News Clippings on Sheff v. O'Neill

    ~The gap between classrooms in city and suburban schools 
  

Mark O’Donnell 

It was halfway through the morning 

of the first day of the Educational Quali- 

ty Through Understanding and Learn- 

ing summer program, a state-funded 

project that brings city students togeth- 

er with students from 23 surrounding 

towns. This year, the EQUAL program 
was located in Burr Elementary School 

in Hartford's South End. I was teaching 

a class of 18 fifth- and sixth-grade stu- 

dents. One of my students returned to 

class from the girls’ bathroom. 

“Is there another bathroom in this 

school?” she asked. “I really have to go, 

but it’s too disgusting in there.” 

1 sent her to the teachers’ restroom. 

Burr Elementary School is typical of 

more than 74 percent of American 

schools, according to a study published 

this year by the American Association 

of School Administrators in Washington, 

D.C. This study found that, in general, 

three-fourths of our school buildings are 

unacceptable learning environments. 

Many urban schools in Connecticut 

were built in the early part of the 20th 

century and have never been renovated. 

Ceilings leak when it rains, classroom 

temperatures reach 110 degrees in 

warm months, 48 degrees in the cold 

months and toilets have no doors or 

toilet paper. Classroom and corridor 

walls in many city schools have not been 

painted in 30 or 40 years. 
The suburban students were amazed 

  

  

  
  

  

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at the physical condition of the school. 
The hallways are dark, damp and 

smelly. The classroom furniture is from 

the 1950s and ’60s. Chairs are wobbly 

and cracked. The atmosphere is dismal 

and depressing. 
Under one of the portable classrooms 

behind the Burr School, a student point- 

ed out a huge hole in the ground where 

the rats live. “We sometimes see them 

come out of the dumpsters and run into 

Barrie Maguire / Special to The Courant 

their hole,” she said. 
Maureen Edwards of Georgetown 

University compared average achieve- 

ment scores with building conditions of 

the Washington, D.C., public schools in 

1991. She found that students assigned 

to schools in poor physical condition 

could be expected to fall more than 10 

percentage points below those who at- 

tend schools in good condition. Edwards 

concluded that there is a correlation be- 

tween doing well academically and the 

physical environment. 

in a 1988 report, the Carnegie Foun- 

dation for the Advancement of Teaching 

found that “the physical indignities in 

many urban schools is not lost on stu- 

dents. It bespeaks neglect, and students’ 

conduct seems simply an extension of 

the physical environment that sur- 

rounds them.” 

As a suburban teacher who has 

worked in several Hartford schools for 

the past four summers, I have an appre- 

ciation for the commitment and effort 

that it takes to teach in an urban school. 

Teachers and administrators in Hart- 

ford deserve praise and gratitude for 

the efforts that produce academic suc- 

cess for many urban public school stu- 

dents. There is no money in the city 

budget for major renovations. 

At the same time, in a city that is 
home to some of the nation’s wealthiest 
insurance companies, and in a state 
with one of the country’s highest per- 
capita incomes, it is hard to believe that 
Hartford students have to attend 
schools in conditions that no lawyer or 
insurance company executive would 
tolerate. 

Old school buildings do not have to be 

depressing places. Boston Latin School 

was built in the 19th century. Yet, this 

prestigious public high school has been 

well cared for and is meticulously clean 

inside and out. The school solicits public 

and private funds to maintain a physi- 

cally attractive learning environment. 

Hartford’s political and business 

Tuesday, August 11, 1992 B11 

leaders must realize that the city’s 
schools are just as important to the 
country’s future as suburban schools. 

Connecticut's corporations have a so- 
cial, ethical and civic responsibility to 
help improve the condition of schools in 
city neighborhoods. 

Some partnerships already 
Some insurance companies have 
for and maintain computer labs such as 
the one CIGNA has financed at Weaver 
High School. 

Why not extend this partnership to 

such projects as replastering, painting 
and floor refinishing? Why not solicit 
funds to wage an all-out war on rats and 
roaches? 

Why not put some unemployed paint- 

ers and carpenters to work with materi- 

als and labor paid for by the private 

sector? The funds exist in corporate cof- 

fers, but the will to give, to share corpo- 

rate profits, does not always exist. 
A healthy, safe and comfortable 

learning environment should be every 

child's right. Key federal, state and city 

decision-makers need to be made aware 

of the unacceptable conditions of some 

of our urban schools. 
Connecticut also needs to en e 

cooperation between the public fe 
private sector to provide the best I€darn- 
ing environments for children, regard- 
less of the wealth or lack of wealth in a 
school district. 

Mark O'Donnell, a Windsor fifth-grade 

teacher, is a team leader in the Hartford 
area's EQUAL program. 

      

 



  

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A A ve | pl Sh A SBD ptt prt |e. 

I 

“ A18: THE HARTFORD COURANT: Thursday, August 6, 1992 
  

By ROBERT A. FRAHM 
Courant Staff Writer 

An insurance company official 
3 and former Bloomfield school ad- 

. ministrator became the state’s No. 2 
~~ educator Wednesday, joining the ad- 

ministration of new Education Com- 
missioner Vincent L. Ferrandino. 

The State Board of Education 
named Benjamin Dixon as Ferran- 
dino’s top deputy and also appointed 
Bridgeport educator Juan S. Lopez 

. as superintendent of the State Re- 
gional Vocational-Technical 
Schools. 

The appointments came as Fer- 
randino, who took over in June, con- 
tinued to fill vacancies and reshuffle 

the administration of the state De- 
partment of Education. 

Ferrandino, former superinten- 
dent of schools in Weston, also saw 

  

  

the education board Wednesday rec- 
ommend a giant increase in the state 
education budget for 1993-94. 

The 26 percent raise is almost 
entirely the result of automatic in- 
creases built into the state’s educa- 
tion funding law, but neither Ferran- 
dino nor anyone else believes those 
increases will survive after the gov- 
ernor and General Assembly review 
the budget. 

Still, groups representing school 
boards, school superintendents, mu- 
nicipal officials and teacher unions 
have supported the recommended 
$1.6 billion budget. They warn that 
schools have been damaged by a long 
economic slump and will continue to 
decline without a massive infusion of 
cash. 

The appointments of Dixon and 
Lopez mean that Ferrandino’s top 
cabinet is nearly complete. The only 

4 

  

State education chief appoints 4 
remaining vacancy is the head of the 
newly created Office of Urban and 
Priority School Districts: 
~ Dixon 53 head of the Workforce 
Diversity Unit for The Travelers 
Cos. in Hartford, worked as a teach- 
er and school administrator before 
joining the insurance company in 
1989. He was assistant executive di- 
rector of the Capitol Region Educa- 
tion Council from 1987 to 1988 and 
an administrator in Bloomfield pub- 
lic schools from 1974 to 1987. 

Lopez, 48, has worked in Bridge- 
port public schools since 1976 and 
has been an assistant superintendent 
there since 1987. 
Ferrandino also announced 

Wednesday the appointments of 
Emily Melendez as his policy assis- 
tant and Thomas W. Murphy as the 
education department’s public infor- 
mation officer. 

  

  

  

 



  

  

    ———— 

        

  

By ROBERT A. FRAHM 
Courant Staff Writer 

A coalition of Hartford-area 
businesses, colleges and schools 
has won a national grant to attack 
the chronic ills of urban education. 

Hartford is one of 10 American. 
cities to receive a Community 
Compact Grant from the American 
Association for Higher Education 
and The Pew Charitable Trusts, 
officials announced Tuesday. 

The $40,000 planning grant, 
which could lead to hundreds of 

thousands of dollars more, is de- 
signed to help Hartford identify 
and correct problems that cause 
too many children to fail. 

“This is a great idea, and the 
enthusiasm is unbelievable,” said 
Jeffrey L. Forman, a special assis- 
tant to the superintendent in the 
Hartford public schools. 

Despite countless efforts to at- 
tack the problems of urban schools, 
Hartford, like many of the nation’s 
cities, seems unable to break a 
chronic pattern of failure. 

Of students who enter ninth 

grade in Hartford, less than half 
will graduate from the system four 
years later, state figures show. Of 
those who do graduate, 31 percent 
go to four-year colleges compared 
with 52 percent statewide. 

More than 90 cities applied for 
the grants. Besides Hartford, 
awards were made to Boston; 
Providence; Philadelphia; Phoe- 
nix; Pueblo, Colo.; Birmingham, 
Ala; El Paso, Texas; Portland, 
Ore; and Gary, Ind. 

“The problem is very serious in 
inner-city schools,” said Carol 

$ 

Hartford gets grant to stem failure of students 
Stoel of the American Association 
for Higher Education. “There are 
small graduating classes. Very few 
students are taking what are con- 
sidered college requirements.” 

Stoel, national director of the 
Compact Program, said, “We be- 
lieve if you start looking at those 
critical sixth- and seventh-grade 
years, you can make a difference.” 

Educators can point to isolated 
examples of success. Hartford's 
Weaver High School, for example, 

Please see Hartford, Page D11     

Anti. a 
\) 

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: = Hartford gets grant to stem failure of students Continued from Connecticut Page 
ed is part of a nationwide Coalition of th ssential Schools while seven of 

Hartford's 26 elementary schools 
use a popular parent involvement 
model developed by Yale Universi- 
ty’s James Comer. 

Such programs, however, reach 
only a limited number of students 
and sometimes suffer under a large 
system's bureacracy, said Forman, “They have not reached their 

llest potential,” he said. 
Many of the participants in the 

Hartford coalition had been meet- 
ing even before applying for the 
grant. 

“It’s one of the reasons we chose 
Hartford,” said Stoel. “They’ve got 

a real good underpinning of higher 
ucation systems working with 
€ Superintendent and the 

schools.” 
Among the business represent- atives are two of Hartford's major 

insurance firms, The Travelers and Aetna Life & Casualty Co. 
“From our perspective it’s a pretty serious problem . . . in terms of where the work force is going to come from in the next decade,” said Linda Seagraves of Aetna’s corporate public involvement de- 

partment. 
Aetna has had a partnership with Hartford public schools since 1984, running the Saturday Academy for seventh-graders who have poten- tial but have not always performed 

well in school. 
The coalition also includes sev- eral higher education partners, in- 
uding the University of Hartford, the University of Connecticut, Cen- tral Connecticut State University, Trinity College and Greater Hart- ford Community College. 
Part of the group’s job will be to track what happens to students during middle school and high school. In many school systems, data on dropouts and college-bound students is sketchy. 
The coalitions in the 10 cities are expected to report data annually on student progress. 
The coalitions also will examine existing education reform pro- grams but will “plan strategies 

cl 

that strike at the heart of the sys- tem rather than create more scat- - tershot programs,” according to a press statement announcing the - grants. 
“We really have to break new ground,” said Robert Fried, a con- 

tion’s work. “If we do things the Same way, we’ll get the same rela- tively small percentage [of sty- ° dents] getting through.” 
Richard Arends, education dean at Central Connecticut State Uni- versity in New Britain, said city 0ols suffer a variety of ills, ranging from the breakdown of families to the shift of wealth to the suburbs. 

sch 

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bo a 

Judge rejects 
bid to block 
suit alleging 
segregation 

By ROBERT A. FRAHM g of 
Courant Staff Writer 

A judge rejected the state’s challenge to a major 
school desegregation lawsuit Monday, clearing the way 
for the 3-year-old case to go to trial. 

Hartford Superior Court Judge Harry Hammer 
denied a motion by state attorneys to block the suit, 
rejecting their argument that the case raises social 
issues too complex for the courts to decide. 

It was the second time Hammer has rejected an 
effort by the attorney general’s office to derail the suit, 
which challenges Connecticut’s longstanding practice of 
operating separate — and largely segregated — city and 
suburban school systems. 

“We're on! We're on! God bless Harry Hammer,” 
said Elizabeth Sheff, the mother of one of the 17 Hart- 
ford-area children who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit 
against the state. 

“I am excited, ecstatic. . . . Finally, the trial,” said 
Sheff, whose son, Milo, the lead plaintiff, is a seventh- 
grader. He was in the fourth grade when the suit was 
filed in April 1989. 

Assistant Attorney General John R. Whelan said, 
“We're disappointed with the ruling, but we are going to 
proceed on to trial.” 

No trial date has been set, but Wesley Horton, an 
attorney for the plaintiffs, said he hoped a trial would 
begin within the next few months. 

In Hartford public schools, more than 90 percent of 
the students are members of minority groups, and many 
are from low-income families. Many of the city’s sub- 
urbs are predominantly white. The suit contends that 
racial segregation, along with the heavy concentration 
of poverty in city schools, violates state constitutional 
guarantees of an equal education. 

The state’s motion, filed in July, contended that 
Connecticut had no role in creating racial segregation 
and, therefore, could not be held liable. 

