossfire between the school’s lawyers and the state Office of Higher Education. 

The nursing school closed its doors amid questions about its examination passage rates, faculty qualifications and clinical training. Since then, about 850 students have been unable to obtain their transcripts while the Office of Higher Education audits the academy’s records to determine the validity of its coursework. The state is demanding that Stone pay $200,000 for that audit. 

The clash between state officials and Stone Academy has left Mendez and her classmates in limbo. Mendez, who has been working as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home for the last 10 years, said it’s a frustrating position to be in after years of spending money and time on a program that she was hoping would help her serve her patients better.

She recalled having to watch her oldest child’s high school graduation on a computer because she had a final exam that day. She missed out on time with her mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer, to attend classes. She says she also spent hundreds of hours in class away from her 3-year-old daughter.

That’s not including countless hours studying, doing homework or driving from her home in New London to East Hartford three times a week. 

Mendez said the school notified students of the closure on Valentine’s Day.

“While we were in class that night, they sent us an email saying the school will be closing at the conclusion of tonight’s classes,” Mendez said. “There was no information given. Nothing was told to us. We had no idea.”

It felt like the school decided it was “just done with us all,” Mendez said.

“I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to all my classmates. Me and those girls have been through so much together. We’ve cried together. We laughed. We’ve helped each other pass exams. We studied together. It’s just very heartbreaking,” Mendez said. “And then it went to anger. I drove over 30,000 miles on my new car to get to this program. I missed time with my daughter. My mother got diagnosed with breast cancer while attending this program. I couldn’t be there for her. I feel like it was all for nothing.”

Until last year, Stone Academy was owned by Mark Scheinberg, the founder and president of Goodwin University in East Hartford. He was forced last May to divest and pay $1 million to resolve allegations that Stone had concealed a high rate of student loan defaults. 

Stone now is held in a trust managed by his son-in-law, Joseph Bierbaum. Scheinberg’s brother, Richard, also is a trustee.

Stone Academy, with campus locations in East Hartford, West Haven and Waterbury, now faces a new investigation by Attorney General William Tong for potential violations of the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act in regards to the closure.

“This is an active and ongoing investigation,” said Elizabeth Benton, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office. “We have received and are reviewing thousands of documents from our initial civil investigative demand. We have also sent two subsequent civil investigative demands and subpoenas for testimony to Stone’s leadership, specifically Richard Scheinberg and Joseph Bierbaum.”

Although its shutdown came without warning, evaluations of the school have been ongoing for several months, according to the state’s Office of Higher Education. 

State officials and lawyers for Stone sharply disagree over the chain of events preceding the closure, the legal basis for assessing attendance and qualifications of staff, and the propriety of the Office of Higher Education seizing student records.

“Indeed, most of the components of Stone’s programming now alleged to be deficient were reviewed and approved by DPH in October of 2021 and by OHE in January of 2022, when each agency separately approved Stone’s program,” wrote Perry Rowthorn, a former deputy attorney general who represents Stone. 

Rowthorn said in a letter to the attorney general’s office that “systemic dysfunction” and an “erratic regulatory process” within the Office of Higher Education contributed to Stone’s closure and the uncertainty over the value of the training provided to its students.

“To be very clear, Stone students’ transcripts are accurate. Students legitimately earned the clinical credits reflected on their transcripts,” Rowthorn wrote. “Students should be allowed without any further delay to obtain their transcripts and, if they wish, present them to other schools so they can continue their education.” 

Debate over scope and cost of audit

The Office of Higher Education tells a different story. 

Tim Larson, the former state senator who is executive director of the agency, said initial evaluations were underway because Stone Academy was set for its renewal process this year. Stone’s last approval was in January 2022 and was set to expire on Jan. 25 of this year. The Office of Higher Education typically begins its evaluations a few months prior to expiration.

On July 29, however, the Office of Higher Education began to investigate a compliance complaint from a student, including concerns regarding program issues like clinical cancellations and lack of attendance records, Larson said.

