Racial balance in classroom vital to learning

Let’s call Connecticut what it is: A blue state with too many segregated schools. The state’s racial imbalance law was born of best intentions in the post-Civil Rights Era. The concept is simple, to prevent students of color from being placed in one school and white students in another.

Like so many other aspirational Connecticut laws, ignoring this holds no consequences. As a result, school officials from some of the same districts meet year after year to explain why some schools still can’t hit the magic number. The law requires that a public school is within 25 percentage points of the district’s overall racial makeup.

So when Fairfield officials were summoned by the state board last month, they reached back into a reliable quiver of defenses, including how they can’t decide where people choose to live. This time, they also tossed in a new excuse, that the pandemic was a distraction.

At this point, they all fall into “the dog ate my homework” category. State officials have heard it all before, given that Fairfield has failed 15 times in the last 16 years.

One Greenwich school, meanwhile, has been out of balance since the last century. Leaders in the town point to progress at its two unbalanced schools, but it also is home to five of the top nine most unbalanced schools in the state.

Officials in Greenwich and Fairfield declined to be interviewed for a recent Hearst Connecticut Media news story about the issue.

Not talking about a problem is never the solution. No one is pretending there are simple remedies. No parent is going to be excited about putting their child on a bus for a longer trip out of the neighborhood. And Fairfield fended off proposals to swap students with neighboring towns years ago. That doesn’t mean it is not a good idea, but Connecticut is allergic to regional solutions.

“The ultimate remedy for all of this are regional school systems,” Center for Children’s Advocacy Executive Director Martha Stone opined. “If you had regional school systems the way most other places around the country do, you’d be able to get racial balance a different way.”

There are many different ways to get to the root of the problem. One of them is the other issue Connecticut’s affluent towns tend to resist — more access to affordable housing.

And even without consequences, the racial imbalance law has motivated several communities. Most common solutions involve the creation of magnet schools or renovating or rebuilding aging buildings to make them more attractive to families in other parts of town.

But there can never be balance until everyone recognizes its benefits. Clinging to schools that are primarily white or mostly populated by minority students ignores the reality of the world that will greet students after graduation day.

Ultimately, the best carrot to luring communities to embrace diverse schools is to celebrate that the students in them tend to perform better academically.

When two people meet who are not the same, they both have the potential to learn, and to teach.

Clinging to schools that are primarily white or mostly populated by minority students ignores the reality of the world that will greet students after graduation day.