However, in his 12-page ruling, Hammer cites a 
1973 U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Denver 
public schools, which said that whether the segregation 
was created by the state or not is irrelevant to the 
determination of the constitutional issue. 

“That’s our whole case,” Horton said after reading 
Hammer's decision. “It is a very important part of our 
case.” : 

Whelan, however, said, “I don’t see anything in the 
decision that indicates one way or another how [the 
judge] will rule when he looks at the facts of the 
situation. ; 

“The essence of the opinion is the judge sees a 
dispute he feels needs to be resolved by a trial.” 

Both sides have agreed that the lawsuit charts new 
territory in school desegregation cases because it does 
not allege intentional segregation. Also, it alleges viola- 
tions of a state constitution rather than the U.S. Constitu- 

Please see Judge, Page B7 

157° 

  

Judge rejects bid 
=: against lawsuit 

Continued from Connecticut Page 

tion. - 

Typically, school desegregation 

cases have been fought in federal 

courts, where lawyers have been re- 

quired to prove that segregation 1s | 

intentional and constitutes a viola- 

tion of the U.S. Constitution. 
The state’s latest legal move, a : 

motion for summary judgment, had | 

sought to avoid a long and costly | 

trial by sending the issue directly to | 

the state Supreme Court to resolve | 

conflicting questions of law. Cy) 

Horton said Hammer’s ruling 

should prevent further delays be- 

cause “there is no further procedur- 

al tool the state can file to avoid a 

trial.” 

  

  

 



State cho@ses 

commissioner 

of education 
Small-town superintendent 

set to tackle statewide test 

By ROBERT A. FRAHM 

Courant Staff Writer 

WESTON — This peaceful, wood- 

ed campus, where third-graders 

learn Spanish and 
virtually every stu- 
dent graduates and 
goes on to college, 
seems an odd train- 
ing ground for Con- 
necticut’s top edu- 
cation official. 

The man who 
oversees Weston 
schools, one of the 
state’s smallest 

and most affluent 
suburban school 
systems, was cho- 
sen Tuesday to 
lead Connecticut's 
schools, including 

its beleaguered 
city systems, 

through one of the 
toughest economic 
slumps in decades. 

With urban poverty among the 

state’s most serious education prob- 

lems, the state Board of Education 

took a gamble in choosing Weston’s 

Vincent L. Ferrandino, whose only 

other experience as a superinten-’ 

dent has been in rural schools near 

m Vincent L. Ferrandino 
New education commissioner 

Litchfield. 
Yet, the 42-year-old Ferrandino, 

who grew up in a poor, immigrant 

neighborhood in nearby Norwalk, 

believes he is ready to become Con- 
necticut’s new edu- 

- cation commis- 
joner and to tackle 
the $1.3 billion 
state school sys- 
tem and all of its 
ills. 

“There is no 
question there are 
great challenges 
facing us in Con- 
necticut,”’ said 
Ferrandino, super- 
intendent of Wes- 
ton’s 1,500-student 
system, which in- 
cludes an elemen- 
tary school, middle 

3 school and high 

campus. 
“He’s a leader, 

and he’s tough. . . .He’s going to de- 

mand action and excellence,” said 

state board Chairman John F. Man- 

nix, who predicted that Ferrandino 

would continue a series of education 

reforms that began under former 

Please see State, Page A8 

school all on one 

THE sli Wednesday, February 26, 1992 

State chooses 
commissioner 
of education 
Continued from Page 1 

Commissioner Gerald N. Tirozzi 
during the 1980s. 
"Tirozzi, whose reforms included 

higher salaries and tougher stan- 
dards for teachers, resigned in Octo- 
bér to become president of Wheelock 
College in Boston. 
~However, unlike Tirozzi, who 

headed one of the state's biggest city 
school systems in New Haven before 
becoming commissioner, Ferran- 
dino has spent his career in small 
towns. 
~The board voted 7-2 to choose Fer- 

randino, passing up other candidates 
whose backgrounds included experi- 
ence in urban schools. They included 
Al Ramirez, a top education official 
i’ Illinois, and J.R. “Jay” Cum- 
mings, a Texas educator who had 
worked 10 years in Dallas schools. 
~Ferrandino’s lack of urban experi- 

ence worried Glenda Armstrong of 
Danbury, one of the two members 
who voted against the appointment. 
~“My concern is urban issues,” she 

said. “If you go into Bridgeport, New 
Haven and Hartford, they are going 
to.say we need somebody who’s been 
in the trenches.” 
«Armstrong and Alphonse Wright 

of Trumbull, who cast the other dis- 
senting vote, are the only black 
members on the board. Wright said 
he was unhappy with the selection 
process, but denied reports that he 
had urged the board to find more 
black or Hispanic candidates. 

“You heard wrong,” he said. “I 
was pushing for the best candidate.” 
mFerrandino, who lives in Wilton, 
was the only remaining finalist with 
Connecticut ties, and that worked in 
his favor. Among those who urged 
the board to choose someone with 
state ties was Gov. Lowell P. Weick- 
er Jr. 
» “Frankly,” said Mannix, who also 
ljves in Wilton, “being from Con- 
necticut was a plus factor.” 
= But those who have worked close- 
1§ with Ferrandino say he has other 
strong qualities, too, describing him 
as a good listener, a decisive leader 
ahd an innovative thinker. 
“ “You have to understand his intel- 
lect. Here is a bright, bright man,” 
dhid Christopher Sidoli, a social stud- 
igs teacher at Weston High School. 

idoli and other teachers said Fer- 
gandino’s creation of a curriculum 
¢buncil forged much closer ties 
among teachers at the high school, 
middle school and elementary" 
sthool. 
= Thomas Urbania, a high school 
senior, said Ferrandino is popular 
With parents and shows up frequent- 
ly at school events. “I've seen him 
even at soccer games, and we were 
pretty bad,” Urbania said. 

One of the innovations Ferrandino 
promoted was the introduction of 
Spanish classes at the elementary 
school, starting with third-graders 
this year. . 

“That was visionary at a time 
when everyone else was cutting 
budgets,” said Jean McNeill, princi- 
pal of Weston’s Hurlbutt Elemen- 
tary School. 

One of Ferrandino’s immediate 
problems in Weston is replacing Mc- 
Neill, who is retiring after 25 years 
in the system. Ferrandino was think- 
ing about that problem as he sat in 
his office at Weston Middle School 
Tuesday morning, only a few hours 
before the state board selected him. 

On May 1, when he begins his new 
job, the problems will be tougher. He 
will inherit problems such as racial- 
ly segregated city and suburban 
school systems, poor academic per- 
formance in inner-city schools and a 
slumping economy that is eroding 
school budgets across the state. 

A key issue, he said, is the dispari- 
ty between poor towns and those 
such as Weston, where schools spent 
$9,440 on each student last year, the 
third highest figure among the 
state’s 169 towns. The state average 
was $6,822. 

Ferrandino’s new job as education 
commissioner will require that he 
take a pay cut, from the $106,000 a 
year Weston pays him, to the $95,000 
the state job pays. 

Before going to Weston in 1989, 
Ferrandino had been superintendent 
in Regional School District 6, which 
serves Goshen, Morris and Warren. 
A former high school principal in 
Litchfield, Ferrandino also has 
worked at schools in Mamaroneck, 
N.Y., and West Nyack, N.Y. Ferran- 
dino says he understands the crucial 
nature of urban school problems. 

“While I may not have worked in 
that kind of system, I grew up in that 
kind of system,” he said. 

His father was an Italian immi- 
grant who worked as a shipping 
clerk in a factory. His mother, the 
daughter of immigrants, dropped 
out of school at age 16 and went back 
to school as an adult. Ferrandino and 
his brother grew up in a home with 
his parents, grandparents, aunts and 
uncles. 

Ferrandino said his family be- 
lieved that “if you worked hard and 
did well in school, there would be a 
payoff down the road.” 

“It was a childhood full of hope,” 
said Ferrandino, a tall, graying man 
who, with his wife, Christal, is rais- 
ing three children of their own. 

Ferrandino says schools and other 
social agencies must work together 
to combat the poverty and broken 
families that afflict so many chil- 
dren, especially in the cities. 

   



Regional approach gains momentum - ’ 

veer 

Se 

Continued from Page 1 

ell P. Weicker Jr. suggested during 
his annual budget message that the 
state offer incentives that would en- 
courage towns to build schools joint- 
ly. 

At the same time, the state may 
make it much tougher for school 
districts to build schools indepen- 
dently. 

Towns and cities get anywhere 
from 20 percent to 80 percent of 
construction costs from the state 
when they build schools, but the gov- 
ernor has asked lawmakers to con- 
sider ways to limit the state’s com- 
mitment on future projects. 

By national standards, Connecti- 
cut does not have an oversupply of 
school buildings. The state has 731 
elementary schools, averaging 415 
students per school, slightly below 
the U.S. average of 441 per school, 

according to U.S. Department of 
Education figures. The state’s 223 
secondary schools average 658 stu- 
dents per school, compared with the 
U.S. average of 670 per school. 

Rather, the impetus for slowing 
“school construction is the growing 
cost. The state’s bill for paying off 
construction loans is expected to 
reach $153 million this year, five 
times more than the cost five years 
ago. 

Towns see benefits | 
in sharing schools 

By ROBERT A. FRAHM 
Courant Staff Writer 

Things are so crowded at Chesh- 
ire’s Dodd Junior High School that 
some pupils start lunch at 10:40 a.m. 
One algebra class has ballooned.to 
32 pupils. When the bells ring, pupils 
spill into the hallways in a shoulder- 
to-shoulder herd. 

Yet, voters last March turned 
down a $24.4 million bond proposal 

to build a new middle school that 
would provide relief — the third 
such plan to fail. 

In neighboring Meriden, officials 
also are feeling the pressure to build. 
Washington Middle School, the larg- 
est middle school in the state at 1,200 
pupils, is nearly 300 above capacity. 

Now, squeezed by a slumping 
economy and unable to persuade the 
school board to plan a new school 

3-22-12 

building, Meriden Superintendent of 
Schools Gordon Bruno has raised a 
startling idea. 

What if Meriden and Cheshire 
built a school together? Or what if 
they joined with nearby Berlin, 
Southington and Wallingford, towns 
that also are feeling the pressure to 
build? 

“Given the same population is- 
sues, we could put schools relatively 
convenient to Wallingford and 
Cheshire and Berlin and Southing- 
ton,” Bruno said. 

The discussions have been prelim- 
inary, but in a tradition-bound state | 
where all but a handful of towns 
operate schools independently, such 
an idea seems revolutionary. 

The notion gained additional mo- 
mentum this month when Gov. Low- 

Please see Regional, Page A8 

Across the state, if construction 
continues at its current pace, state 
taxpayers could face a whopping 
loan debt of more than a half-billion 
dollars a year by 2022, the gover- 
nor’s budget office estimates. 

The cost originates in towns such 
as Hamden, which has had an ag- 
gressive school-building campaign 
in recent years. Hamden opened a 
new elementary school in 1990 and 
expects to open another in the fall. A 
third elementary school was recent- 
ly renovated, and two others are 
targeted for renovation. Officials 
also have recommended building a 
new high school. 

The state pays more than half the 
cost of building Hamden’s schools.. 
Without that money, “we couldn’t do 
it,” says Deputy Superintendent Lyn 
Caliendo. 

Many of the new or renovated 
schools popping up in Connecticut 
are in towns that neighbor each oth- 
er, according to records at the state 
Department of Education. 

Bristol, for example, is building a 
$19 million middle school — nearly 
two-thirds of which will be paid for 
by the state — while new or renovat- 
ed middle schools also are planned 
or under way in the surrounding 
towns of Farmington, Plainville and 
Plymouth and in the nearby joint 
district of Burlington and Harwin- 

ton. : 

Whether it would have been prac- 
tical for any of those towns to build a 
school together is uncertain, but offi- 
cials at least might have discussed 
the idea if the state had offered in- 
centives as the governor has sug- 
gested. 

“If this proposal were out in front 
five years ago, it would have caused. 
some cooperative thinking,” said 
William H. Streich, Farmington’s 
school superintendent. 

With school enrollments expected 
to grow statewide through much of 
the next decade, the pressure to 
build or renovate schools also will 
grow. Construction money could be a 
powerful incentive to build schools 
jointly, some educators believe. 

“I find it makes a great deal of 
sense,” said John J. Allison Jr. of the 
Capitol Region Education Council, 
an agency providing services to 
school districts in the Hartford area. 

Under the existing system, said 
Allison, “we end up with several 
school systems each bonding and 
-building, when they very well could 
have built schools together.” 
‘Besides cost, there is another 

benefit. Top state officials, including 

interim Education Commissioner 
Marilyn A. Campbell, believe 
schools built jointly by cities and 
suburbs would reduce racial segre- 

gation. wi 
A state commission on voluntary: 

racial integration mentioned the: 
idea in a report issued in 1990. _-. 