The school then underwent a hearing in the early fall with the Department of Public Health after analyzing its NCLEX scores, Larson added. 

The National Council Licensure Examination is the final test nursing students must pass at the end of their programs.

“[Schools] have to have a minimum of 80% [of students passing] and last year, … the highest score was [70]%,” Larson said. “[The Department of Public Health] asked them to explain, and they didn’t give a real solid answer. So, [the department], discontinued their East Hartford day program. In the meantime, … West Haven’s day and evening cohorts also were under some discussion.”

The Department of Public Health did not respond to questions from the CT Mirror about why the East Hartford day program was closed and West Haven’s programs were being monitored, or how many students at Stone Academy took the exam last year. 

The Office of Higher Education decided to hire a DPH investigator to help with additional evaluations of the nursing school for its renewal, according to Larson. 

By late December, the Office of Higher Education called for a “compliance conference,” Larson said, where the department highlighted eight significant violations at the school, including allegations that 20% of the school’s instructors were not qualified to teach.

“They had an opportunity to refute all of these violations … and they didn’t,” Larson said. “We could understand that during COVID, there were issues. We could understand that hiring, sometimes, was an issue. But when they didn’t refute any of this stuff? It caused us great alarm.”

The Office of Higher Education then requested an audit, so it could “understand, in the grand scheme of things, what the impact on these students was,” Larson said, adding that the audit would help determine how many credits and clinical hours students were missing and how to “facilitate a repair of their education.”

Larson said Stone Academy agreed to the request on Jan. 27, but over a week later, on Feb. 6, the school sent the Office of Higher Education a notice that it was planning to shut its doors. It did not notify students at the time. 

“They sent a letter to us that they closed. We did not close them,” Larson said. “In fact, I extended their authorization for two more months to accommodate an audit. … I [just] needed to understand what the damage was and if, in fact, they had the ability to patch this back up.”

Rowthorn insists in his communications with the attorney general’s office that the higher education office forced the closure, and its allegations, such as a claim of unqualified staff, are due to a misunderstanding of the law and the actual duties of some employees.

“OHE has failed to provide a detailed explanation for these allegations, but it is apparent that they are based on fundamental misunderstandings of fact and law,” Rowthorn wrote. “By way of example, most of the staff now claimed to be unqualified instructors were, in fact, staff hired to accompany students on observational clinical experiences after DPH specifically advised that no regulatory qualification requirements existed for such staff.”

The for-profit nursing school also initially agreed to pay for the audit that would analyze records for more than 800 of its students, but, after learning it could cost around $200,000, has been in a back-and-forth battle with the Office of Higher Education for weeks about who would pay the bill, Larson said.

In a letter to the attorney general’s office, Rowthorn said there is no legal requirement for such an audit when a school is closing and that a decision by federal education officials to cut off funding changes Stone’s finances.

“You point to previous indications of Stone’s willingness to fund an audit but ignore significant changes in circumstance since those discussions occurred,” Rowthorn wrote. “Stone’s financial ability to continue its programs, let alone to fund an audit, was significantly impaired by the United States Department of Education’s imposition of restricted cash flow status, a step we believe was likely motivated by OHE’s posture towards the school.” 

Larson said the Office of Higher Education had wanted to use the same firm that conducted an audit when Goodwin College purchased the University of Bridgeport. The $200,000 price tag would cover time and staffing.

“You have 800 students, you probably have to put two hours together per file … so that would be 1,600 hours,” Larson said. “Then they backfill however many people … they need to accomplish that. [The auditors] would also be coordinating an effort with my staff … so that every one of these Stone students has someone that they can talk to individually about what their concerns are.”

Rowthorn questioned the need for the audit and warned of its harm to students, to whom he insisted Stone is committed to assist.

“In that spirit, we will not condone — let alone fund — a misguided audit that will wipe away their hard-earned educational achievements,” Rowthorn wrote. “We urge OHE to deviate from a course that places its interests in direct conflict with those of Stone students and graduates.”

