Schools remain racially unbalanced

HARTFORD — A year after it eliminated a magnet school to save on busing costs, Stratford has two elementary schools on a state list of schools nearing racial imbalance.

Both Franklin School — which has been on the list before — and Stratford Academy Johnson House are among 26 schools reported to the state for having racial imbalances of between 15 and 24 percent compared with their school district as a whole.

Under state law, a school is racially imbalanced when the proportion of minority students exceeds 25 percentage points more than the school district. There are six schools on that list this year, including McKinley School in Fairfield and Greenwich’s New Lebanon and Hamilton Avenue schools. All three have been on the list before and are working on corrective action plans.

At McKinley, 55.48 percent of the school’s 438 students in 201819 were minorities, compared with 25.63 percent district wide, putting the gap at 29.85 percent, slightly more than the 28.39 percent posted the year before.

McKinley’s corrective action plan includes creation of a magnet program and redistricting. Fairfield also has two school construction projects under way that, once complete, will allow the district to adjust attendance boundaries and reduce the disparity of minority students between McKinley and other elementary schools in town.

Laura Anastasio, director of legal affairs for the state Department of Education, told the state board on Thursday that the two new schools on the list — including Church Street School in Hamden — will be required to develop and submit a corrective action plan to the state.

As in previous years, Anastasio said, the state also notifies districts with schools nearing the statutory cut off in hopes they can rectify the imbalance.

In addition to Stratford, the impending list, which takes up two pages of the report provided to the board, includes one or more schools in Hamden, Greenwich, Milford, Norwalk, West Hartford, Groton, Vernon, Manchester, Enfield, Glastonbury and Meriden.

In Hamden, Church Street School moved from the impending list to the officially unbalanced list this year. At Church Street School, 89.75 percent of the 283 students who attend are minorities, compared with a district percentage of 64.5 percent.

That issue may soon be resolved, however. The Hamden School board is considering a plan that could close Church Street school by 2021 as part of a redistricting plan.

Hamden’s Helen Street School, meanwhile, is very close to the 25 percent cut off. At Helen Street, 87.58 percent of students are minorities, making their gap 23.08 percent.

Stratford Schools Superintendent Janet Robinson said Thursday that both Stratford Academy Johnson and Franklin remain under the 25 percent variation.

“We are monitoring both,” Robinson said. “If their numbers go up beyond the state limit, we may have to bus elsewhere. Parents love their neighborhood schools, especially Franklin, and want their children there. So it is hard to persuade them to go across town.”

Last year, to help seal the budget, the Stratford School board decided to turn Stratford Academy, which includes Johnson and Vicki Soto Schools, back into neighborhood schools. The complex had been a magnet school — created to even out racial disparities — since 1983.

While some parents liked the idea, many forced to change schools, did not. Those parents appealed to the state board for help but were told the state could not intercede.

This year, Johnson House, which houses grades three through six, has a minority student population of 82.84 percent compared with 65.19 percent for those grades district wide.

Robinson said the district has not been offered any assistance from the state.