Still, some educators believe there 
could be many obstacles. 

Where should a school be located 
Who would run it? Who would main: 
tain it? Would teachers work under: 
the same contract? 91 

“Funding for a [joint] project, ‘at. 
the very least, would be complicat: 
ed,” said William D. Guzman, assis- 
tant superintendent in New Britaip 
where a $16.5 million middle schqql, - 
is under construction. :. 

243 

“In Connecticut, you've got 166 
school districts, and they’re all very 
independent,” he said. “There is that. 
whole mind-set, and it’s real.” 

However, educators in Cheshire: 
don’t know how Dodd Junior High, 
School, which already has 600 pupils, 
will be able to accommodate 100: 
more in the next two years. 

The idea of looking to Meriden an# 
other nearby towns does not seem so 
far-fetched to Greg J. Florio, mati’ 
agement and personnel services div 
rector for Cheshire public schools:*- 

“It seems no one town is really 
ready to build its own middle 
school,” he said, “so a regional ap- 
proach might be easiest and most 
feasible.” jos? 

   



  

  

  

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NOVEMBER 18, 1990’ 
  

anvecticut is pot Ukely 10 deseg- 
ale is public sehools vol . 
5 8 [ormer West Hartford educa- 
who later headed ove of the 
i's most well-known court-de- 
regated school 

| think you'll do what the 
"ts tell you to do,” D. Relle 
an sudence of edocators and 

© lenders during a forum vo 
of desegregation at Triality Col- 

  

  

Carolina, headed Charlotte, NC, 
public schools wotil July. He was 
among a number of national 
who speculated on Comm 

result jo dramatic changes in Com- 
neclicat’s long-standing tradition of 

Educator says voluntary school desegregation unlikely 
buleat Decade in the Lives of Three™ Continsed fzem Connecticut Page 

doubted that voluntary steps would 
be sufficient. 

“We can design all the grand and 
glorioas plans for volunlarism ... 
amd it will be a drop in the bocket,”" 
said Relic, who was West Hartord's 
superintendent of schools from 1980 
to 1987. . 

Slate cHicials, inclnding a cox 
mission formed by Gov. William A. 
O'Neill, have zaid they hope schools 

-8chools violates the stale constitn- 
tion. Most pupils in suburban schools 
are white. } . 

One speaker, Harvard University 
Professor Charles V. Willie, outlined 
ane possible design for racial deseg- 
regatione dividing Harlford ixio 
ree or four zones that would 
lioked with three or Jour clusters 
suburbs. 

can be desegregated by voluntary 
TIRES. 

Boston University political sci- 
ence professor Christine H. Rossel] 
said mandalory desegregation plans 
have cansed middle-class white peo- 
ple to fee cities more rapidly than 
voluntary plans have. 

Author J. Anthony Lukas, who 
chronicled Boston's turbulent court- 
ordered desegregation case, said 
voluntary measures should be ex- 

      
    

“If you want to do the right thing 
ed ed odie 
sald fu am impassioned sppeal for 

LJ 

“Neighborhood schools have no in- 
trinsic valae” he sadd, There is a 
need “lo disassociate geogya 
From education” id 

programe emphasizing math and 

plored. 
“Coercive Goesa’t, 

in many of our cities, work wery 
well,” be sald. Bul ke added, “My 
burch is that volontarism needs the 
fist of coercion lirking in the back- 

the suburbs, which were pot 
in ithe court order, sald Lakass, the 
author of “Compson Ground: A Tur 

   

gual schools, Montessori schools or 
schools thad are linked with colleges, 
osseinns and busisespes — ali de- 
sigaed lo promote the movement of 

Idren between city and sub- 

‘The pending laweuit does not spec- 
ify any solutions for desegregation, 

American Families.” 

sald veluniary mersures plone 
would ot be emongh io ackieve de 
segregation o 

Sore panelists also said they ! 

Please see Kdurater, Page C11 

LY 

If the plaintiffs win the Connecti-, 
cot Jawsudt, the solution 
would include sll social classes, in-+ 
coding those who live lo the suburbs. + 

“The submrbs would no longer be a= 
saactvary,” Eukas said. "White and 
middle class flight would be more. 
dificult and more expensive,” a 

- 

The forum was sponsored by ac 
number of Hartford-area colleges, 
edocation agencies and civic groups...



   

  

  

“Parents would have the option of s 
ing a’statement that they can’t con 
their children, but then they must. 

ii the city $100 for each offense, do com 
nit 7ice work and post a sign at tl 
home “a bu r sticker on tl 

   
   
    

   
      

      

oF 5 
-          

   

ey are yours.” 

yaturday. 

blem of pare 

   



    

City educator 
5-31-92 

‘has bold plan 
to bring change 
School would be regional; 
new ideas would be stressed 

By RICK GREEN 
Courant Staff Writer 

Imagine a city where children 
from all over the region come to- 
gether to attend schools, where 

. teachers run computerized class- 
- rooms independent of bureaucratic 

bosses, and students plot their own 
school day. : = 
Some stu- 

dents might go 
year-round; 
others would 
attend schools 
hand-in-hand 
with universi- 
ties and corpo- § 
rations. Young- 
sters would” 
begin learning 
“alternate” — 
not foreign — 

     

   
®B Haig - - - 

—languages in the second grade. Stu- 
dents from disadvantaged back- 
grounds wouldn't slip through the 
cracks — they’d be sent to a school 
run out of Paul Newman’s camp. 

It could be Hartford. Hartford? 
- The Hartford Board of Education 
and Superintendent of Schools T. Jo- 

siha Haig think so. 
In a step toward tying the dozens 

of schools, nearly 27,000 students, 
thousands of employees in the dis- 
trict with the residents and business- 
es of the city and region, the high- 
profile superintendent has prepared 
a 36-page annual report and vision of. 
the future for the second-largest 
school system in New England. 

The document, which resembles a 
corporate or a municipal annual re- 
port, will be distributed to teachers, 
business leaders and state legisla- 
tors. Parents and citizens also can 
obtain copies from the board offices 
on High Street. 

On the eve of the first day of school 
Tuesday, and the beginning of his 
second year in Hartford, Haig has 
big plans for the agenda he has laid 
out in the report. 
“We have to set some very, very 

clear direction for this organization. 
You have to go much further than 
vision — you've got to have some 
substance and some content to it,” 
Haig says. 

“We think it sets up sort of a 

Please see Educator, Page C7 

c
e
r
e
 
—
—
—
—
 
T
Y
 

 
—
 

EH
X 

    

*5 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Monday, August 31,1992 C7 
  

Educator has plan 
to revitalize system 
Continued from Connecticut Page 

powerful statement of where we 
think we are, where we need to be,” 
he says. “The truth of the matter is 
that a lot of our kids are not learn- 
ing.” 

The report is honest about Hart- 
ford’s educational problems: Drop- 

. outs and the number of students held 
“+ back are rising; schools are over- 

crowded and crumbling; scores on 
the state Mastery Tests are below 
remedial standards; teenage preg- 
nancy rates are soaring; and 700 new 
students are expected this year 
while education spending has re- 
mained virtually the same as last 
year. 

But it is also ambitious, listing 
dozens of new initiatives under way 
or planned, many of them designed 
to address low test scores, or im- 
prove the academic performance of 
minority males, for example. Haig 
calls all of this “re-engineering.” 

There are also creative and inno- 
vative plans for making schools 
more independent, eliminating all 
paper memorandums in favor of 
computer communication, a region- 
al Montessori school, an alternative 
school at Paul Newman's Hole in the 
Wall Gang Camp and a collaborative 
Urban Education Network consist- 
ing of colleges in the Hartford area 
that would work closely with the 
Hartford schools. 

“It is important for a school sys- 
tem to go through this kind of proc- 
ess,” said Vincent Ferrandino, com- 
missioner of the state Department of 
Education. Ferrandino recently 
spent a weekend in Puerto Rico with 
Haig and others discussing educa- 
tion issues and ideas for the future, 
including regional education initia- 
tives. 

“It will be extremely important as 
at least a starting point for discus- 

sion,” he said of the report. Ferran- 
dino has listed urban education is- 
sues as among his top priorities. 

What Haig and the board of educa- 
tion want from the document are 
teachers and other employees who 
more clearly understand the school 
district’s vision and parents who see 
what the schools can offer. They also 
want Hartford's role in the region to ; 
be more clear. t 

“We could be a significant player | 
as far as regionalism. We have re- 
sources that people are just asleep 
about,” said board of education 
member Courtney Gardner. “A lot of 
people don’t really realize what our 
school system has and the expertise 
of the faculty.” 

“Part of marketing is understand- 
ing what you have to offer and sell- 
ing that. Sometimes it’s how ycu say 
it — and seeing yourself as an 
equal,” Gardner said. 
Among other things, Haig prom- 

ises more union participation and 
cooperation, and more regional in- 
volvement from other school dis- 
tricts in Hartford's schools. The “Vi- 
sion of Excellence” report is also the 
beginning of more private sector 
participation in city schools, he said. 

“You'll see more of the business 
community reaffirming their com- 
mitment to the schools,” Haig said 
recently. Last year, corporations 
and foundations provided $1.2 mil- 
lion to local schools. Thousands of 
people volunteered their time in 
schools. 

Other board members said the su- 
perintendent and the board need to 
look beyond the day-to-day struggle 
of the budget. 

“At some time, in order to make 
progress,” said school board Vice 
president Allan B. Taylor, “we've 
got to keep our head on something 
that’s above the immediate crisis on 
the immediate horizon.” 

 



  

THE NEW YORK de pa AUGUST 30, 1992 

  

Connecticut Q&A: Dr. Matia Finn-Stevenson 

How Schools Might Do More for Children 
  

By NICOLE WISE 
  

HE concept of a new kind of 
elementary school, a ‘school 
of the 21st century,” has 
been developed at the Bush 

Center in Child Development and So- 

cial Policy at Yale University. Three 

models of the concept — where tradi- 

tional education is combined with 

child care and other family support 

services — were opened in the state 

in 1988..Today there are eight such 
schools in the state, and more than 

200 around the nation. The three mod- 

el schools in Connecticut are in Kill- 

ingly, Hartford and North Branford, 

the other five that have since opened 

are in East Hartford, Groton, New 

London, Stamford and West Hartford. 

The school of the 21st century was 

designed by two Yale professors, Dr. 

Matia Finn-Stevenson and Dr. Ed- 

ward Ziegler, who run the Bush 

Center. In a recent conversation in 

her office at Yale, Dr. Finn-Stevenson 

discussed the efforts on behalf of the 

new-style schools. 

Q. Can you describe how the school 

of the 2st century differs from a 

more conventional elementary 

school? - 

A. In addition to all of the academic 

and scholarly work that goes on at a 

school, the school of the 21st century 

includes child care and family 

support services. There are five com- 

ponents: child care for students, be- 

fore and after school, and during va- 

cations. There is also a child care 

program for preschoolers, from 7 

AM. to 7 P.M. There are outreach 

services, including a home visitation 

program for parents with children 

aged 0 to 3, where a worker goes each 

month to a child's home to discuss his 

or her developmental progress and 

any problems, and gives the parents 

any information or help they might 

need. 
We also have outreach to family 

day care providers in the community. 

And finally, we have an information 

and referral service, where we hope 

that schools can identify a variety of 

services in the community to parents 

who might benefit from them. 
® 

Q. How was the concept developed? 

A. The school of the 2lst century 

was conceptualized by Prof. Ed Zieg- 

ler, my colleague here at Yale, as a 

response to the child care problems 

we are having in this country. He'd 

~ worked on the issue of child care for 

many years, and initially was hoping 

to have Federal legislation that would 

address the problem. But it has 

grown so much larger than it was 20 

‘yers ago that it is a bigger problem 
than any government can really ad- 

dress, especially given the deficit. So 

his thinking is that maybe*the solu- 

tion needs to be on the local level, 

using the schools, which are already | 

accessible to parents. 
: 0) 
Q. How quickly is the concept of the 

school of the 21st century catching on 

around the country? ; 

A. The plans were first announced 

five years ago, in September 1987, 

and at that time it was just an idea on 

paper. We've been surprised at how 

fast things have moved. As soon as 

people began to hear about it, school 

superintendents began calling and 

asking for help in implementing the 

plans, and that’s still going on. We are 

always running, trying to catch up 

with the number of requests for infor- 

mation, the number of people who 

want training and assistance. We now 

have 200 communities where the con- 

cent has been implemented in one 
A 

  

Gale Zucker for The New York Times 

Dr. Matia Finn-Stevenson of the Bush Center in Child De- 

velopment and Social Policy at Yale University. 
  

  

The model is nota 

‘cookie cutter’ 
because school 

districts vary. 