Cynthia Jennings, an attorney and political activist who says more than 20 women harmed by the closure have contacted her about possible litigation, is placing some fault for their situation on the Office of Higher Education. An audit now feels like a punishment toward the students, she said.

“The Office of Higher Education should have done an audit before they had that school open up. You should have done an audit before you took their student loan money,” Jennings said. “There’s no money that’s going to make up for what they’re going through right now. Some of them are homeless. They took off [work] and intentionally went and sacrificed time with their family, they got extra jobs, they took up all these loans. … Don’t just take their money and then turn around and say, ‘We’re going to investigate here to see if their courses were accredited.’ Why would they be accredited? They haven’t even had an opportunity to take their exams.”

Jennings called the audit “a mass issue of discrimination because most of those students are Black and brown students.”

During the first week of March, the Office of Higher Education held informational sessions for students to learn about future steps, including the ability to transfer credits to nearby institutions, tuition refunds and loan forgiveness.

“[The information sessions were] more for those that are willing to start over, and I just put in 18 months of my time. I can’t start over,” Mendez said, adding that the most important questions, especially for students who were close to graduating, went unanswered.

“The [other nursing schools] said until the Office of Higher Education releases our transcripts, and we know which classes are actually validated for the credits, they can’t do anything for us,” Mendez said. 

The audit is expected to take several months. 

“We want to look at your enrollment agreement and what you signed up for when you were supposed to graduate. We want to look at your transcript to see what classes you took and when you took them,” Larson said. “Then we need to overlay that against a credible faculty member for your classwork and the same thing for clinical work. [We’re] just straight up trying to clean up the transcript. … We’re probably going to have to interview some of the students. We’re going to have to interview some of the older faculty. … Then continue to sanitize the list, so that we make sure we have accurate data and that we’re in agreement on where the students can progress.”

Next steps for students

Larson said that there are four options for Stone Academy students.

“The first step is if they no longer pursue a practical nursing program, we would want their transcripts and find out how they were paying for it and then refund their tuition,” Larson said. 

Sean Seepersad, the division director of academic affairs at the Office of Higher Education, said most Stone Academy students were paying for the school through financial aid, so those refunds and loan discharges would be through the U.S. Department of Education.

“For students who paid tuition out of pocket, not federal financial aid, currently the statute allows for a refund of tuition from the student protection account for approved courses or units of instructions in which the student was unable to complete because of the closure of the school,” Seepersad continued.

Larson said students who were just starting their programs could restart at another school without waiting for the audit.

“[That’s mostly for students] who say ‘I’m not going to transfer anything. I started in December or January, so I really haven’t accumulated a transcript,’” Larson said.

Some students who were at the finish line, depending on what the audit concludes, may receive a certification of completion from the Office of Higher Education. But for those who were in the middle of their program and want to transfer their credits to another school, it will be a complicated process.

“If you’re taking Pell [Grant] money, you need to keep your loan default rate very low. … They have to have the wherewithal to pay this money back [if they continue their education],” Larson said. “[The transfer schools] also are rated on their own performances, and they don’t want to bring Stone students that are not prepared into their cohort and drag down their performance rating status. So it’s very, very complicated, and that’s where we are right now.”

Mendez said Lincoln Tech told her at an information session that she could pick up her education if her credits are validated. She said others, like Porter and Chester, told her that her credits would first need to be approved, then she’d have to undergo additional testing, which would determine her placement in the program, she said.

In the meantime, many students are hoping to rile up enough support to warrant intervention from lawmakers. 

“These young women are going to talk to legislators all over the state. They’re going to put pressure on them to pass them a special act so that they can go take their boards. They’re going to look for support so that they can have classes,” Jennings said. “We need to talk about how important it is that their elected officials protect them at this point.”

A protest outside the Office of Higher Education, which is based in downtown Hartford, is scheduled for March 28.

