‘Disconnected': Foundation says CT youth are in danger of not becoming self-sufficient

Last month, a young man from Hartford, just 18, was arrested for causing a fatal car crash that killed a Hartford police officer.

At the time, Richard Barrington Jr. was living with his mom, not attending school, and without a high school diploma.

A leading education foundation just took the wraps off research that indicates younger people ages 14 to 26, like Barrington Jr., are part of a growing population of our state’s “disconnected” youth - ones either without a job, high school diploma, or on the road toward dropping out of school - and it’s a crisis.

Connecticut’s Dalio Education Foundation said it wants to make people aware of what it considers a huge issue not isolated to our state’s large cities.

The foundation got us in touch with a young woman who was disconnected and got back on track. Not long ago, 18-year-old Deanna Segree almost dropped out of high school.

“I wasn't really going to class. I was mostly skipping...I lost motivation for school," Segree said.

Segree got a chance to go to Opportunity Academy in Hartford, an alternative high school for students well behind in the credits they need to graduate.

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She got in a fight and was expelled - her advisor gave Segree another chance - she said she matured and realized she needed to get her diploma.

“I messed up. But I kept in contact with Miss Colon over the summer. And she told me that I could come back in," Segree said.

Dalio Education Foundation co-CEO Andrew Ferguson said there is an unseen, unspoken crisis in Connecticut; roughly 120,000 people ages 14 to 26 in Connecticut with stories similar to Segree’s. But unlike her, there aren’t always advisors there to help.

Research commissioned by the foundation showed factors like absenteeism, going to a high-poverty school, involvement in the justice system, and even changing schools a lot can get a student off track in school and unemployed, or underemployed in a dead-end occupation.

“In a state that has 90,000 unfilled jobs and our labor market today, we have a huge number of young adults with a diploma, but not connected to a job," Ferguson said.

The Dalio Education Foundation said it will work to increase awareness of the issue. Then, the state must identify the most successful current programs, increase coordination with towns, nonprofits and state agencies, and then employ more people in those programs - like the person who helped Segree get back on track.

“We're doing what we can to support efforts to help reconnect young people to success. But gosh, this is so much bigger than any one foundation," Ferguson said.

The Dalio Education Foundation has not attached a price tag to how much doing all this would cost.

However, its report says the state could eventually recoup an estimated $650 to 750 million in annual state budget savings…in terms of fewer people unemployed, on public assistance or in prison.

This is not just an issue in our larger cities. You can check out the heat map in the report made for the Dalio Education Foundation on this issue.