  

form or another. 
® 

Q. Is the concept adaptable in part, 
or does the model only work as a 
whole? 

A. We designed the schools to be 
adaptable. We didn’t make it a cookie 
cutter because every community is 
differént, with different needs, A 
rural community in Wyoming, for ex- 
ample, is very different than one in 
inner-city Hartford. We advise 
schools to develop a program that 
meets their needs, so what you see is 
.that each site is really very different. 
But they all share a common goal, 
which is the optimal development of 
children, and they adhere to a com- 
mon set of principles, one of which is 
the importance of good quality child 
care. . 

® 
Q. Do you think that these schools 

of the future will be the solution for all 
communities? 

A. One of the things we require all 
schools to do when they begin to work 
with us is a needs assessment, to 
verify exactly what the needs are. 
The school board and superintendent 
may believe there is a need for child 
care for preschoolers, but maybe, in a 
particular site, there isn’t. We do 
have one community, in rural Wyo- 
ming, where they didn’t need another 

   

child care program, so what we are 
doing there is working closely with an 
existing child care center in the com- 
munity. 

* 
Q. Is there any research yet avail- 

able on the efficacy of the program? 
A. The Ford Foundation has pro- 

vided us with a three-year grant to 
follow the progress of the program 
and to evaluate it, which we are doing 
starting with our first site, which was 
Independence, Mo. We've been col- 
lecting the data for three years, and 
haven't analyzed it yet, but should 
have some results this fall. It takes 
time, though, not only to collect the 
data, but to allow the program to 
stabilize to the point where you can 
even begin to collect the data. But 
some of the nicest things we’ve seen 
from the programs have been a sur- 
prise, things that weren't written into 
our plans. 

For example, when 1 go into the 

éomittg down td read to the little kids 
! in child care, it’s really nice. Or to see 

a third grader stopping in to check on 
his little sister who's 3. In one site we 

sites and see fourth:or fifth graders; 

  

have an elementary school that is 
located next to a senior center, so it 
was just a natural thing to have the : 
retired people coming into the school ! 
to read or play with the kids. - 

® 
Q. Where does this concept fit in the 

national movement toward school re- 
form? : 

"country. 

A. The school of the 21st century | 
. expands upon the traditional mission 

of the school, so 1 consider it an 
integral part of any school reform 
initiative. School reform initiatives 
vary: some focus on school reorgani- 
zation, changing the climate of the 
school or improving curriculum or 
teaching methods. Any of these ap- 
proaches is also more effective if it is 
coupled with an effort, such as 21st . 
century school, to respond to the 

fes
ts 

| : 

needs of children and parents. 
Q. Don’t teachers and administra- 

tors already have enough to do within 
the school? 

A. Yes, they have a lot to do, and we | 
are confronted with that issue all the | 
time. But the point here is that the 
teachers are not thé only ones who | 
will be providing child care or the | 
family support. The school needs a | 
site coordinator, with additional staff 
to be managed separately from the 

“school. We find sometimes teachers | 
are resentful of the fact that we are 
using resources that could be used for 
other academic purposes, and some 
think the schools should be adhering 
to the traditional mission, which is 
teaching children fundamental skills. 

But many teachers see the poten- | 

tial benefits associated with this con- | 

cept because they realize that they 
have a lot of kids who go home alone 

after school because their parents 
don’t have child care, and those kids 

aren't doing well in school. And once 

_the program becomes an integral 

4 part of the school, 1 think that most 
peoplé realize the benefits. They not 
only accept the program but they 
support it. 

® 
Q. How much more does it cost to 

"run this kind of school? 
A. The school of the 21st century is 

based on a parental fee for services, 
. for the child care portion. There is a 
sliding scale fee, and if parents are |, 
unable to pay, the school has to find 
some subsidies, some of which are 
available from the state, and others 
of which come from other sources, 
including corporate sponsors. 

® 

Q. How do you see your program 
evolving over time? 

A. No one program can address all 
the problems that any family might 
have, and I think that today families 
with young children have lots of prob- |- 
lems to contend with, like poverty and 
the lack of adequate and affordable |’ 
health care. 1 think that our program 
addresses one of today’s major prob- 
lems, which is the lack of child care. 

We made a decision early on to 
limit what we try to do, to limit the 
number of components in the pro- 
gram until it had stabilized. Now that 
we have schools which have imple- 
mented all those components and 
services, we are ready to go in some 
new directions. We are developing a 
health care component, and we are 
working on a nutrition component. 

. : 

Q. Any changes you’d like to’ see 
take place in the training aspects of 
the program? 

A. Our initial- goal was to imple- 

ment the program in as many places. 

      

  
around the country as we couid, so for | |” 
this reason we'opted to take a service |’ 
approach rather; than just develop a 
model program. Our task has been to 
build the capacity of the program, to 
provide assistance and support to 
communities that want to implement 
it, and I think this is one major factor 
in why you are seeing so many 
schools of the 21st century around the 

* 
Q. What's the thing that you most 

wish for America’s schools today? 
A. I think that schools should be a 

place that a child enjoys going to, and 
remembers fondly. Some of the sites 
that 1 go to visit are really great 
places, where 1 would have loved to 
have been as a child. They're places 
where children can really learn, and 

feel good about themselves. If all 
“schools could offer that kind of sense 
of safety and comfort for children, 
and for their” parents, 1 think that 
would be an ideal school. Ww 

    
  

  

 



  

RY | 

B7 
  

‘ATION WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1992 

Battling in Court Over School Finance 

In 23 states, lawsuits have been 
filed by parents, school district 
and civil rights organizations 
against governors and state 
departments of education over 
the way states finance public 
schools. 

  

inequitable finance formula 
FUL ROE EY EY CRT | 

    h fal 
Fes J 

    

\ CALI 

~ 

oan  HAWAN 

The suits typically allege that 
tate finance formulas do not 

address the spending disparities 
. between rich schools and poor 
schools or that the formulas do 
not give an adequate amount of 
money to all schools. In some    

Inequitable finance formula 

  

     states, both issues are raised in. 

    

   
   

    

  

> 

   
     

     
Since the start of this year, school finance suits in California, indiana, New York, New Hampshire and Washington have 
either been withdrawn, settled, or the plaintiffs plan to file an appeal. In Arizona, the issue over school finances relates to 
state financial aid for school facilities. 

  Sources: The Education Commission ol the States, Denver; sate Ec Departments and Gx affioss 

The New York Times 

23 States Face Suits on School Funds 
By WILLIAM CELIS 3d 

As schools reopen this week from 
the summer break, many begin the 
new year under a cloud: Increasing 
numbers of states face lawsuits over 
their failure to close spending gaps 
between rich and poor school dis- 
tricts or their failure to give adequate 
aid to all schools. 

Twenty-three states are embroiled 
in suits, most filed since 1990, over 
how they finance school districts. 
Three others — New York, New 
Hampshire and California — could 
face lawsuits again if plaintiffs make 
good on threats to appeal or refile 
cases that were decided this year. 

By comparison, 11 states faced 
such suits five years ago, with most 
now settled. 

Seeking Long-Term Solutions 

“Whatever comes out from these 
rounds of court cases, people should 
be thinking about long-term solutions 
and not short-term solutions,” said 
Robert Berne, the assistant dean of 
the Wagner School of Public Service 
at New York University who has tes- 
tified in several cases. “Giving cash 
infusions without anticipating infla- 
tion, growth or the cost of school 
reform may win you the short-term 
battle, but you don’t win the war.” 

Chris Pipho, an analyst for the 

by state legislators, that reflects 
what many school finance experts 
have proposed: Let education im- 
provements and needs dictate the 
amount states allocate to schools. 

Although the notion seems simple, 
basing school financing on education- 

‘al needs would be difficult for two 
reasons. First, it requires states to 
[abandon the decades-old approach of 
basing their school aid primarily on 
the number of students per district. 
‘Second, it is always debatable which 
education improvements and needs 
deserve financing. i 

Nowhere is the fight for equalizing 
state aid among school districts more 
divisive than in Texas. 

Taking Texas to Court 

The State of Texas has been in and 
out of court over school financing 
since 1968, when a San Antonio sheet-' 
metal worker, Demetrio Rodriguez, 
became the lead plaintiff for a group 

  

The gap between 

rich and pooris a 

bitter issue. 
  

Education Commission of the States, ' - 
a Denver education research and pol- 
icy organization, said: “School fi- 
nance is back on the front burner. 
Finance issues had taken a back seat 
to education reform in the 1980's, but 
the issues of equity and adequacy are 
too big to ignore.” 

The growing number of lawsuits 
reflects several problems, not the 
least of which is the lingering effects 
of the recession. For much of the 
1980’s, when resources were more 
plentiful, many states addressed 
spending disparities among schools 
by giving more money to poorer 
school districts. But the recession has 
hobbled those efforts. 

Compounding the Problem 

Outdated ways of financing school 
districts have compounded the prob- 
lem. Most school budgets still come 
primarily from local property taxes; 
thus, the more affluent the area is the 
more money its school district re- 
ceives. 

In addition, most school finance! 
formulas do not take into account the 
mounting expenses caused by an in- 
creasing number of students who 
need special academic and social as- 
sistance. 

But some states have started to 
search for remedies. In Massachu- 
setts, for example, a business group 
last year proposed a plan, embraced 

of parents in the predominantly His- 
panic and property-poor Edgewood 
Independent School District. 

Mr. Rodriguez's original suit, as’ 
well as a second suit filed by the’ 
Mexican American Legal Defense 
and Education Fund, asserted that 
the state did too little to correct the 
gap in wealth between rich and poor 
school districts. : 

Some districts, with highly valued 
commercial and residential property, 
can afiord to spend nearly $20,000 on 
each student every year. Other dis- 
tricts, like Edgewood, cursed by bad 
geography and homes too modest to 
generate much in the way of taxes, 
spend about $3,000 a year per student. 

Such a gap means classrooms in 
well-off districts may be outfitted 
with the latest in technology and text- 
books and well-equipped science lab- 
oratories while classrooms in poorer 
areas must settle for outdated school’ 
books and little technology, let alone 
science labs. 

Three times Texas has tried to 
remedy the problem and three times 
in as many years the Texas Supreme 
Court has rejected the plans as insuf- 
ficient. In its most recent rejection, 
the State Supreme Court gave the 
Texas Legislature until May 1993 to 
correct the problem, and Gov. Ann W. 
Richards is expected to call a special 
legislative session this fall to address   

the disparities, which rank among the 
greatest of any state. 

Increasingly, lawsuits are chal- 
lenging states on another front: 
whether all schools, rich and poor, 
are receiving adequate financing to 
give students a quality education. 

The American Civil Liberties 
Union is testing that approach in Lou- 
isiana, where it filed a lawsuit five 
months ago charging the state with 
underfinancing all public schools. 

The A.C.L.U. says the underfinanc- 
ing results in deficient educations. 
Some school districts use history 
textbooks so outdated that in their 
pages men have not yet landed on the 
moon. Some buildings have been al- 
lowed to deteriorate to to the point 
where sewers back up into the rest- 
rooms in a heavy rain. Some schools 
do not even have indoor bathrooms. 

While many states struggle to 
maintain at least their present levels 
of financing, West Virginia, Tennes- 
see and Kentucky have taken the lead 
in trying new ways to pay for schools. 

All three states have assumed a 
larger responsibility in supporting 
schools than ever before through 
raising more taxes at the state level, 
putting a cap on how much rich dis- 
tricts can raise locally and giving 
more aid to all school districts, with 
larger allocations going to the poorer 
districts. Although these plans do not 
address all the discrepancies in 
school wealth — and lawsuits are still 
active in West Virginia and Tennes- 
see — they have gone far toward 
closing the gaps. 

Experts say school financing 
should at least reflect the higher cost 
of doing business in urban areas, 
which tend to have more youngsters 
who require special academic and 
social assistance. These experts also 
say that education needs should drive 
state financing if they can be prop- 
erly defined and measured. 

  

 



  

  

  
9-6-90~ 

There is a way to brin 
  

    

Cecilia Prestamo / The Hartford Courant 

Principal James Parham greets students outside the 

J.C. Clark Elementary School in Hartford last week. 

   

    

By EUGENE E. LEACH 

n 1963 James Baldwin warned Americans 

that if they did not conquer their racism, 

it would destroy them. Baldwin quoted an 

old slave song: “God gave Noah the 

rainbow sign, No more water, the fire 

next time!” 
In 1992 the flames of South Central Los 

Angeles should burn Baldwin's prophecy back 

into our consciousness. 
A quarter-century ago. Americans seemed 

to be heeding Baldwin's warning. The epic civil- 

rights movement forced this country to 
confront the ills of racial prejudice more 
forthrightly than it had ever done before. Yet 

today, in the courts and in the streets, the great 

gains of the movement seem in danger of being 
reversed. Racism, America’s original sin, still 

blights the lives and wearies the souls of tens of 

millions of citizens. 
Much of black America remains a 

beleaguered island in white America. Other 

racial and ethnic minorities, too, live like 

internal exiles in urban ghettos. The eruption of 

anger and desperation in Los Angeles, 

Eugenc E. Leach, a professor of history and 
American studies at Trinity College, lives in West 
Hartford. 