Either way, it’s a waiting game for Mendez and her fellow classmates.

“If it comes to worst-case scenario, where my credits aren’t validated at all, there’s Three Rivers Community College over by my house, and I figure I’ll just go to night school there and skip the LPN and go for the RN,” Mendez said. “I’ll just start over and go higher because that was originally my goal. So now I’m like, ‘Well, if none of this counts, and none of this matters, I’ll find a school closer to home, and I’ll just go that route.’”

And even though Mendez has a back-up plan, that doesn’t mean it will make the process, or the uncertainty behind it, any easier, especially if she needs to start all over again.

“[The last few months have been] countless nights of me staying up — falling asleep — on the couch with my laptop … or fights with everybody, because I’m not there, and I can’t do anything for anybody because I’m always so tired from working and going to school,” Mendez said. “It’s hard because now my daughter is getting used to me being home all the time. And when I start a program again, it’s going to be heartbreaking for her because, ‘Where’s mommy? Why isn’t mommy home?’ … [I’ll] never have time for everybody.”

Public education in Connecticut has two very different faces. That’s because the state continues to perpetuate one of the largest opportunity gaps due to an outdated funding model that discriminates based on zip code, race and economic status.

Our state is one of the wealthiest in the country, yet a $713 million statewide funding gap disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable students and perpetuates an inequitable public education system. 

For years we have been told that there are not enough resources to go around and support all schools and students. We all know this is not true! 

Gov. Ned Lamont recently released his budget proposal reflecting a projected budget surplus and budget reserve of $6.4 billion. Yet, despite this sizable surplus that could finally bring equity to education funding in our state, the governor’s proposed plan does not prioritize students. It does not include the continued phase-in of weighted funding for public schools. Nor does the governor’s $50.5 billion spending plan include additional funding for the state’s approximately 11,000 public charter school students, doing a disservice to our highest needs students.

Federal COVID-relief funds helped, but Connecticut’s schools are set to lose over $1 billion when those funds expire. This will result in the loss of classroom teachers, special education teachers, guidance counselors, tutors and instructional aides at a time when these positions remain hard to fill. Our students will suffer.

I’m sickened by the long-standing inequities in our state’s broken public education system and the elected leaders who allow it to stay that way because they do not have any skin in the game. 

As part of Connecticut’s public education system, charter schools give thousands of families educational options in communities where access to great schools is limited – often in communities of color and low-income communities. New Beginnings Family Academy (NBFA) is among 21 charter schools in Connecticut that provide families access to a great public education.

In 2002, NBFA became Bridgeport’s first elementary charter school. Of our roughly 500 students, 54 percent of our students are African-American, 44 percent are Hispanic, 13 percent are multilingual learners and about 10 percent receive special education services. Recognizing that children learn better when they see themselves reflected in their teachers, the majority of NBFA’s teachers – and our leaders – are people of color. 

NBFA focuses on the whole child, offering an emotionally responsive approach to teaching and learning in every classroom. We educate students in grades Pre-K to 8 through experience-based learning that helps them develop essential social, emotional, and critical-thinking skills. Students learn how to navigate the world around them, build confidence and master standards-based skills together. Children receive the necessary foundation to reach their full potential and be positive change-agents in their communities.  

NBFA is proof that by reimagining a more just education, we can make a big difference in the lives of students. Despite myriad challenges faced during 2021-22, students made noteworthy gains in reading and math. Based on the spring 2022 state assessment, NBFA exceeded the state average in English language arts and math growth following the return to in-person learning. NBFA was also in the top 25th percentile in reading growth. In addition, NBFA partnered with families to significantly reduce pandemic-related chronic absenteeism rates.

Like all charter schools, NBFA students enroll through a blind lottery. We open our doors to any student who applies and do the best job we can educating them with even less funding than our cash-strapped host districts. But the funds we do receive go directly to the classroom and make a tangible difference in the day-to-day lives of our teachers, students and families. We are able to offer smaller class sizes and hands-on instruction in a safe and nurturing learning environment, provide breakfast and lunch prepared onsite each day and provide teachers ongoing professional development.

