Fairfield BOE approves redistricting charge for consultant
FAIRFIELD — The Board of Education has approved a charge for a consultant to come up with scenarios for redistricting the town’s public schools, paving the way for a long-discussed approach.
Redistricting is the school system’s primary tool for addressing a racial imbalance in the elementary schools, but also will help the district better balance how the buildings are used and capacity rates in the schools, officials said.
One of the proposed responsibilities for the consultant was considering the feasibility of closing one of the lower capacity elementary schools. Families with students in Dwight Elementary School protested last year after concerns rose that their school could get closed as a result of such a charge, but officials have repeatedly said they are in the preliminary stages of that discussion.
The charge also includes language that the board would prefer the consultant aim to keep students within walking distance of their schools in the same school so they could continue to do so. Parents of students who walked to school came out in force in recent meetings and made it clear they did not want their children to have that taken away from them.
BOE member Christine Vitale said she supported keeping walkers at their current schools for multiple reasons, including the benefits parents pointed out and in light of transportation challenges the district has been dealing with.
“I think that adding busses is something we should try to avoid if we can,” she said.
BOE Vice Chair Nick Aysseh and other board members said they did not want to put too many restrictive directives in the charge, as they did not want to bog down the consultant. Still, the board voted 8 to 1 to support the amendment and the overall charge, with BOE member Crissy Kelly being the lone vote against it.
According to the racial imbalance plan submitted to the state, Fairfield must submit a redistricting plan to the Fairfield school board by May 30, which the board intends to adopt by Oct 30. The plan would go into effect at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year.
State officials identified McKinley Elementary School as racially imbalanced in April 2007. That meant the proportion of minority students at the school is at least 25 percentage points more than the proportion for the school district. McKinley’s minority population was 56.65 percent for the 202021 school year, which is approximately 30 percentage points higher than the entire district’s minority population of 26.4 percent.
Included in the consultant’s charge is a directive to “bring the disparity in racial composition between any one elementary school and the districtwide K-5 average within the limits required by law in a manner that is sustainable” as well as targeting having all schools be 85 to 90 percent used after subrtracting specialized programming.
The school district has already contracted The SLAM Collaborative, formerly known as Malone and McBroom, for demographic work. Officials say Superintendent Mike Testani will now engage work with the firm to do the redistricting scenarios.
icy, there’s nothing that explains how you can allow that to occur. It’s just so wrong.”
“Things happen and move forward because of the way you approach these issues,” Thody continued. “It is easy to be angry and lash out. It is hard to be peaceful and really push the ball forward and get change.”
The police chief said that since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, “that’s the way our community has conducted themselves, and that’s the reason I think we’re going to continue to see change.”
Several other state, municipal and police officials meanwhile issued blistering statements condemning the actions of the five officers involved in the assault.
“Tyre Nichols should be alive today. His life matters, and my heart breaks for his family, friends, and loved ones. His last word was ‘mom,’" Gov. Ned Lamont said in a written statement issued by his office.
“I was struck by the beautiful photos taken by Tyre, which serve as a stark contrast to the horrifying video and images released last night. His family and our nation deserve a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation,” Lamont said. “We cannot continue this way. We must create a more just society for everyone. I’m committed to continuing that work here in Connecticut.”
Footage the Memphis Police Department released to the public Friday evening, days after showing it to his family, shows Nichols, who is Black, crying out for his mother as he is punched, kicked and struck with batons by the five officers following a traffic stop on Jan. 7. He was then left propped up against a police car as the officers fist-bump and appear to celebrate the assault.
Nichols, the father of a 4year-old son, died days later in the hospital. He was 29.
The five officers, including
Bloomfield High School grad, Desmond Mills Jr., all of whom are Black, have been fired and face charges that include second-degree murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault stemming from the incident.
“We need to send a resounding voice out loud to law enforcement that we’re not anti-law enforcement who is anti-Black, we have to deal with you accordingly; that there is no place for you in our police departments across our country, period,” said state Sen. Herron Keyon Gaston.
The Democratic state senator, whose district includes Stratford and Bridgeport, spoke Saturday morning during a news conference at the First Cavalry Baptist Church in New Haven organized by members of the clergy.
