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Since 2008, nonprofit organization Link to Libraries has served kids in need all across Western Massachusetts and Connecticut. President and Co-Founder Susan Jaye-Kaplan helped start the organization to give kids opportunities to explore our world through books and expand their horizons.

Recently it has become so much more.

Link to Libraries is making use of the basic needs items on the First Book Marketplace and supporting kids beyond providing access to books.

“Link to Libraries is known primarily as a book donation and distribution organization,” says Susan, “but we give far more to our target audience — students in need. We distribute combs, dental hygiene kits, bilingual bookmarks, and more.”

Though books and educational materials are important, basic needs items are also essential for students if they hope to make the most of their education.

One student who participates with Link to Libraries had to miss time at school because of dental surgery, time that can be critical to their development.

“The fact is, this child’s teeth impacted their ability to go to school and learn. If they had had all the dental care products they needed, maybe this doesn’t happen” says Susan.

The basic needs items available through the First Book Marketplace all have an effect on a child’s education. Coats are essential for getting to and from school during winter months. Non-perishable food items prevent kids from losing focus when they get hungry. New t-shirts mean children can play during recess and not worry about a stretch here or a stain there.

Susan knows just how far these kinds of items can go for a child in need. She grew up in a difficult environment and situation herself. She wants to pay forward the kindness that she received as a child growing up in Boston.

“I was fortunate to have had Mrs. Bolton, an assistant librarian at the Boston Public Library, as a child,” Susan, now in her 70s, recalls, “she would bring me all the new books that came into the children’s room and on occasion an apple or carton of milk. My siblings and I sat there after school for many years as it was a safe and warm place to go. We were able to travel the world by reading those wonderful books and yet we never left that couch in the library.”

Thanks to Link to Libraries, many kids will see the world through books and have everything they need for the adventure.

Susan and Link to Libraries are doing impactful work using basic needs items and if you serve children in need, you can too. Please visit the basic needs section of the First Book Marketplace to learn more.

The post ‘Link to Libraries’ Connects Education With Basic Needs appeared first on First Book Blog.

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By Edward Zelinsky

Connecticut’s new governor, Dannel P. Malloy, has appointed six sitting members of the Nutmeg State’s General Assembly to positions in the executive branch. These gubernatorial appointments have engendered a fair amount of discussion since special elections will be required to fill the legislative vacancies resulting from these appointments.

There has, however, been no public discussion of the pension implications of these appointments. Under Connecticut’s retirement plans for government employees, relatively brief service in executive positions results in significant spikes in legislators’ state pensions. This phenomenon is not unique to Connecticut.

The issue of legislators’ pension spikes suggests how difficult it will be for state governments to curb their unruly pension costs. Legislators’ pension spikes are the broken windows of the state pension crisis, emblems of underlying fiscal disorder.

While the details are complex, the basic arithmetic is not: Connecticut state employees (including legislators) are covered by contributory defined benefit pension plans. These plans provide “final average” pensions, meaning that a participant’s pension is based on the highest salary he earns during his last three years of state employment.

To take a simplified, but substantively accurate, example, suppose that a Connecticut legislator serves for twenty years at a constant salary of $30,000 per year. Suppose further that the state’s defined benefit pension plan pays this legislator a retirement annuity equal to his final salary multiplied by one percent for each of his years of state service. In this case, the legislator is entitled to a retirement annuity of $6,000 yearly because $30,000 X 20% = $6,000.

Now suppose that this same individual spends seventeen years in the General Assembly and then works in the executive branch for the last three years of his state career at an annual salary of $100,000. Under the retirement plan’s final average formula, the legislator’s final average salary spikes and thus so does his pension. In this simplified example, the three years of full-time executive branch employment rachet the former legislator’s state pension from $6,000 annually to $20,000 yearly because $100,000 x 20% = $20,000.

In effect, the former legislator’s last three years of full-time executive service at a salary of $100,000 retroactively balloon the value of his first seventeen years of relatively low-paid, part-time legislative service. The result is a tripling of the former legislator’s pension even though he only works at the higher salary for the last three of twenty years in state government. The legislator gets the same pension as does a Connecticut state employee who, over his twenty year career, consistently earned a full-time salary of $100,000.

Another way of characterizing this pension spike is that the governor bestows upon this former legislator a signing bonus for joining the executive branch of state government. Since he works for the governor at the higher executive salary, the former legislator’s state pension increases more than three-fold during his relatively short executive branch service.

Quantifying this signing bonus as a lump sum involves many details and qualifications, such as assumed interest rates, life expectancies, and other actuarial variables. However, under conservative assumptions, in this simplified example, the present value of the former legislator’s increased pension is at least several hundred thousand dollars. Frequently, in practice, the amounts involved are even more.

If Governor Malloy had granted each of his appointees from the General Assembly a $200,000 check as a signing bonus, the public outcry would have been overwhe

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