Governor Lamont claims to be focused on growing Connecticut’s economy and developing our workforce. Well, a strong public education system drives economic development and guarantees a qualified workforce. However, without investments in education that equitably fund our most vulnerable students, such goals will be forever out of reach. 

The budget is not a forced choice: we can use our resources wisely and do right by our students simultaneously. Then, we will achieve our promise of an equitable education system. 

Yes, I am the leader of NBFA. I am also a parent. My husband and I exercised our right to choose the best public school for our children, which meant sending four of our six children to charter schools in Bridgeport and New Haven. And one of our grandchildren is a charter student in the Hartford area. My family has real skin in the game. 

Education is a right not a privilege. Yet, the current status quo system only works for a few who already can afford all the choices in the world – like moving to a wealthy neighborhood or paying for a private education – while severely limiting opportunities for Black and brown families who are being denied access to fully funded and great public school options. Our communities deserve a student-centered, need-based funding system regardless of their race, zip code, or type of public school they attend. 

I urge Governor Lamont and the legislature to pass a budget that permanently prioritizes students and achieves funding equity for all public schools this legislative session. Let’s stop being two-faced and fully fund ALL public schools for the first time.

Ronelle P. Swagerty is the Director and Chief Executive Officer of New Beginnings Family Academy in Bridgeport.

Currently, there have been more mass shootings than days in 2023. According to the Gun Violence Archive, as of March 16, 2023 — the 75th day –there have been a total of 95 mass shootings in the United States.

With numbers growing and a lack of consensus coming from the House and the Senate, states are left to scramble and mitigate the risk. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont is trying to reduce gun violence in Connecticut and has announced three sets of gun violence prevention proposals.

The first set of proposals tackles gun violence in Connecticut from multiple angles. Lamont wants to invest an additional $2.5 million in community violence intervention programs, ban the open carrying laws, limit handgun purchases to once a month, and update the state’s ban on unregistered “ghost guns.” The second set of proposals would close loopholes in the state’s assault weapons ban, strengthen penalties to the state’s ban on large capacity magazines to make the ban enforceable, and increase the firearms purchasing age to 21.

Lamont said, “National statistics show that Connecticut remains one of the safest states in the country and violent crime has been decreasing here over the last several years, but even one shooting is one too many.” He is right. One shooting is one too many.

Out of all his suggestions, the most controversial yet important change is through raising the firearm purchasing age to 21. Currently, federal law already restricts those younger than 21 from buying a handgun but says nothing about the age to purchase a long gun. This loophole allows 18-year-olds to purchase long guns such as semi-automatic AR-15-style rifles.

It is no shock that Connecticut has been the driver for gun safety and regulation. The anti-gun advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety has stated that Connecticut has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation. Out of a composite score of 100, Connecticut ranks 78.5 for gun law strength.

The state has carried the weight and burden of gun violence since the brutal murder of 20 children and seven adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. With the addition of closing long-gun loopholes and raising the purchasing age, murderers like 20-year-old Adam Lanza, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, and 18-year-old Salvador Ramos will not be able to purchase long-guns.

Loopholes regarding the purchasing age of long-guns must be federally restricted. By this, we need to enforce a federal law that discusses the age to purchase a long gun. A report published January 2023 estimates out of 193 mass shooting incidents, 93 mass shooting incidents were conducted with a long gun (63 rifles, 30 shotguns).

Public opinion predominantly supports raising the federal age to purchase firearms. According to Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University Poling Analyst, “as mass murders by teenage killers tear at the heart of the country, Americans say by a three to one margin, you should be 21 to buy a gun.”

