By Friday afternoon, several million people in Connecticut knew that former Gov. John Rowland had been indicted, again – see Mark Pazniokas’s story on the scene Friday at the U.S. Courthouse in New Haven.

And they knew that Ted Kennedy Jr. would be running  for the state Senate this year from his hometown of Branford – see Pazniokas’s look at that scene here.

But few, perhaps, knew that issues affecting Connecticut children dominated much of the important, though more prosaic, work this week at the Capitol. As reported by Jackie Rabe Thomas:

• The state’s new locked facility — for troubled girls who break the law – has opened in Middletown, which has done nothing to end the simmering controversy between children’s advocates and the Department of Children and Families over whether the unit is really needed. The story includes a series of pointed questions from legislators about the new Pueblo Unit, and answers from DCF.
• Rabe Thomas wrote about the conclusions of a new study reporting that “most of Connecticut’s charter schools are hyper-segregated,” a violation of state law. The study, by the advocacy group Connecticut Voices for Children, said most charters fail to enroll diverse populations based on race and ethnicity, and that more than 90 percent of charter students are minorities.
• Legislative Democrats unveiled “Smart Start,” their 10-year plan that would be a big step toward providing universal pre-kindergarten, at a projected cost of $10 million a year for each of the next 10 years.
• The state House of Representatives voted to require that public and private colleges and universities in Connecticut respond in a stronger, more comprehensive way to students who report they’d been victims of sexual assault.

But wait — there’s more! — Go to our education and children’s issues section of The CT Mirror for still more stories from the week related to Connecticut’s young people.

Buried in another Pazniokas piece, however, about state Republicans’ annual Prescott Bush Dinner, was a wonderful anecdote about children. The keynote speaker was Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida and younger brother of President George W. Bush. After discussing the need for comprehensive immigration reform, Bush told of meeting his future wife while studying in Mexico years ago. And today, he said, two of their three grandchildren are “Iraqi-Canadian-Texas-Mexican-Americans” — “quadro-hyphenated Americans.” It could be a trend.

For the full week’s report, go to www.ctmirror.org.

See you next week.

Jenifer Frank, Editor