Lottery error shines light on magnet schools

NEW HAVEN — School officials said a reporting error for the district’s school enrollment process was fixed and communicated within a day, but members of the Board of Education began questioning Monday whether the entire magnet school program was fully benefiting the city and its students.

Director of Choice and Enrollment Marquelle Middleton said that the lottery system that looks at incoming students’ ranked choices for schools glitched, affecting 441 students who were placed in their local comprehensive high school — either Wilbur Cross or Hillhouse — but without any information on what their number was on the wait list for their choices.

“It provided false numbers to those rising grade nine students,” Middleton said.

Board member Joe Rodriguez asked that Middleton keep documentation for when the vendor, Smart Choice Technologies, has its contract up for renewal.

In presenting the information of how the district recovered from the error, Middleton included information about how his office functions, including the information

that the district strives to recruit 65 percent New Haven students into magnet schools in an effort to strike a balance for racial isolation numbers.

According to the state, all magnet schools must have no fewer than 25 percent or no greater than 75 percent black and Latino students, and must not have more than 75 percent local students.

Board member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur said she was bothered by the district setting its standards for recruiting city students and children of color below what was maximally possible.

“We are struggling across the district and across our schools to meet that reduced racial isolation standard,” Middleton said.

It’s not new information for the school board, which heard from district staff about lagging racial isolation numbers as a reason for closing Creed High School last year at risk of being fined by the state.

Some board members began to express their displeasure with using the magnet school program, which places a heavy onus on urban districts to recruit white suburbanites to their schools, as a means of desegregating schools.

“If you study the history of integrated education, it started on a false premise that black children had to sit in the room with white children to learn,” said board member Ed Joyner. “We’re being punished in a sense for not attracting white children to our schools. People move to the suburbs for a reason: schools and housing.”

Joyner argued that suburbanites will take advantage of the hospitals, universities and culture of a city like New Haven, but they have no interest in attending its schools.

“The reason they went out there is because they wanted to be racially isolated,” he said.

Mayor Toni Harp, who sits as a board member, said the state recently changed its policy on racial isolation — previously, a black or brown student from a suburb like West Haven or Hamden would not count against the district in its schools’ racial integration numbers. She said New Haven has a different cultural and geographical context from Hartford, which was directly involved in the Sheff v. O’Neill lawsuit.

Board chairman Darnell Goldson said he was unclear as to whether the magnet program, which carries alongside with it a supplemental grant, is financially beneficial to the city, especially as the program was originally a pretext for constructing new school buildings at a discounted rate.

“It should be based on socioeconomic (status) instead of race,” he said, adding that the state will not count mixed race or biracial students with white heritage as white. “How Jim Crow is that?”

Joyner suggested that the district draft a letter to the General Assembly outlining their concerns. Harp said she would want to be careful about what the letter says, as there may be “financial implications” and she would not want the district to “cut off our nose to spite our face.”

Joyner said he believes the non-economic costs — such as families living next to appealing, themed schools that they cannot attend — should be mentioned, invoking the spectre of segregation. He said he would want to see a cost-benefit analysis of how the magnet program impacts New Haven.

Goldson suggested that, if necessary, the school board might consider a lawsuit.

Earlier in the meeting, Goldson found himself in the crosshairs when Citywide Parent Team President Nijija-Ife Waters used the public comment portion of the meeting to lambaste Goldson for apparently brushing her off at the movie theater. She said she approached Goldson who called her a liar for previous comments she made about board members looking bored and disengaged during public comment.

Waters said that Goldson incorrectly assumed her comments were about him, when she was actually referring to Harp.

“It was my birthday and I was with my family,” Goldson said.

The two began arguing as Goldson attempted to give his side, with Waters insisting that her son and husband both be allowed to give recount the movie theater incident in their own words, without Goldson disrupting the flow of public comment.

After the meeting, Waters said the movie she saw was “Little” starring Regina Hall and Issa Rae. She said she enjoyed the movie.

Goldson agreed with that assessment.

“It was funny and it was ageappropriate,” he said.