Gaston said the state has passed some legislation, “but you know you can’t legislate always bad conduct,” he added. “We have to have a moral fibrillator that helps to change the hearts and minds of individuals in terms of the way they treat Black and brown bodies in this country.”
“Once we saw the video last evening, we decided that we needed to come together and not wait; that this is a pressing and burning issue within this country and within our city,” said the Rev. Boise Kimber, a local civil rights activist.
Gaston, who serves as senate chair of the legislature’s public safety committee, suggested lawmakers should also re-examine how the state handles qualified immunity for individual police officers.
“If law enforcement officers are working for a municipality, they’re agents of that municipality as well, so I think there should be some level of shared responsibility and accountability,” he said. “We need to be able to hold our local mayors accountable as well that when these things happen, that they take decisive and quick action to ensure they deal with it, and we need to be accountable to the constituents and the residents that we represent, because they are the taxpayers.”
“I do understand the argument on the other side of that, that municipal governments try to protect the interests of the taxpayers, because taxpayers are the ones having to bear the burden and to pay for these things when officers mess up,” Gaston continued. “I think we need to make it a little bit stronger that officers who really do mess up, that they should be on the hook for pay, and they should be the ones that should not be indemnified by the city.”
He suggested that officers should have to have insurance, and that they could be sued in civil court and be liable for their actions.
Such a move has been hotly contested by police unions and state republicans, who have claimed the state’s police accountability law, passed in the wake of George’s Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, discourages officers from doing their job.
The law states that if a court judgment is entered against a police officer for a “malicious, wanton, or willful act,” then the officer must “reimburse the municipality for incurred defense expenses” and the municipality “must not be held liable to the officer for any financial loss or expense resulting from the officer’s act.”
Demonstrations broke out across the country hours after the release of bodycam footage of police beating Nichols. Protesters gathered in Memphis, Washington, D.C., New York, Atlanta and several other major cities. The protest were mostly peaceful. Arrests were reported in New York.
In Hartford, protesters began gathering at 1 p.m. in Julio Lozada Park for a demonstration billed as a “rally against police oppression,” according to a flyer distributed on Twitter.
The rally was peaceful and proceeded without incident. A Hartford police spokesperson said earlier in the day that police were prepared if violence did occur.
“We are monitoring social media and national tends,” Hartford police spokesperson, Lt. Aaron Boisvert, said. “We are not expecting any violence but will be prepared if needed.”
Ivelisse Correa, vice president of Black Lives Matter 860, one of the groups helping to organize the protest in Hartford, said the group hopes to repeal qualified immunity, the legal principle that shields police from civil law suits.
“Besides getting the repeal of qualified immunity, we do want to send a message that it’s not going to be any of our sons,” she said.
Correa said she began crying watching the video. “I saw my son,” she said.
“I know there’s been a lot of commentary on the race of the officers, similar to Freddie Gray,” Correa said, referring to a 25-year-old Black man who died in Baltimore police custody in 2015 after he was placed in the back of a police van unsecured. Six officers were charged in Gray’s death, but the charges were later dropped.
“It is a racist system of policing,” she added.
In Danbury, Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour and Mayor Dean Esposito issued a joint statement calling the video “appalling.”
“There is no rightful place in this profession for brutality under any circumstances,” the joint statement said.
In New Haven, Mayor Justin Elicker and Police Chief Karl Jacobson also issued a joint statement condemning the officers’ actions, saying they felt “horror and disgust” watching the video Friday night.
“We grieve with the Nichols family, the City of Memphis, and the nation at these abhorrent acts of police brutality and violence. We condemn them in the strongest possible terms, and we are glad that the officers involved will be held accountable for their criminal acts,” the statement said.
Another demonstration took place in Manchester later in the day.
“People are shocked but they’re not sure why they are shocked,” said Keren Prescott, founder of POWERUP Manchester, the group organizing the rally. “People are heartbroken, angry, disappointed, frustrated, tired, exhausted.”
“How did we go from a summer of uprising not even two and a half years ago, and now we’re back here and it’s worse than what it was two years ago?” she said.