Legal Clips, [April 2008]Schools in Hartford and 22 of its suburbs would be encouraged to open more classroom seats to children from outside their neighborhoods in order to increase racial diversity, under a tentative settlement reached Friday in a decades-old desegregation case. The settlement, which still requires the approval of Connecticut legislators and the state court handling the dispute, outlines a five-year plan whose goal is to get at least 41% of Hartford's minority students into schools where enrollments are no more than three-quarters minority. In the first year, the goal would be at least 19%. Approximately 94% of the 22,000 students now enrolled in Hartford's 40 public schools are minority. Achieving the goals depends on students crossing district lines in a region where students, over all, are about 45% minority. The tentative deal opens the possibility of resolving a case that has outlasted three governors but has yet to bring sweeping changes to the composition of Hartford's public schools. The case is known as Sheff v. O'Neill. The tentative settlement, much like the ones that have preceded it without permanent success, relies entirely on voluntary incentives. They are intended to encourage suburban schools to build, with state help, interdistrict, thematic magnet schools to attract students from Hartford, and open up more slots in their regular schools under a program known as Project Choice. Hartford's school system, meanwhile, would have incentives and penalties to ensure that it improves its magnet schools and does a better job of promoting them to attract children from neighboring districts.
People on both sides said the latest settlement goes beyond past efforts to settle the case by giving the State Department of Education more power to administer programs aimed at increasing the diversity of schools in the Hartford area so parents have one place to consult and unified deadlines for applying. It also changes the way the state and the plaintiffs will ultimately judge the success of the plan. While the goal would remain having 41% of Hartford's minority students in schools that are at least one-quarter white, the program could also pass muster if it satisfied at least 80% of the demand among minority students seeking placements in such schools. Without putting a price tag on the plan, the settlement requires the state to "provide sufficient resources" and compels it to reduce the time children spend on buses going from one municipality to another. Previous efforts at desegregation have faltered because families were unwilling to send children to schools in other districts voluntarily when it meant children as young as 7 were traveling three hours a day.
Source: New York Times, 4/5/08, By Alison Leigh Cowan
[Editor's Note: The agreement is below, and additional details are provided by the Hartford Courant. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), available at the next link, that desegregation remedies under the U.S. Constitution could only be imposed across school district lines where the districts in question had engaged in segregation. However, in Sheff, 678 A.2d 1267 (1996), the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the extreme racial and ethnic isolation of Hartford students, even if the unintentional result of school districting and attendance statutes, violated their right under the state constitution to a substantially equal educational opportunity. The court left to it the legislature to determine how to remedy the violation, but the failure of attempts thus far led to resumption of litigation. In July 2007, the legislature adjourned without voting on the most recent proposed settlement in the case. See the last link.]
Stipulation and Proposed Order in Sheff v. O'Neill
Hartford Courant, 4/5/08, By Arielle Levin Becker & Colin Poitras
Oyez.org on Milliken v. Bradley
NSBA School Law pages on Sheff v. O'Neill