  

o Americans together: integrate the schools 
triggered by the unfathomable verdict in the 
trial of Rodney King’s attackers, was more 
destructive than any urban riot of the 1960s. In 
matters of race relations it appears Americans 
are sliding backward. 

Yet few practicable means for resuming 
the civil-rights movement have been suggested, 
much less tried. We have exhortations, 
investigations, prayers and books, endlessly 
citing a crisis for which no decisive remedy is 
proposed. 

Three years ago, my family and nine 
others joined to challenge the racial iselation in 
the Hartford region by filing a school 
integration lawsuit. The case, called Sheff vs. 

O'Neill, will go to trial in November. 
The reasoning behind school integration is 

simple. Children of different racial and 
economic backgrounds should attend well- 
funded, well-equipped schools, staffed by 
teachers who know how to work with diverse 
student bodies. Test scores, graduation rates 
and other measures of educational outcomes 
will improve. 

Minority children will no longer be 
concentrated in overburdened inner-city 
schools. All children will enjoy the same 
educational benefits long taken for granted by 

sn
 
E
A
,
 

H 
> 

  
Michael McAndrews / The Hartford Courant 

® Kindergarten teacher Pat Borjestedt meets students 

Please see The public, Page E4 arriving at the Elizabeth Green School in Newington. 

 



  

The public schools have always 
served to integrate America 
Continued from Page El 

middle-class white children. Educa- 
tional performance will gradually 
improve. Meanwhile, the perfor- 
mance of middle-class white chil- 
dren will be unaffected as dozens of 
studies of desegregated schools have 
proved. 

In the day-to-day experience of 
learning and playing together, chil- 
dren of different backgrounds will 
acquire a tolerance and mutual re- 
spect for one another. They will nev- 
er develop the habit of defining other 
racial groups as alien or savage or 
inferior. Parents, political leaders 
and other adults will learn the same 
lessons. 

Why pick on the public schools, 
which already have so many respon- 
sibilities and so many problems? 
The reason is that schools are excel- 
lent tools for overcoming racial iso- 
lation. They serve the great majority 
of families, and they are — or can be 
— powerful agencies for spreading 
economic opportunities, shaping at- 
titudes and fighting prejudice. 

Urban public school systems have 
always been organs of integration. 
For nearly two centuries, city 
schools have provided avenues of 
mobility and assimilation for mil- 
lions of immigrants and the poor. 

Yesterday they served primarily 
white newcomers from Europe and 
rural America. Today they must 
serve African-Americans and La- 
tinos. Imperfect as the schools may 
be, it is impossible to build a multira- 
cial democracy without them. 

To be sure, school integration has 
costs. Successful integration de- 
mands money for planning, teacher 
training, curriculam innovation, 

transportation and other measures. 
To make school integration work, 
everyone has to make sacrifices, ev- 
eryone has to open his and her mind 
and heart. Everyone has to cast 
away habits and prejudices, every- 
one has to resolve to do things in new 
ways. 

But think of the benefits: checking 
the current slide into racial crisis; 
repairing the conditions of igno- 
rance and despair that created first 
the Rodney King verdict and Los 
Angeles riots; progress toward mak- 
ing a society that honors its pledge of 
liberty and justice for all. 

Costly or not, school integration 
has to come. 

Does anyone believe that race re- 
lations in central Connecticut can be 
significantly improved while 93 per- 
cent of the schoolchildren of Hart- 
ford are African-American or Latino 
while 90 percent of the children in 
suburban schools are white? 

Does anyone believe that Con- 
necticut, with one-quarter of its chil- 
dren belonging to minority groups — 
a figure that is rapidly rising — can 
afford to isolate so large percentage 
of its future workers and voters? 

  

Does anyone believe this 
region, this state, can 
expect to remain 
prosperous and peaceful 
unless it attacks the 
segregation problem 
head-on? 
HL... li i i a kL 

Does anyone believe this region, 
this state, can expect to remain pros- 
perous and peaceful unless it attacks 
the segregation problem head-on? 

Does anyone believe that the re- 
cent pictures of South Central Los 
Angeles in flames hold no meaning 
for Hartford? 

School integration is not a pana- 
cea. There are other proposals that 
must be considered. For example, 
segregated schools reflect segregat- 
ed housing. Any comprehensive ef- 
fort to overcome racial isolation in 
central Connecticut will have to in- 
clude programs to integrate residen- 
tial areas. 

But such programs have not been 
developed. A proposal for school in- 
tegration is on the table now. The 
Sheff vs. O'Neill lawsuit is a call for 
action. If Hartford and its suburbs 
are to avoid the calamity recently 
suffered by Los Angeles, where bet- 
ter to begin than with our children? 
What is more likely to heal the 
wounds of racism and racial division 
than integrating the schools? 

Today, when ethnic conflicts are 
rending societies all over the planet, 
James Baldwin's decades-old plea to 
end America’s “racial nightmare. . . 
and change the history of the world” 
resonates more powerfully than 
ever. “I knew that what I am asking 
is impossible,” wrote Baldwin in 
“The Fire Next Time.” “But in our 
time, as in every time, the impossi- 
ble is the least that one can demand.” 

Here and now in Hartford, doing 
the impossible and changing history 
can begin with integrating the 
schools. 

 



  

B6 L THE NEW YORK TIMES METRO THURSDAY, JANUARY 14, 1993 

  LJ ~n 

  TTCeU0T 
  

Expert Indicates How Far Weicker School Plan Goes Toward Desegregation Suit Goal 
By GEORGE JUDSON 
Special to The New York Times 

WEST HARTFORD, Conn., Jan. 13 
— A week after Gov. Lowell P. Weick- 
er Jr. proposed integrating Connecti- 
cut’s schools over five years, a deseg- 
regation expert's court testimony 
here today indicated how far the Gov- 
ernor’s plan goes toward meeting the 
goal of plaintiffs suing to link Hart- 
ford’s schools with those in surround- 
ing districts. 

Testifying for the plaintiffs, the ex- 
pert said any plan to integrate 
schools in the Hartford region should 
send suburban children into the city 
as well as city children to the sub- 
urbs; be overseen by a neutral panel, 
not by the state or local districts, and 
start immediately. 

The expert, Prof. Charles V. Willie 
of the Harvard Graduate School of 
Education, showed that there were 
many points of agreement between 
Mr. Weicker and the plaintiffs. Both, 
for example, propose that a metropol- 
itan plan give parents some choice on 
where to send their children. Both’ 
emphasize the need to improve the 
quality of schools as well as to inte- 
grate them. 

“You cannot develop an effective 
desegregation plan for a metropoli- 
tan area without resources,” Profes- 
sor Willie said in Superior Court. “If 
you do not have resources that can 
upgrade schools in the central city, 
people in the suburbs will not send 
their children to those schools. And a 
one-way plan is unfair.” 

Use of Percentages 

Professor Willie today also used 
percentages for the first time in the 
three-week-old trial to describe ra- 
cial-balance goals for a desegrega- 
tion plan. No school should have less 
than 20 percent black and Hispanic 
students, or 20 percent whites, he 
said; ideally, all schools should be 
half to two-thirds white, and half to 
one-third black and Hispanic. 

That range of mixes, he said, would 
expose children to others unlike 
them, while insuring that each group 

in a school was large enough so that 
its needs could not be overlooked. 

“When the children of all racial 
groups are in one classroom, you 
can’t harm one group without harm- 
ing all of them,” he said. ‘You have 
guaranteed them against harm that 

  

A professor shows 
similarities between 

the Governor’s and 

plaintiffs’ aims. 
  

is racially motivated.” 
The Hartford metropolitan region’s 

racial mix, he said, combined with 
what he called the manageable size of 
the population, suggests that a suc- 
cessful desegregation plan could be 
established here. 

In Hartford and the 21 surrounding 
towns that the plaintiffs seek to in- 
clude in a desegregation plan, 63.3 
percent of the 93,791 students are 
white, and 33.8 percent are black or 
Hispanic. Of the city’s 25,700 stu- 
dents, 7.6 percent are white and 90.2 
percent are black or Hispanic. 

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the 
suit said they had not decided on 
specific goals that they will request 
from Judge Harry Hammer, who is 

hearing the suit here in Superior 
Court. Today's testimony served, in 
part, as a handbook of desegregation 
strategies for Judge Hammer, should 
he decide the segregation in Hart- 
ford’s schools violates the state’s 
Constitution by denying children an 
equal educational opportunity. 

The major elements needed for a 
successful plan, Professor Willie said, 
include these: 
The ideal racial mix allows flexi- 

bility so that individual schools could 
have varying proportions but still be 
within 10 percentage points higher or 
lower than the region's. The Hartford 
region’s racial mix provides that flex- 
ibility. Mr. Weicker called for schools 
to reflect their region’s overall racial 
mix, within a range to be established. 
¢Mandatory participation and 

goals are essential, while voluntary 
clements like magnet schools or 
school-choice plans are extremely 
helpful. The plan should be developed 
by a neutral panel, such as one ap- 
pointed by a court. Mr. Weicker is 
emphasizing voluntary strategies 
and local control and would have the 
State Board of Education, a defend- 
ant in the suit, approve the regional 

r 

plans. : 
GA plan must be carried out as 

soon as possible. Phasing one in is 
unfair to the children already in 
school and worsens the political and 
educational climate. Mr. Weicker has 
proposed a five-year timetable. 

gA fair plan must send suburban 
children into city schools as well as 
city children to suburban ones. That 
will require heavy investment in city 
schools, so that they will be attractive 
to suburban parents. The Governor 
has not addressed the potential cost 
of a desegregation plan. 

Professor Willie, who has helped 
"draft desegregation plans adopted for 
Boston, St. Louis, Seattle and Milwau- 
kee, was questioned sharply for the 
state by Alfred A. Lindseth, an Atlan- 
ta lawyer who has helped school 
boards fight desegregation suits in 
Atlanta, St. Louis, Los Angeles and 
Charleston, S.C. 

In fighting to avoid a court order," 
the state contends that the conditions 
in Hartford’s schools are a result of 
poverty and other factors beyond its 
control. 

Mr. Lindseth tried repeatedly to 
get Professor Willie to concede that 

[8 

sending poor children to schools out- 
side the city would not repair the 
harm from the poverty of their home 
life. 

For the first time he raised the 
issue of white flight, in questioning 
Professor Willie about a plan that 
Boston introduced in 1988 that asks 
parents to list the top five schools 
they want their children to attend. 
The professor had held up the. plan, 
which he helped draft, as an example 
for Hartford, saying that under it 
most parents get their first or second 
choice. . 

Professor Willie heatedly called 
claims that desegregation plans 
cause whites to flee cities ‘‘a wrong, 
spurious conclusion.” 

“Whites have been leaving cities 
since World War II,” he said. 

Mr. Lindseth also asked how many 
suburban children chose to attend 
city schools under St. Louis’s deseg- 
regation plan, which has cost several 
hundred million dollars. 

Handed his own study of St. Louis, 
Professor Willie looked over the num- 
bers. “Three hundred and fifty one,” 
he said. 

   



WESTPORT NEWS, Tuesday, December 22, 1992 31 
  

  

Landmark case goes before Hartford court 
By LOCKER McCARTHY 

It is potentially the most far- 
reaching desegregation case since 
Judge Arthur Garrity’s ruling 
integrated Boston’s schools in 
1975. Within a few weeks, a Hart- 
ford jury will decide if the de 
facto segregation separating the 
overwhelmingly white suburban 
schools from the minority- 
dominated city schools consti- 
tutes an illegal deprivation of 
education for urban youngsters. 

In 1989, Elizabeth Sheff, a 
Hartford councilman, sued on 
behalf of her then-13-year-old son, 
Milo, saying that the conditions 
in city schools were such that 
they violated the state constitu- 
tion’s guarantee of equal educa- 
tional opportunity. 

It further argues that spending 
more money on city schools is not 
enough, and that urban and sub- 
urban school districts should be 
merged in order to break up 
clear patterns of segregation. 

Connecticut Attorney General 
Richard Blumenthal counters 
that, because the state had no 
demonstrable role in creating the 
segregation as it exists, it is not 
liable in the case. 

Should the state lose Sheff v. 
O'Neill (William O’Neill, who 
was governor when the suit was 
filed, is the named defendant), 
similar suits could follow all over 
the North, where white flight has 
left city schools overwhelmingly 
the domain of impoverished mi- 
norities. 

