Interest In Magnet Schools Is Low, Education Commissioner Says

HARTFORD (AP) — State education officials and lawyers for the plaintiffs in the landmark Sheff vs O’Neill school desegregation case clashed Monday at a hearing to discuss how best to achieve integration in the schools.

Commissioner of Education Theodore S. Sergi said it is time to move beyond “desegregation efforts of the 1960s,” and instead concentrate on creating magnet schools that students from city and suburb will want to attend.

“Open choice does nothing to reduce the racial isolation of the students remaining here in Hartford,” Mr Sergi said. “It should be about suburban students coming in [to the city] because of the unique opportunities in the city.”

The voluntary open choice program, once known as “Project Concern,” allows Hartford students to attend school in suburban districts.

Supporters of the program said not enough is being done to expand the program, which has been hampered by a lack of available space in suburban school districts and support from the state.

The Sheff plaintiffs would like to see many more magnet schools and the open choice program expanded to as many as 5,000 students, up from the current enrollment of about 850.

Mr Sergi said that no more than 300 or 400 additional students are interested in joining the program.

The program came in response to a 1996 state Supreme Court decision in Sheff that ordered the state to desegregate Hartford schools.

But in the past five years, the city’s racial and economic isolation has not changed. Hartford schools are about 94 percent minority and its poverty rate has grown worse.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case filed another suit late last year asserting that the state has not done enough in response to the 1996 decision.

“We find ourselves in 2001, five years after the decision, and we have not seen any reduction of racial and ethnic isolation in Hartford,” said Dennis Parker, a member of the Sheff legal team and lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “The steps taken do not come close to what is required.”

The parties are expected to return to court later this year.