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Hartford, Conn. is one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation, embedded in the state with the worst economic inequality. So it was a major progressive victory when, in the 1996 case Sheff v. O'Neill, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that Hartford's children, because of their racial and economic isolation, were being denied their state constitutional right to equal educational opportunities. A 2003 agreement between the plaintiffs and the state tried to remedy the problem through a program of busing city children to schools in the suburbs and attracting suburban kids to high quality magnet schools in downtown Hartford. But only a small fraction of poor Hartford children benefited from the new programs, which were oversubscribed and underfunded.Integration advocates have longed floated the idea of regionalizing education across the 29 towns of the Hartford region. In many cases, lines between city and suburb were drawn with the explicit goal of keeping neighborhoods and schools exclusively white or middle class. Zoning laws re-enforced these barriers, as did the placement of federally-subsidized housing in already downtrodden, non-white neighborhoods. This is an old story, of course, one that has played out across the nation. But in Connecticut, the Sheff court order has forced policy-makers to grapple with undoing this legacy of discrimination and segregation. Sadly, the state has failed to live up to the charge. But for an idea of how it might be done, look toward Hartford mayor Eddie Perez, who argued for regionalization in the Courant yesterday:
We should create a Hartford County School District that includes all 29 towns in the county. ... For this new school system to succeed, the municipal cost of school operations and capital expenditures must be funded fully by the state. Hartford County towns annually spend more than $1.5 billion operating public schools — a cost of about $11,000 per student. Towns participating in this new school district would be relieved from funding schools through the local property tax.For many towns this would mean cutting the average homeowner's property tax bill by as much 50 percent.Additionally, tens of millions of dollars would be saved by the streamlining of dozens of redundant school district bureaucracies, the elimination of duplicate buildings and the efficient use of excess capacity. ... ...every school would have a local governance committee. Parents would be urged to participate and become fully invested in the success of their child's school. District schools that are already successful would have the autonomy to continue their success.Centralizing funding and mandating integration within counties would reduce educational inequality caused by geographic isolation. But in almost every part of the country, this strikes affluent and middle class parents as a radical solution that puts their own kids at risk. Social science tells us racial and socioeconomic integration benefits all children in myriad ways. But that's a message that hasn't penetrated into either our politics or our culture. --Dana Goldstein
