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05/11/2022 08:30 AMMarissa Mollica-Velazquez may have a long title—East Haven Family Resource Center (FRC) and School Readiness Early Childhood Facilitator—but her mission is simple and clear: to help local preschool youngsters and their parents prepare for entry into grade school.
Marissa conducts her work from the Overbrook Elementary School Early Learning Center, where the FRC makes its home. When Marissa first joined the staff of the FRC a little over a decade ago, the FRC was located at D.C. Moore Elementary School.
While working during that decade, Marissa earned her certification in special education from Charter Oak State College, and on May 19 she will graduate with her educational leadership administration degree—otherwise known as a sixth-year degree—from Southern Connecticut State University.
As a result of all this advanced study, Marissa says her role at the FRC has changed.
“When I was at D.C. Moore, I was the parent educator and I was working individually with families, providing playgroups and home visits,” Marissa recalls. “And in 2012, I became the coordinator of the school readiness program.”
From there, the preschool program began to grow because of Marissa’s efforts to facilitate grant writing for the FRC.
“From 2012 to 2014 many grants came out, both federal grants and state grants, and in collaboration with our school readiness liaison and the superintendent of schools, we applied for and received every one of them,” says Marissa.
That effort boosted the enrollment of 33 to 36 preschool students at D.C. Moore when Marissa first started there, to more than 100 shortly thereafter.
Then, “around 2015, the [East Haven school] district was redistricting, and they were closing down schools,” Marissa explains.
D.C. Moore was one of the casualties since the facility was older, needed a good deal of repair, and the school administration found it could better serve the educational needs of the K-12 students by moving the D.C. Moore’s students to two other elementary schools and relocating the FRC program to Overbrook Elementary School.
Another benefit of Marissa’s work with the successful grant writing was a consolidation of the pre-school programs, which operated at three different schools.
“Now,” Marissa notes, “the pre-school program operates only at the Overbrook Early Learning Center, and we have close to 162 students, nine classrooms, and approximately 50 staff. After working with all the involved school principals and the superintendent, we felt it would be best for the students to be all in one building, so we could really serve their needs.”
“Our program at Overbrook is...very detailed,” Marissa explains. “We screen every student, we conduct home visits, and we make sure that every child receives high-quality preschool. Our goal and our mission are to really give them the foundation, not just academically, but socially and emotionally, to transition into kindergarten.”
Handling these issues became a challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools were closed, and remote learning was instituted.
“We [the FRC] shut down at the same time the district did, but with the support of the superintendent and the Board of education, we were able to go virtual, just like the district,” Marissa, says, adding, “We were able to support the students and work with the families and get them the resources they needed through the state.”
Outside of direct educational and socialization programs for preschoolers, the FRC also conducts monthly food distribution in cooperation with Connecticut Foodshare.
“In our first distribution during the pandemic, we were able to provide 300 [carloads] of food,” Marissa notes. “Ever since the pandemic [started], we’ve been in a mode to service our families in town, through a big team effort involving parent educators, teachers, and others from the district.”
Marissa and her team also wrote a grant during the pandemic, in collaboration with Cecarelli Farms in Northford, and with that money “we were able to give families fresh fruits and vegetables once a week throughout the pandemic as well,” Marissa says.
When Marissa looks back over the decade that has helped bring FRC to where it is today, she sees a parallel with her own growth as an educator over the past quarter-century.
“When I went to college I started in sociology, social work, and criminal justice,” Marissa says of her earliest higher education studies. “I was thinking about becoming a correctional officer. And with my sociology background and my love of people, things shifted. I did my internship at Mount Vernon, working with Mentoring USA, and I was in a homeless shelter there, working with homeless moms and kids. It was like an ah-ha moment. I stepped into that role and saw the change in these families and in myself, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I need to go into education.’”
A year and one-half later Marissa earned her master’s degree in multicultural education from the College of Mount Saint Vincent. She then began teaching in the South Bronx.
“I said to myself, ‘If I can teach in the Bronx in 1999, by myself, then this is my goal, this was what I needed to do for the rest of my life,’” Marissa recalls. “I went through 9/11 in the Bronx. I went through so much in the Bronx with those families and those children it changed my life and really geared me towards what path I was supposed to go down.”
Marissa then moved to Connecticut shortly after 9/11, after meeting her husband, Hector Velazquez, where they raised their own family of two daughters.
“I want to be that light because it hasn’t been an easy walk for me,” admits Marissa. “It’s taken me 20 years to go for my sixth-year degree. I’ve seen things and lived things, and by connecting with the right mindset, tapping into the right people, and motivating people—I want that for everyone. I want to be that kind of leader—for my staff, for the community families—that makes people realize, ‘Wow, if she can do it, we can do it, too.’”
“Everyone has unique needs, individual to their circumstance,” concludes Marissa. “My goal is to build relationships with people and to let them know there’s hope and we’re going to figure out a solution and we’re going to figure out how we can help these families or connect them to the resources they will need to help them.”