In Connecticut, some of the 
nation’s wealthiest communities 
exist cheek-by-jowl with some of 
its poorest cities that have been 

called ‘‘enclaves of disad- 
vantage.” 

“I think the case exposes 
facts that everybody should be 
aware of, and they’re not some- 
thing we should be proud of,” 
says state Sen. Robert Genuario 
(R-25), who serves on the legisla- 
ture’s Education Committee. 

“Speaking just on the legal 
issues,” says Mr. Genuario, ‘I 
don’t think the judiciary should 
be doing what the legislature 
should be doing. The focus is 
positive, but I favor the solution 
being fashioned by us, rather 
than by the courts. 

“But if the court rules for 
Sheff, that’s what we're going to 
be left with,” he continues. “On 
the other hand, if Sheff loses, that 
can’t be taken as justification for 
the present system, which is 
segregation.” 

Mr. Genuario notes that a 
number of proposals have sur- 
faced in the legislature that pur- 
port to remedy educational im- 
balances — bills call for more 
magnet schools and provide fi- 
nancial incentives for inter- 
district cooperation. 

Darien Board of Education 
Chairman Lynn Hamlen com- 
ments: “I don’t want to pre- 
judge [the case], but what’s criti- 
cal is how the state will interpret 
its responsibility to improve edu- 
cational opportunities. Do we in- 
terpret a desegregation order as 
more busing across district lines, 
or do we start to address the 
crisis where it’s happening: in 
the city schools? Or should we 
continue along the lines of inter- 
district cooperative educational 

programs, such as the ‘6 to 6’ 
magnet schools that Claire Gold 
developed?” 

(Editor’s note: the “6 to 6” 
schools are in session from 6 in 
the morning to 6 in the evening 
and provide comprehensive pre- 

. school and after school programs, 
as well as a regular curriculum.) 

State Sen. George Jepsen (D- 
27) predicts a victory for the 
plaintiffs. “And then it’s a mat- 
ter of what the courts tell us to do 
[in the legislature]. They could 
order nothing short of redistrict- 
ing so that every school in Con- 
necticut reflects the racial diver- 
sity of the state. Or they could 
decide not to mandate specific 
solutions and say that students 
who want to avail themselves of 
an education that reflects plural- 
ism and racial diversity have 
that opportunity.” 

Mr. Jepsen adds, “Here in 
Stamford, we desegregate. There 
are regular reviews and the 
schools reflect the racial compo- 
sition of the city.” 

Overall, approximately one- 
quarter of the state’s public 
school students are black or His- 
panic, but many districts in Hart- 
ford, New Haven and Bridgeport 
are more than 90 percent minor- 
ity. Meanwhile, neighboring sub- 
urbs like West Hartford are al- 
most 90 percent white. 

The Sheff legal team says they 
expect that, if victorious, the 
courts will set specific quotas in 
any integration scheme, coupled 
with busing plans to achieve the 
goals. 

According to a published re- 
port in The New York Times, the 

first witness called this week, 
David Carter, president of East- 
ern Connecticut State Univer- 
sity, defined equal educational 
opportunity as the chance to 
achieve one’s maximum poten- 
tial. He testified for a need to 
Provide “hope for the hope- 
ess.” 

Darien State Rep. Reginald 
Jones is currently sponsoring a 
bill that would use a number of 
incentives for college students to 
go into the inner cities and tutor 

minority children. But he is chary 
of a sweeping desegregation 
order. “I think the problem is 
more complex than people are 
willing to admit. The simplistic 
view is if you simply integrate 
the classroom, the quality of 
education will improve. But if 
you take a child who is not 
performing at grade level and 
put him or her in a class where 
the others are all at grade level, 
I'm not sure you're doing that 
child a favor.” 

 



   
{ i 

  

  

| en 
‘ : 

By GEORGE JUDSON 
Special to The New York Times 

WEST HARTFORD, Conn., Dec. 23 
— The, principal of an elementary 
school in-Hartford’s North End testi- 
fied in Superior Court here this week 
that of his 580 pupils, only 17 do not 
qualify for frée lunches. 

A first-grade bilingual teacher at a 
second school testified that years after 
Puerto Rican children leave her class, 
hey have learned neither Spanish nor 
English, and “cannot complete a single 
sentence-in one language.” 

A fifth-grade teacher at a third 
school said that of her 18 pupils, only 2 
met the state’s reading goal in fourth- 
grade mastery tests. Special attention 
for her one gifted pupil, she said, is 
limited to trying to get him into a 
better school. 

As civil-rights lawyers complete a 
portrait of Hartford's public schools as 
institutions overwhelmed by the pov- 
erty and racial isolation of their stu- 
dents, details like these sometimes 

“seem to fill the courtroom with the 
feeling of hopelessness that teachers 
say suffocates their classrooms. 

Poverty vs. Education 

The ‘state, accused of denying the 
city’s children an equal educational 
{opportunity by not acting to end the 
segregation in its schools, contends 
that the real issue is poverty, not edu- 
cation. It says that the goal of the 
lawsuit being tried here, a court order 
lo integrate Hartford's schools with 
those of its suburbs, will not address 
the underlying problem. 

But as teachers and principals de- 
scribe their students and schools, they 
make depressingly clear that public 
education in Hartford has no choice but 
to fight poverty before it can begin to 
teach. 

| “They need more than other chil- 
dren,” the bilingual teacher, Gladys 

| Hernandez, said of the poor black and 
Hisp ‘nic children who fill Barnard- 

    

\___ THE'NEW YORK TiMES NATIONAL SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 192 

CF Wr tN Bi Sh lS 

on — 

  

  
  

Brown School, where she taught until 
retiring last June. “It is as if they have 
a terrible illness and they need all the 
medicine in the world.” 

The civil-rights lawyers, represent- 
ing 19 black, white and Hispanic chil- 
dren in a suit known as Sheff v. O'Neill, 
argue that the city’s schools are so 
burdened by the special needs of poor 
children that they cannot offer the 
same educational opportunities as sub- 
urban schools. 

Testimony on Segregation 

They also say that schools made up 
entirely of poor children from racial 
and cthnic minorities deny them an 
exposure to the mainstream society 
beyond their ghettos, where they will 

  

Poor children 
lack exposure to 
mainstream 
society. 

  

have to compete with the graduates of 
suburban schools for jobs. Ninety per- 
cent of the city’s 25,700 students are 
black or Hispanic, and nearly half are 
from families on welfare. 

This week the lawyers presented the 
first of several expert witnesses on the 
effects of segregation and integration, 
Jomills H. Braddock, chairman of the 
sociology department at the University 
of Miami. 

Segregation tends to perpetuate it- 
self, Professor Braddock testified, cit- 
ing studies tracking the higher educa- 
tion and employment of blacks. Attend- 
ing integrated schools, he said, makes 
blacks more likely to live in integrated 
settings as adults, and makes whites 
mot likely to view integration favor- 

  

  

ably. 
But in the first six days of the trial, 

the most compelling testimony came 
from witnesses who work in the Hart- 
ford schools. Much of it had to do with 
problems of poverty that the schools 
have little choice but to spend time and 
money on, draining resources from 
basic education. 

Very Little Schooling 

From 1980 to 1990, for cxample, 
Hartford’s Hispanic population in- 
creased 59 percent, overtaking blacks 
as the largest group in the schools, with 
48.9 percent of the students. 

Nearly all are Puerto Rican. Some 
come from the island with little or no 
schooling, entering the city’s schools 
years behind. Many move back and 
forth, changing schools once or twice a 
year. Most live in families and neigh- 
borhoods where English is not spoken. 
Most are extremely poor. 

“Nine out of 10 of my kids were from 
families headed by a woman,” Mrs. 
Hernandez said of her pupils. “The 
fathers sometimes said, ‘I have a little 
job.” That meant he might have several 
little, part-time jobs to help him 
support his family.” 

At Barnard-Brown, 125 children at- 
tend bilingual classes, studying read- 
ing, writing and mathematics in Span- 
ish while they learn English. But be- 
yond an hour of English each day, Mrs. 
Hernandez said, the children do not 
hear the language, at home, on the 
street, at play. Their Spanish, mean- 
while, is so rudimentary that they do 
not know words for common objects 
like clothing. 

Many children have learning prob- 
lems stemming from premature birth 
or their mother’s alcoholism or drug 
abuse, testified Freddie Morris, princi- 
pal of Wish School in the North End, 
which has children from Stowe Village, 
the city’s poorest housing project. Sca- 
‘bies and lice are common. Many chil- 
dren suffer from severe tooth decay. 

  

“Many mornings, teachers can't 
even get through taking attendance 
and the lunch count before children 
come up to them, complaining of stom-, 
ach aches, headaches, pains, and other 
symptoms of hunger,” Mr. Morris said. 

The picture is so bleak that the 
state's lawyers, in seeking bright spots,» 
often elicit testimony that is damaging 
to them. Assistant Attorney General 
John R. Whelan, questioning Mr. Mor- 
ris, noted that a description of Wish 
School mentioned its successful com- 
puter laboratory. 

Mr. Morris agreed that it had been 
successful, in that most teachers had 
taken their pupils there for the one 
hour a week they had been allowed. But 
since that description had been written, 
he said, five or six computers had 
broken, there was no money for re- 
pairs, and so the lab was no longer 
used. 

Jean Anderson, a teacher at Be- 
tances School, had described the wide 
range of abilities she must deal with in 

of 

in 

at 

th 

m 
of 

st   
  

  

Schools 
  

her fifth-grade class, in which a fourth 
her pupils need remedial help in 

math, and half in reading. 
Isn’t it beneficial for children to 

learn in a group with a range of abili- 
ties, Mr. Whelan asked. 

“I’m not sure it goes so far down as 
my case,” Ms. Anderson replied. ‘I 

have two students who are functioning 
a second-grade level in math.” 

Torn between pride in their work and 
a desire to help their students any way 

ey can, the teachers and principals 
describe their schools’ shortcomings 

atter of factly, with a weary refrain 
“We do the best we can.” 

How Hartford became segregated is 
not an issue in the suit, only whether 
the segregation violates the State Con- 

itution’s guarantee of equal educa- 
tional opportunity. So most testimony 
offers little sense that the city and its 
schools, not so long ago, were prosper- 
ous and white. Clues that do emerge 
seem disconnected and out of time. 
  

  

 



1 THE NEW YORK TIMES METRO SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1993 

  

  ay EEE 

In Hartford, Data Portray | vice 

Schools in Crisis of Poverty | The Plaintitf's Case 

  

  

  

In a lawsuit being heard in a Connecticut state court, plaintiffs 

By GEORGE JUDSON 
Special to The New York Times 

WEST HARTFORD, Conn., Jan. 1 
— Reduced to charts and graphs, the 
state of Hartford's schools was viv- 
idly displayed in Superior Court here 
this week as civil-rights lawyers pre- 
sented crucial evidence in a lawsuit 
seeking to integrate the capital city’s 
schools with those of its suburbs. 

On graphs showing the concentra- 
tion of minorities and poverty in the 
Hartford metropolitan area, sharp 
spikes marked the city’s place, high 
above its neighbors. On graphs show- 
ing students’ test results, deep 
notches marked the city’s perform- 
ance, worst in all of Connecticut. 

What the graphs show, testified a 
professor of education and sociology 

triello said, this gap in results vio-i 
lates the state's own definition of 
equal educational opportunity, in a 
policy guideline adopted by the state 
Board of Education in 1986. - 

“The goal of equity of access,’ he 
read from the guideline, “is that no 
group of students will demonstrate 
systematically different achievement 
based upon the differences — such as 
residence or race or sex — that its 
members brought with them when 
they entered school.” 

The poor performance of Hart- 
ford’s students, he said, is a result of 
where they live: in a city whose 
schools are overwhelmed by the 
problems posed by intense poverty. 

The problems of poverty, he testi- 
fied, make the fact that Hartford 

SPENDING PER STUDENT 

are seeking to break up the concentration of poor minority 
students in Hartford through a metropolitan desegregation plan 
covering the city and 21 surrounding towns.   