Although the public agrees that a federal law should raise the purchasing age of long-guns (semi-automatic weapons), certain politicians and gun rights advocate groups refuse to allow for new legislation. Some may argue that raising the age is discriminatory, but that is absurd. There is no situation where an 18-year-old needs an AR-15 for routine protection. If the true issue resides with protection, then there are other means that individuals under 21 can rely on.

Governor Lamont is doing what he can to protect his constituents from the plague that is gun violence. However, the federal government needs to implement similar policies on a national basis. By continually allowing people to purchase long-guns at the age of 18, they are feeding into mass shootings.

Enough with ‘Thoughts and Prayers.’ It is time for action AND deliverables. Federal legislation needs to mirror strong states, like Connecticut, to ensure that gun violence does not surpass the previous year’s record of 648 mass shootings.

If other states follow this lead, the possibility of national legislation grows perceptively. Connecticut is the model for advancement in the fight against gun violence.

Haley Gervino lives in Storrs.

There is nothing harder in the work life of child welfare professionals than the loss of a child. While much of the work in child welfare is marked by success stories, thanks to the tireless efforts of those in the child welfare field who care deeply about the safety and well-being of children and families they serve, the reality is that no system or combination of systems can prevent all tragedies.

This is true for other systems, such as transportation and health care, but these systems have adapted to address critical incidents utilizing evidence-based, safety disciplines to mitigate future occurrences and create a more trustworthy system of transportation or health care delivery.

Today, the child welfare field is working toward a similar goal to implement safety science by better understanding system risks and how to reduce deaths from abuse or neglect.

How does this work in practice?

The Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) is one of 35 jurisdictions working to answer that question by adapting safety science in child welfare. As part of the National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS), a quality improvement collaborative formed in 2018 to reduce child maltreatment fatalities through the application of safety science and shared data, Connecticut’s DCF is joining with state, county and tribal child-serving agencies from across the nation to strengthen families, promote innovations, and foster a public health response to reducing and preventing child maltreatment and child fatalities.

As an evidence-based field of discipline, safety science expands the scope of learning beyond an individual case to a systemwide comprehensive analysis. This process reinforces that empowering and supporting families does not rest solely with the child protective services agency – but the entire child welfare system – of which the state agency is a part.

In the context of child welfare, it utilizes a standardized critical incident review process, coupled with data analysis across multiple jurisdictions to identify systemic challenges that serve as barriers to child safety.

In essence, safety science provides a framework and processes for child protection agencies to understand the inherently complex nature of the work and the factors that influence decision-making. Most importantly, it also provides a safe and supportive environment for professionals to process, share and learn from critical incidents to mitigate the potential for future tragedies. That is why, in Connecticut, we have implemented a “Safe and Sound” culture across all levels of the DCF where staff openly express their views in an honest and straightforward manner regarding casework decisions to create an authentic learning environment.

A safety science approach must also be cultivated throughout the agency — from top to bottom — and with external partners, including constituent partners and those with lived expertise, to promote learning. Tools are created to collect data and identify and understand systemic barriers to child safety, and to guide recommendations to effectuate change.

Data sharing across jurisdictions is another important tool in safety science. When each jurisdiction looks at its own data in isolation, the numbers are small and less informative. Having a national collaborative approach to data collection allows for the identification of meaningful trends and patterns, enhancing the visibility of areas for child safety improvements.

In Connecticut, we have already begun the data exchange process with other jurisdictions, both locally and nationally. Our data is collected as part of a Special Qualitative Review (SQR) process that we initiate after a child fatality or near fatality to assess all components of our case practice, adherence to policy and strengths. We then extrapolate major themes across the data to help generate a learning forum to examine outcomes and make recommendations for practice and systematic improvements.

All of these efforts and strategies reflect many of the recommendations of the federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, established by Congress as part of the Protect Our Kids Act of 2012. In its groundbreaking 2016 report, the commission emphasized that fatalities are preventable and identified three fundamental components to improving our child welfare systems based on a public health approach: 1) leadership and accountability; 2) decisions grounded in better data and research; and 3) multidisciplinary support for families.

