School racial balance law soon may be in for overhaul
Greenwich may see more time to improve student integration
Connecticut’s controversial law regarding racial balance in local school districts could be in for an overhaul.
Under a bill that has advanced out of two legislative committees, the state’s education department would study potential changes to the law, with enforcement paused until the review is complete.
That would mean the towns of Fairfield, Greenwich, West Hartford and Hamden, who each have at least one school out of compliance with the law, would be off the hook — at least temporarily — from explaining to state officials how they plan to better integrate their school systems.
State Rep. Jennifer Leeper, D-Fairfield, was responsible for the provision regarding racial balance, which is included in a broader education bill. Leeper said Friday she has grown frustrated with the existing racial balance law, which requires non-white students be distributed relatively evenly across a school district, instead of concentrated in certain schools.
Typically, the schools out of compliance with the law are those in majority-white towns that have a significant number of non-white students.
“Really, the schools that are probably models of inclusivity and integration are the ones getting identified by the law, where we know we have racial isolation happening at the vast majority of other schools otherwise that are not captured by this law,” Leeper said.
Leeper argued racial imbalance in some schools largely reflected issues around zoning, including “where people choose to live, where people can afford to live, where we allow for more diversified housing stock.”
Under the proposed bill, the education department would study the effectiveness of existing racial balance policies, assess how those policies have affected students of color and propose “alternative methods for correcting racial imbalances.”
State Rep. Jeff Currey, DEast Hartford, who co-chairs the legislature’s Education Committee, said pausing enforcement of the racial balance law would give the state time to examine the law “and then be able to come back and see how to best make decisions at the local level.” Under the new proposal, the study would be due by Jan. 1, 2026.
Connecticut’s racial balance law, passed in 1969 and updated several times through the decades, requires that each public school in a given district fall within 25 percentage points of the overall district’s share of white and non-white students. If a town is 70 percent white, for instance, each individual public school there must be between 45 and 95 percent white.
Districts with at least one school out of compliance with the law are required to submit and implement plans for how they plan to achieve better balance moving forward.
Over the years the law has drawn criticism from numerous directions. Officials in districts affected by the law often complain that it forces them to move kids from their neighborhood schools, creating unnecessary disruption. Some integration advocates, meanwhile, have wondered why the state enforces racial balance only within a given school district, as opposed to regionally.
Those who support the law
typically acknowledge its limitations but argue state oversight is necessary to keep districts from confining students of color to one or two schools while leaving other buildings almost entirely white.
In practice, the racial balance law tends to affect only a narrow subset of towns: those with a substantial number of nonwhite students but not enough that they’re spread across the school district. Last year, the state reported five schools out of balance — two in Greenwich and one each in Fairfield, West Hartford and Hamden — as well as 20 additional schools in “impending imbalance” meaning they were close to the imbalance threshold.
Some of those schools have been out of compliance on and off for decades, submitting plan after plan to state officials but nonetheless failing to achieve proper balance.
At a recent meeting of the State Board of Education, officials from Greenwich criticized the racial balance law, defending the district’s diversity and its level of integration.
“We have diversity within our schools, and maybe it doesn’t look like diversity with respect to one’s outward appearance, but the diversity and culture goes beyond just that,” said Karen Kowalski, chair of the town’s Board of Education.
Charlene Russell-Tucker, the state’s education commissioner responded by noting the legislature’s proposed bill, saying she didn’t know if it would pass but that if it does it would “guide our action” with regard to racial balance.
In written testimony submitted to the legislature, RussellTucker didn’t weigh in for or against the proposal but said the education department “will attempt to conduct such a study that examines the strategies implemented by Connecticut districts to remedy racial imbalance, evaluate their effectiveness and cost-benefits, and explore other alternatives.”
The proposed bill passed out of the Education Committee in mid-March, then out of the Appropriations Committee in early April. It now advances to the broader legislature, which has until May 8 to act on it.