  

Hartford 

West Hartford    Farmington 

   

    

  

Connecticut state average $7,330- 

COMPOSITION OF THE STUDENT POPULATIONS 

  

  

    
  

    
    

who prepared them for the case, is spends more per-pupil than most of 
, that public education in Hartford is its neighbors almost meaningless. Hartford Farmington 

- failing under the burdens of the city’s Much of the money is spent on special Asian White Asian 
poverty and racial isolation. programs for bilingual or special- 1.8% 7.6% 3% 

Denial of Opportunity ‘education students, and on psycholo- * i 

ter ; : gists and social workers. The city Black White 
The city’s children are denied an  gpen ds jess than the state average on Black g go 2% 

educational opportunity equal to that  p,qc educational programs, even 41.6% 
available elsewhere in the state, said though its students need more. Hispanic ‘Hispanic 

the professor, Gary Natriello of Even where the city outspends oth- 49% 1.2% 
Teachers College, and many leave go. owns on its teachers — the aver- 
school not even minimally prepared age salary in Hartford is $44,525, ; 

for adult life. compared with a state average of West Hartford Connecticut 
. "You've got a tragic situation,” he ¢4) 351 _ jt receives less, he said. 

said. “There's no other way to char-  yarford has far fewer teachers with Asian Asian 
acterize it.” oi : . master’s degrees, and twice as many 5.6% 2.2% 

Professor Natriello’s testimony is fir vear teachers. Hispanic : Hispanic fe : _ central to the suit, which seeks to In addition, he said, the children in 6.1% | White 10.4% L White 
overcome the Federal courts’ refusal nearly every classroom lack basic 81.8% 4.3% 

to desegregate school districts across  gypnort from parents and their com- Black Black 
city lines, by arguing in a state court munity: books at home, a place to do 6.0% 12.8% 
that the racial and economic segrega- 
tion in Hartford schools violates Con- 
necticut’s constitution. 

The defendant, the state govern- 
ment, says it is not responsible for the 
segregation, which is the result of 
  

A suit says the state 

violates its own 
definition of equal 

opportunity. 
  

housing patterns that have divided 
cities from their suburbs across the 
North. 

But the suit says the state is re- 
sponsible, because it has not acted to 
end the segregation. 

The suit is similar to a landmark 
case in New Jersey known as Abbott 
v. Burke, which won increased school 
financing for that state's cities, argu- 

. ing that they must spend much more 
to offer the same opportunities to 
poor children as schools serving mid- 
dle-class children. 

But the Connecticut suit, known as 
+ Sheff v. O'Neill, seeks much more 

' than increaseu aid. Its goal is to 
break up the concentration of poor 
minority students in Hartford 

* through a metropolitan desegrega- 
" tion plan covering the city and 21 
surrounding towns. 

For two days this week, Martha 
Stone, a lawyer with the Connecticut 
Civil Liberties Union, led Professor 
Natriello through a thick study he had 
prepared, mainly from the state’s 
own education statistics on Hartford 
and its suburbs. 

The study showed wide disparities 
between Hartford schools and subur- 
ban ones in nearly every category he 
examined, from scores on mastery 

© .tests that Connecticut requires in the 
fourth, sixth and eighth grades, to the 
amounts spent per-pupil on library 
materials and textbooks. 

Disparities on Mastery Tests 

In 1991, for example, 59.3 percent of 
. the children in West Hartford scored 
- at or above the state’s goal on the 

t 
[1] 

mastery test in mathematics; in 
neighboring Hartford, only 12.6 per- 
cent met the goal. 

In West Hartford, 90.2 percent of 
the 1991 graduates took the Scholastic 
Aptitude Test, and the average score 

. was 962, of a possible 1600. In Hart- 
~ ford, only 56.7 percent of a senior 

class already decimated by dropouts 
took the S.A.T., and the average score 

- was 668. 

Whatever its cause, Professor Na- 

homework, a parent with the educa- 
tion to help with lessons. 

Citing statistics on health, social 
and economic factors, Professor Na- 
triello said that a teacher with an 
average fifth-grade class of 23 chil- 
dren would have 3 who were born 
with low birth weights, 3 born to 
mothers using drugs, and 5 born to 
teen-age mothers; 15 living below the 
poverty line, 15 living with single par- 
ents, and 8 living in inadequate hous- 
ing; 21 members of minority groups; 
up to 12 from homes in which English 
is not spoken, and 9 whose parents do 
not work. 

‘Such is the stunning constellation 
of social problems that will confront 
the members, both teachers and stu- 
dents, in a typical class in a Hartford! 
public school,” he wrote in the report! 
he prepared for the case. 

Professor Natriello’s description of 
the city schools’ problems, like anec- 
dotal ones offered earlier by teachers 
and principals, was, as he said, ‘‘de- 
pressing.” : 

“We know, from national studies, 
that even left alone, students make 
progress,’ he said. “So the fact that 
we're finding so little change or 
progress is especially disturbing.” 

Such a bleak outlook could pose a 
political problem for any court order 
or out-of-court settlement that results 
from the lawsuit. While both the civil- 
rights lawyers and lawyers for the 
state say Connecticut supports inte- 
gration, many suburban parents, 
hearing Professor Natriello, might 
wonder how their children would ben- 
efit by attending school with such 
troubled children from the city. 

They might also argue, as New 
Jersey officials did in Abbott wv. 
Burke, that the city’s social problems 
are so overwhelming that spending 
more on its schools would be a waste’ 
of money. 

Ms. Stone anticipated that re- 
sponse, asking Professor Natriello, 
“Given how bad things are, do 
schools make a difference?’ 

He hesitated. “If they had the re- 
sources,’ he said, ‘‘they could make a 
difference.” 

Earlier, he had offered the state’s 
own answer, in another definition of 
equal educational opportunity adopt- 
oy the State Board of Education in 

‘That definition, he said, said that, 
progress in achieving equal opportu- 
nity could be measured by the lessen-: 
ing of disparities in such measures as: 
resources and test scores. : 

“Equity in this sense,” he read 
from the state’s definition, ‘does not 
mean an equal distribution of re- 
sources; rather, it implies that those 
who need more must receive more.” 

  
   

   
. Hartford 

. West Hartford 
, Farmington 

Connecticut 

Percentage of students who scored 
above remedial level on mastery tests. 

  

Writing 

87.8 

Reading    

   
    
  

Percentage of 

students who go to 
four-year colleges. 

  

Spending figures are for 1990-91 school 
year. The rest are for 1991-92 school year. 

Source: Connecticut 
Department of Education     

  
  

The New York Times ; 

 



  

  

  

on
 

tb
da
n 

» 

1 THE NEW YORK TIMES METRO WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6, 1993 

  

CONNECTION TY 
  

Effects of Segregation Told in a Trial 
  

' By GEORGE JUDSON 
wi Special to The New York Times 

WEST HARTFORD, Conn., Jan. 5 
— Lawyers seeking to integrate Hart- 
ford’s schools with suburban ones of- 
fered evidence today from some of 
the best-known studies on the effects 
of segregation on black students: 
studies of a 25-year desegregation 
program in Hartford and its suburbs, 
Project Concern. 

The studies’ main author, Prof. 
Robert L. Crain, has testified about 
Project Concern in school-desegrega- 
tion cases across the nation. Their 
findings, he said today, are the ‘‘cen- 
tral national evidence’ that segrega- 
tion perpetuates itself — that children 
who attend segregated schools live 
segregated lives as adults. 

‘Segregation proved to have long- 
term harmful effects,” testified Pro- 
fessor Crain, a sociologist from 
Teachers College at Columbia Uni- 
versity. It discouraged black students. 
from completing high school or col- 
lege, led them into segregated, low- 
level occupations, and limited their 
contact with whites. 

The focus on Project Concern 
brought into the open many of the 
uncomfortable ironies of the lawsuit 
being heard here, which in challeng- 
ing the racial and economic segrega- 
tion of Hartford's schools is seeking a 
desegregation plan covering the city 
and 21 surrounding towns. 

State Defends Its Role 

While the plaintiffs say the studies 
of Project Concern prove the harm of 
segregation, the State of Connecticut, 
the defendant in the case, argues that, 
the very existence of Project Concern’ 
shows that the state has been trying 
to promote integration. 

The segregation that divides Hart- 
ford, where schools have a minority 
enrollment of 90 percent, from its 
suburbs, where schools are 90 per- 

cent white, is found across the North 
and West, where the migration of 
Southern blacks in the 1950's and 60's 
speeded the movement of whites to 
the suburbs. 

Lawyers for the state say that the 
state did not cause the residential 
segregation, but that it has tried to 
combat the growing segregation of 

schools in Hartford. 
Isn't Project Concern the oldest 

desegregation plan in the nation send- 
ing children across city lines, Alfred 
A. Lindseth, an Atlanta lawyer hired 
by the state, asked Professor Crain. 
“Can you think of any in the entire 
country that have been continuously 

in effect for over 25 years?"   
Larger Program Backed 

“There may not be any others,” 
Mr. Crain replied. “When this was 
done in 1966, it-was a pretty impor- 

tant program.” 
For the civil-rights lawyers argu- 

ing the suit, however, the resuits of 
Project Concern are crucial evidence 
that a much larger integration effort 
between Hartford and its suburbs 
would benefit the city’s children. 

The children who stayed in Project 
Concern through graduation from 
suburban high schools, Mr. Crain tes- 
tified, not only had more years of 
college education, but were more like- 
ly to live in mixed or white neighbor- 
hoods, have friends who were white, 
and work in an integrated environ- 
ment, while being less likely to per- 
ceive discrimination around them. 

State Agrees With Suers 

And while Project Concern is a 
source of pride for many people in 
Hartford and its suburbs, its small 
scale is evidence of how limited the 
region's desegregation efforts have 
been. Only 680 children attend subur- 
ban schools through the program, 
down from a high of 1,175 in 1978. The - 
city’s schools have 25,700 children 
attending them. 

This suit is also unusual in that the   
state agrees with the goal of those 

who are suing it: improving the edu- 
cation of Hartford's children by inte- 
grating them with children from sur- 
rounding towns. The state wants to 
achieve that goal voluntary or legisia- 
tively, not by court order. 

But as lawyers for the state ques- 
tion Project Concern, a desegregation 
plan that meets one of the state's own 
main requirements, that a plan be 
voluntary, they unavoidably raise 

doubts whether the common goal — 
integration — carries any benefits. 

“Weren't these schools all white?" 
Mr. Lindseth asked of the suburban 
schools taking part in Project Con- 
cern. ‘So isn’t this really a study of 

  desegregated school?" 
In Project Concern, children from 

schools in the predominantly black’ 
! North End of Hartford are invited at 
| random to attend schools in other 
towns. Parents and the children can 

"reject the invitation, or choose to re- 
, turn to city schools at any time. 

| Efforts of the City 

In the program's first years, the 
.city not only made a great effort to 
| see that all those selected took part, 
but also, at the insistence of the re- 
search director of West Hartford's 
schools, Edward Riedy, set up an 
experiment. A comparable group of 
children who stayed in city schools 
was identified as a control group. 

Professor Crain's studies located 
students from the program's first 
years, and those from control groups, 

how blacks do in a white school, not a * 

Famed School Study of Hartford and Suburbs Given as Evidence 

and questioned them about their 
years of college, their jobs, and their 
attitudes. Most were in their early 
20's, and so, little difference in in- 
come or job status was found. 

But in many other measures, he 
said, the Project Concern graduates 
were much more positive about par- 
ticipating in an integrated world, and 
were much more optimistic about 
their prospects for promotion at 
work. 

The students who attended Hart- 
ford's segregated schools, he said, 
lacked a network of friends in the 
larger, white work world to point 
them toward job openings, had a 
harder time, in their language and 
dress, presenting themselves to em- 

ployers, weren't relaxed with white 
supervisors, and were angrier and 
less able to deal with the demands of 
integrated settings. 

‘A Tough Desegregation Plan’ 

Asked by Marianne Engleman 
Lado, a lawyer with the NAACP Le- 
gal Defense and Educational Fund 
Inc, if students suffered any negative 
effects from Project Concern, Profes- 
sor Crain said no. 

Asked if desegregation was stress- 
ful for blacks, he replied emphatical- 
ly, “Yes.” Project Concern, he said, 
had few participants, so they were 
isolated, the suburban schools had 
few black teachers, and many chil- 
dren had long rides to school. 

“This was a tough desegregation 
plan,” he said. 

  

  

| . 

L+!B5 

  

 



  

2 World® of School 
  

Cuomo and Weicker Vary in Attacks 
On Systems of Bias by Local Wealth 

By KEVIN SACK 
Special to The New York Times 

ALBANY, Jan. 6 — In Albany and 
Hartford, two Governors used their 

annual State of the State addresses 
today to suggest new ways to battle 
the historic problems created by the 
side-by-side coexistence of rich and 

poor school districts. 
Each addressed a dif- 

ferent aspect of the cru- 
cial issue of education. 
Mario M. Cuomo of New 
York focused on the way 

wealth is tapped to pay for education. 
Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut 
confronted the educational dispari- 
ties that inevitably result when white 
students attend schools in affluent 
suburbs while minority students at- 
tend schools in poor urban areas. 

But each, in a sense, suggested that 
part of the solution was to seek a 
broader financial base than the tradi- 
tional school district, which has been 
so central for so long in the way 
Americans make decisions on educat- 
ing their children. 

Mr. Cuomo suggested that money; 
for schools should come from county- 
wide income taxes rather than, as: 
currently, from property taxes as- 
sessed school district by school dis- 
trict, a system that allows wealthy: 
communities to raise more for their 
schools than poor ones. 

