Perpetuating the model of 2 Connecticuts

The theme of two Connecticuts is playing out in a battle to save a Hartford neighborhood school.

For years, Hartford has struggled with underfunding and segregation. Despite the ongoing settlement in the Sheff v. O’Neill desegregation case, too many Hartford children still learn in racially and economically isolated schools. Hartford’s fiscal troubles are compounded by the prospect, with the CCJEF loss, that the legislature will not adequately fund its schools anytime soon.

So, in an effort to make do with less, Hartford public schools (HPS) is repeating an unsuccessful “improvement” strategy. First it hired an outside consultant. Then, it decided to reorganize.

The consultant, ERS Strategies, found the obvious: too many Hartford students are in segregated schools. Then, ERS reached the incongruous conclusion, without conducting an analysis of district finances, cost/benefit or building utilization, that the solution to Hartford’s problems is closing unspecified schools.

School closures are often proposed as a quick fix for fiscal difficulties. However, as a recent Hartford Courant article noted, this strategy rarely saves much money, fails to raise student achievement, and frequently destabilizes vulnerable communities.

Batchelder school is a K-8 non-magnet school whose student population is 77 percent Latino, 19 percent African-American, 3 percent white. Fifteen percent of the children have disabilities, 26 percent are English Language Learners, and 87 percent are eligible for free lunch.

On Dec. 19, parents at Batchelder found out, from the evening news, that the school board planned to close their school.

No reason was given for the closure. Batchelder is not under-utilized, nor is it Hartford’s smallest school. The district announced that a whiter, more affluent, Montessori magnet school, with a fraction of Batchelder’s ELL and students with disabilities population, will take over the building. That school is currently colocated with another Hartford neighborhood school.

Long-standing Hartford school board policy delineates a specific mandatory procedure to follow before closing a school, including: written notice to parents; a detailed building study; a written report sent to parents and the district, and two public hearings.

The school board failed to provide notice to the parents, conduct a building study or write any report.

At a hearing at Batchelder a day before the board vote, scores of parents, children, teachers and volunteers pleaded with the board not to destabilize this close-knit school community. Nonetheless, the board voted to close Batchelder and move the Montessori school in.

The district sent Batchelder parents a form steering them to three equally racially and economically isolated neighborhood schools — with as high or higher populations of ELL students and students with disabilities. The vulnerable students at Batchelder will be uprooted from their stable school community, and the influx of Batchelder students with extraordinary needs will strain the resources of the receiving schools.

The treatment accorded Batchelder parents contrasts with the way more advantaged parents are treated. Twice before, Hartford proposed moving, not closing, this Montessori school. Because parents there balked, Hartford backed down. Several years ago, Hartford proposed moving, not closing, the tiny Renzulli school — a test-in “gifted” school serving no ELL students or students with disabilities. Parents protested and the district backed down.

A group of Batchelder parents filed an administrative complaint with the State Board of Education, contending that HPS violated its own school closing procedure and is improperly steering children to racially isolated schools, in violation of their rights.

Simultaneously, Sen. John Fonfara proposed a bill that would only partially address the Batchelder problem by co-locating the Montessori with Batchelder and guaranteeing admission to some of the current students.

Rather than decide the matter, as the law requires, the State Board took the unusual step of staying the complaint, erroneously claiming that Fonfara’s bill, if passed, would render their complaint moot. In reality, a decision by the State Board would moot out Fonfara’s bill.

In 2011, the State Board, unhappy with Bridgeport’s Board of Education, but unable to identify any improper activities, manufactured an excuse to illegally take over and reconstitute that school board.

Here, a local school board violated its own procedures, and is undermining constitutional rights.

Yet the State Board does nothing.

It is troubling that the State Board overran a democratically elected board on a false pretext, but is reluctant to hold a mayorally controlled board accountable for actual wrongdoing.

The Batchelder parent group has asked the board to lift the stay and rule on their complaint, forcing the board to decide whether it will perpetuate the two-Connecticut model by allowing HPS to favor advantaged families over vulnerable ones, and by favoring mayorally controlled boards over democratically elected ones.

It is troubling that the State Board overran a democratically elected board on a false pretext, but is reluctant to hold a mayorally controlled board accountable for actual wrongdoing.