This concept integrates a broad spectrum of partners and systems to identify, test, and evaluate strategies to provide upstream, preventative, and earlier intervention supports and services that can strengthen the building blocks of healthy families. It represents a system that is focused less on a child protection response to abuse and neglect and more on building the well-being of all children throughout our communities.

As many child welfare systems are working toward a more preventative, upstream approach, safety science enables child welfare staff and leaders to work within jurisdictions and across the sector to build a learning community around safety science, shared data and the application of a standardized platform for critical incident review.

This work will help to strengthen families, promote innovations in safety culture, and, most importantly, reduce the potential for future tragedies from child maltreatment.

Jodi Hill-Lilly is deputy commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families and executive committee co-chair of the National Partnership for Child Safety. Chip Spinning is executive director of Franklin County Children Services in Ohio and executive committee co-chair of the National Partnership for Child Safety. Michael Cull, Ph.D., is Associate Director, Center for Innovation in Population Health; Associate Professor, Health Management and Policy, University of Kentucky, College of Public Health, and technical assistance provider to the National Partnership for Child Safety.

Last year, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) provided an important service to patients struggling with serious illnesses. He chaired a Senate hearing on the role that pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, play in the price and accessibility of critically needed medicines.

In that hearing, Sen. Blumenthal pointed out that the largest PBMs – who hold the power over medicine availability for millions of Americans – were excluding hundreds of drugs from their formularies and, therefore, making them inaccessible to patients.

Since that hearing, the PBM stranglehold on our health and well-being has only tightened. Out-of-pocket drug costs are unaffordable for far too many, and the system has been structured to force patients to use medicines that are best for the PBMs’ financial bottom line even if they are not what our physicians have determined are best for treating our conditions.

It’s time for Congress to translate its investigations into concrete action when it comes to the practices of these corporate middlemen.

This is a matter of great concern and urgency for those with serious, complex diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer. Our body chemistries are not identical and certain medicines have greater effectiveness with some patients than others or, conversely, may cause harmful side effects for some. It is critical that when medical professionals determine the best drug or combination of drugs to treat a severe illness, those treatments are affordable and accessible.

The PBMs were originally charged with making that happen. They were the negotiators who worked with multiple health insurers and public plans like state Medicaid programs, using accumulated purchasing power to leverage favorable prices from the drug manufacturers. Over time, though, the industry has undergone significant consolidation and now only three multi-billion-dollar companies control 80% of the prescribing market. Unfortunately, they use that power for their own interests rather than those of patients and consumers.

In 2014, only 109 prescription medications were excluded from one or more PBM formulary. By 2022, that number had escalated to 1,156. The number of excluded drugs has gone up every single year. These are medicines that the PBMs have determined will not receive insurance coverage, forcing patients to pay full list price or use the PBM-preferred medications. It’s safe to say that very few people can afford a specialty drug’s list price.

Why is this happening? One reason is because the PBMs have created a reimbursement structure in which they make more profit, through administrative fees and rebate deals, when a drug’s list price is higher. So, the medicines that don’t generate favorable revenues for the middlemen have a greater likelihood of being left off formularies, constricting the therapeutic options available to patients. This anti-consumer environment has, thus far, evaded solutions because the PBM business practices are both highly complex and incredibly opaque.

It’s essential for Congress to act and even the scales that have tilted too far in favor of corporate interests. Bipartisan legislation introduced by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would force these companies to make their actions more transparent and would bring an end to deceptive and harmful pricing practices. This legislation is a good start, even if more needs to be done to ensure that the discounts and rebates PBMs are negotiating with drug manufacturers are shared with consumers and not just transformed into profits.

There are people in our state today who are suffering from serious illness and are unable to get the medicines they need. This is simply incomprehensible in our society. Sen. Blumenthal and others have helped narrow the focus on where the problems lie with drug access and affordability. Now it’s time to do something about it.

John Merz is CEO of Advancing CT Together/Hartford.