Killing White Localism 

Mr. Weicker said that Connecti-' 
cut’s school system should be subdi- 
vided into six large regions, eliminat- 
ing the district-by-district system 
that has allowed white communities 
to send their children to predominant- 
ly white schools. 

While the two Governors were 
speaking this afternoon, the most fun- 
damental issues that have long 
plagued school systems, like race and 
class, were at the forefront in both 
state capitals. 

Mr. Cuomo asked the Legislature 
to change a state law to allow coun- 
ties to create a personal income tax 
so that the burden of paying for the 
schools could be shifted from prop- 
erty taxpayers to income taxpayers. 

Governor Cuomo said his primary 
intent was to create a more equitable 
system of taxation by replacing a 
regressive tax with a more progres- 
sive one. ; 

Mr. Cuomo said he had not decided! 
whether the counties or the state 
would devise a formula for distribut-, 
ing the money to individual school 
districts. But he said that either one 
could guarantee that poor districts 
receive more help than they get now, 
when they are limited to what they 
can raise from their own property 
taxes. 

And Mr. Weicker suggested re- 
drawing the state’s educational map 
to create six regions that would have 
to find ways to desegregate their! 
schools. The proposal represented his: 
response to a major lawsuit that 

News 

Analysis 

charges Connecticut with maintain-- 
ing de facto segregation in its schools. ! 

The lawsuit argues that the Hart- 
ford schools, which are 90 percent 
minority, receive far less financial 
support than heavily white schools in- 
the suburbs. It is being tried now in 
Superior Court in Hartford. 

Rather than responding defensive- 
ly to the lawsuit, which was filed by 
the families of 17 children from Hart- 
ford and West Hartford, Mr. Weicker 
made a strong case for reparations. 

“If you are poor, if you are a minor- 
ity, and if you live in one of our cities, 
you start the game at a disadvan- 
tage,” he said. 

Mr. Weicker then provided a de- 
tailed proposal for the creation of the: 
six regions, setting deadlines for 
them to reduce ‘the racial and eco- 
nomic isolation of all students on a 
school-by-school, regionwide basis.’ 

Politicians in New Jersey also have 
been waging a bitter fight over school 
financing. Just last month, Gov. Jim 

  

A call for a county 
income tax, and 
for large regions. 
  

Florio and Republican legislative 
leaders reached a compromise that 
replaced the existing school aid sys- 
tem with a new one. 

The decisions of both Governors to 
unveil proposals that will have little’ 
cost, at least in the short term, re- 
flected the tenacity of the recession 
that still grips the region. 

But the methods used by Mr. 
Cuomo and Mr. Weicker to sell their 
ideas provided a stark contrast be- 
tween a pair of Governors at different 
stages of their careers. 

Mr. Weicker, who is beginning the 
third year of his first term, was the 

+ poet on Wednesday. He devoted the 
vast majority of his speech to the 
problem of racial inequity in the 
state’s schools, speaking movingly 
about ‘“‘a Connecticut of promise, as 
seen in its suburbs, and a Connecticut 
of despair, as seen in its poverty- 
stricken cities.” 

By contrast, Mr. Cuomo, who began 
his 11th year in office, seemed to 
issue his school proposal almost as an 
afterthought. It received two para- 
graphs in his 156-page message to the 
Legislature and one paragraph in his 
somewhat rambling 59-minute 
speech. It took even the state’s Edu- 
cation Commissioner, Thomas Sobol, 
by surprise. 

“It really was unexpected,” said 
Mr. Sobol, who said he could not sup- 
port the proposal until dozens of ques- 
tions were answered. “It’s interesting 
but it’s going to take a lot of work to. 
figure out.” 

J 

e
r
 

 



- Weicker’s Message | 
Focuses on Schools | » 

THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 1993.   

  

  

In Connecticut, Gov. Lowell P.- 
+ Weicker Jr.'s State of the State | a speech focused on the deep racial 
: divisions in the state’s public schools. 

Against the backdrop of a case in 
which minority students are suing the 
state, the Governor urged legislators S h / No d and school leaders to give urban and C 00 S ee suburban districts equal racial mixes 
by the 1999-2000 school year. : | R a ce B a [ a n C e 9 

Weicker Says 

Voluntary Integration 

Urged for Connecticut 

  
    Article, page Bl. 
  
  

  

By KIRK JOHNSON 
Special to The New York Times 

HARTFORD, Jan. 6 — Gov. Lowell P.: 

Weicker Jr., in a State of the State speech 
that focused almost entirely on the deep 
racial divisions in Connecticut’s public 
schools, today urged legislators and local 
school leaders to begin a voluntary integra- 
tion effort that would give urban and subur- 
ban districts roughly equal racial mixes by 
the 1999-2000 school year. 

The backdrop of the speech, which Mr. 
Weicker repeatedly acknowledged, is a 
court case in which minority students from 
Hartford have sued the state, arguing that 
racially segregated schools violate the 
State Constitution’s guarantee to equal edu- 
cation..Testimony is under way in that case, 
with a decision expected sometime this 
year that could, if the students prevail, 

mandate sweeping changes. 
Mr. Weicker did not say that accepting 

his proposal would short-circuit a court 
order, but he clearly held out that hope. 

“A court-run school system is not for 
Connecticut — its children, or its adults,” 
he said. “If we fail to act, the courts, sooner 

or later, will do that which by election was 
‘entrusted to us.” 

Many legislators acknowledged that the 
Governor, with his sweeping denunciation 
of racial and economic balance in Connecti- 
cut’s public schools, had taken moral lead- 
ership on the issue. 

The plan, while ambitious in its goals, 
was cautious in its particulars. Although it 
calls for creating six educational regions in 
the state where integration would be 
achieved by crossing town lines, local con- 
trol of schools would be maintained, the 

Governor said, and the plan would include 
no sanctions against towns that failed to 
cooperate. 

But critics and supporters alike said the 
speech broke new ground by proclaiming 
that a system of mostly white suburban 
schools and mostly minority urban schools 
was, in itself, harmful to the state and all its : 

children and that the state should act to set 
things right. That view contradicts the 
state’s position in the lawsuit, in which it 
has maintained that segregation is a result 
of housing and immigration patterns and 
that the state has no responsibility to cor- 

rect the problem. 

“The racial and economic isolation in 

 



  

   

  

THE NEW YORK TIMES MEY RO THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 1993 

  

  

CONNECT UT 
  

  
Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. delivering his State of the State speech yesterday in Hartford. 

Weicker Urges Voluntary Integration Plan 
Continued From Page Bl 

Connecticut's school system is indis- 
putable,”” Mr, Weicker said. And 
though the causes of] that inequity 
might be disputed, he added, in the 
end it really does not matter. “What 
matters is that it is here and must be 
dealt with,” he said. 

John C. Brittain, a lawyer for the 
students, said the speech undercut 
the state's position entirely. 

‘I don’t see why I wouldn't call the 
Governor tomorrow as a witness,” he 
said, though he quickly added that he 
did not plan to do that for reasons 
involving executive privilege. 

Under the plan, which has yet to be 
[drafted into a formal legislative pro- 
posal, the racial composition of every 
school system in a region would even- 
tually have to match that of the re- 
gion as a whole. Thus, New Canaan, a 
predominantly white town in Fair- 
field County, would have to increase 
its minority enrollment to roughly 
35.3 percent while Bridgeport, with a 
predominantly minority population, 
would cut its minority enrollment to 
35.3 percent. 

‘Social Engineering’ 

Reaction in the legislature ranged 
from open skepticism that local com- 
munities would ever voluntarily re- 
solve racial divisions without eco- 
nomic or other sanctions by the state, 
to fear that sanctions may yet 
emerge as legislators pick up where 
Mr. Weicker left off. 

“I really don't want to see us move 
in the direction that would put some 
sort of racial, social engineering as 
the goal,” said Representative Paul 
J. Knierim, a Republican from Sims- 
bury, and the ranking minority mem- 
ber on the Education Committee. “I 
don't think it should be our objective 
to try to make all school districts 
have the same statistical racial or 
ethnic makeup regardless of settle- 
ment patterns,” Mr. Knierim said. 
“I'm fearful that that's the Gover- 
nor’s thrust with this.” 

But Hartford's Mayor, Carrie Sax- 
on Perry, a staunch supporter of the 
students’ lawsuit against the state, 
called the proposal a ‘“‘clarion call” 
that was more important for its tone 
and its basic premise than for the 
plan itself, which she said did not go 
far enough. 

Lawyers for the state have argued 
in the lawsuit, called Sheff v. O'Neill, 
that poverty is the main problem 
causing poor performance in urban 
schools, not racial isolation. 

Motives Questioned 

But Mr. Weicker said again and 
again in the speech that racial isola- 
tion is itself a handicap and that the 
state government has to be the forum 
for addressing it and coordinating 
local efforts: 

“That's the key,” Ms. Perry said. 
“Not the plan per se, but his accept- 
ance of the responsibility that we 
have to take some ownership of the 
pain out there — he’s made that link- 

age.” 
The 30-minute speech, which was 

full of florid turns of phrase — sev- 
eral of which seemed directly lifted 
from Mr. Brittain’s opening address 
in the trial three weeks ago — clearly 
struck a raw nerve among some leg- 

  

EDUCATION 
  

Toward Integrating the Schools 
  Gov. Lowell P. 

Weicker Jr.'s plan 
to promote school 
integration across 
town lines would 
divide the state 
into six 
educational 
regions.   
    

    

Percentage 
of minority 
students   

Stamford 

begin by 1995-96. 

  

  

m Local districts would maintain con 

personnel and financing. The plan does not require disbanding 
any school district, though some may choose to merge. 

  
CONNECTICUT 

m By the summer of 1994, each region would develop its own five- 
year plan to reduce segregation regionwide. The plan would 

TT ———— ” p— 

By the year 2000, local school districts within each region would 

reflect the racial mixture of the region as a whole, within limits to 
be established during the planning process. Options include 
magnet schools, a school-choice program and regional schools. 

RASS WHE » 

  

trol over their own programs, 

m Beyond technical support for the planning process, {no additional 
state aid is proposed at this time. \     

‘islators. Many raised the specter of 
forced cross-district busing, even 
though Mr. Weicker disavowed that 
idea as doomed to failure. Others 
rejected the Governor's overall goal 
as wrongheaded. 

Others clearly suspected Mr. 
Weicker’s motives, suggesting that 
he was grandstanding to influence the 
trial, and that when push came to 
shove in the legislature, he would not 
be there to back up his plans, as he 
was in 1991, when he proposed and 
insisted upon — through several 
budget vetoes — the creation of a 
State income tax. 

“He said he’s not trying to skew the 
Sheff case, but his address today 
clearly attempted to do that,” said 
the House minority leader, Edward C. 
Krawiecki Jr, a Republican from 
Bristol. “What he was trying to put is 
another piece of evidence, outside the 
courtroom, before the judges and all 
the attorneys that are arguing this 
case — that look, the legislature and 
the executive branch are prepared to 
roll up their sleeves and goto work." 

Under the plan, local school offi- 
cials and municipal leaders in the six 
educational regions would be respon- 
sible for drawing up a plan that would 
address racial and economic imbal- 
ance. Some regions might want to 
consider magnet schools, or school 
choice, Mr. Weicker said, or perhaps 
a full merger of some districts if only 
in the interests of administrative effi- 
ciency. 

The state’s Education Commission- 
er, Dr. Vincent L. Ferrandino, said 
that just getting local communities 

. The New York Times 

talking about regional racial imbal- 
ances would be something of a revolu- 
tion. Dr. Ferrandino, a Weicker ap- 
pointee, also said the state's goal was 
not strictly racial mixing, but rather 
a full rethinking of education, staffing 
and curriculum to enhance education 
for urban and suburban students 
alike. 

Sharp Disparities 

Although there are 166 school dis- 
tricts in Connecticut, about 80 percent 
of the state's minority students are 
concentrated in just 18 urban dis- 
tricts. The state's three largest cities, 
Bridgeport, Hartford and New Ha- 
ven, have enrollments of more than 
80 percent minorities. And 136 of the 
school districts are more than 90 per- 
cent white. 

Mr. Weicker stressed in his speech 
that the specifics of the legislation 
would not be proposed until next 
month and that the six regions would 
also have full control of the process, 
subject to approval by the State 
Board of Education, whose members 
are appointed by the Governor. 

But with an issue so capable of 
arousing fear and suspicion, just 
leaving things open-ended was 
enough to raise the anxieties of some 
legislators. 

“I think there's a fear of integra- 
tion,” said Nancy Wyman, a Demo- 
crat from Tolland and the co-chair- 
woman of the legislature’s Education 
Committee, “People say ‘1 don't want 
my kids bused into somebody else’s 
area’ — it’s a major fear of the public 
and in this building.”