SHEFF V. O’NEILL ANNIVERSARY
Sheff V. O'Neill Case A 20-Year Study In Persistence In Hartford
The Hartford Courant
By JODIE MOZDZER
April 27, 2009

The desire for a good education wakes 13-year-old Kennisha Dixon in the dark hours of morning. She's up at 5:30 a.m. inside the small, tidy cape in Hartford's North End. By 6:45, she's on the school bus. The cracked, pocked streets of Hartford smooth out as Dixon makes her way to Simsbury, a quiet suburb 30 minutes away.  In the carpeted halls of Henry James Middle School, Dixon and her mother, Andrea Edmead, hope to find opportunity, far from the Hartford school system, its historic struggle with dysfunction, its dismal test scores.

Back in the city, thousands of parents and children wait and hope for a similar chance for their children. Some will choose, like Edmead, to send their child to a suburban school. Others will try to win a spot in one of the many magnet schools in the area.  The choices available to Hartford students have grown in the past two decades, since a ground-breaking lawsuit was filed seeking equal education for all students, regardless of race or income level.

Amid a changing educational landscape, the next generation is beginning to reap the benefits, though the state still struggles to fulfill its part of the bargain to provide an equal education for all students, whether they're black, brown, white, rich or poor.

Today, on the 20th anniversary of the case that came to be known as Sheff v. O'Neill, those involved reflect on the legacy of the decision with a mixture of frustration and optimism.

'Left Behind'

The 1989 lawsuit paved the way for city students to look beyond Hartford's borders for their education.  Now students can apply to more than 20 magnet schools or many suburban school districts. But even with more options, thousands of Hartford parents and their children remain outside the reach of Sheff goals.  Their lottery number for a spot in a suburban or magnet school is never called, or their neighborhood school doesn't live up to their expectations.

"The sense of being left behind is not theoretical for these kids," said Justin Long, a Hartford Public High School graduate and a professor at the University of Connecticut Law School. "It's real."

The civil rights lawyers who launched the Sheff v. O'Neill case expected a long battle to integrate Hartford area schools and to force the state to make good on its constitutional obligation to provide an integrated education to all students.

"Is this case slower than it should be? Absolutely," said Martha Stone, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs. "Did we expect to get full integration of Hartford schools by now? Probably not."

Some of the parents in the Sheff lawsuit have waited so long to see results that their dreams rest on the shoulders of their grandchildren now.  The Sheff case wasn't the first attempt to integrate schools in the region. In the 1960s, the state launched a pilot program called Project Concern — now called Open Choice — that let Hartford students enroll in suburban schools. In the following decades, civil rights attorneys and state lawmakers alike grappled with additional efforts to integrate schools.

Yet, when the Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit was filed, 91 percent of Hartford's schoolchildren were minorities. Schools in the surrounding suburbs, in contrast, were virtually all white.

After he released a report in 1987 that urged better integration and a regional approach to education, state Education Commissioner Gerald Tirozzi made comments that seem prescient now: If the state fails to act, Tirozzi said, "some judge, some court someday will tell Connecticut how to do it, and it will probably be on terms no one will find acceptable."

That set the stage for the Sheff lawyers, said John C. Brittain, one of the original attorneys, now chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C.

"We took the report and said, 'Aha! Now the state actually admits what we've been studying,'" Brittain said recently. "We thought the report galvanized the issues and presented them almost on a silver platter."

Around that time, standardized testing data were publicized that spotlighted the disparity between Hartford students and their suburban peers.

"All of a sudden, it was in your face how blatant the discrepancies were in Hartford," said Stone.

That data appalled a city activist and single mother, Elizabeth Horton Sheff.

"They said 74 percent [of eighth-graders] needed assistance with remedial reading," Horton Sheff recalled. "That's not 74 percent of Hartford children failing. That's the system failing."

After consulting with her 10-year-old son, Milo, Horton Sheff agreed to be the lead plaintiff in the case.

"That kind of injustice ... you can't sit and turn your back on it," Horton Sheff said. "You have to do something."

'On Year 13'

The lawyers filed the Sheff suit on April 27, 1989, against then-Gov. William A. O'Neill on behalf of 17 schoolchildren, including two from West Hartford. The suit said the combined effects of segregation and poverty resulted in an inferior educational system that violated the constitutional rights of city schoolchildren.

In 1995, a judge ruled against the plaintiffs.

"The trial decision was devastating," said Stone. "It was probably one of the worst days for all of us. We were all so surprised."

The case was appealed, and eventually went to the state Supreme Court. In July 1996, the high court, in a 4-3 vote, overturned the earlier decision, but left it up to the legislature and then-Gov. John G. Rowland to find a solution.  That solution has been a long time coming. Over the past 13 years, the case has gone back to court several times as the plaintiffs seek faster, better compliance. Two agreements have been hammered out since 2003.

Brittain compared Sheff to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

"It took approximately 15 to 16 years of post-Brown litigation to finally enforce the command of Brown," Brittain said. "We're on year 13. By their standard, we still have some room to meet the compliance time frame."

Long, the UConn professor, was a student at Quirk Middle School when the Sheff case was filed. He studied it in college and now teaches educational equity and constitutional law.

"I never imagined when I was sitting in that courtroom listening that things would be the same today," Long said. "I had an idealism in the power of the courts to get things done when it was ordered."

'A Magical Power'

The plaintiffs are quick to say that for the first time they are in position to achieve the integration goals.

The most recent court agreement resulted in a detailed plan and several steps have already been taken: a new Regional School Choice Office was created, and more magnet schools are diversifying their enrollments.

More than 20 magnet schools have opened in the region in the past 20 years. Of those, 17 are now "Sheff-compliant," which means they enroll no more than 75 percent minority students.

Kathy Demsey, who works in the state Department of Education's Sheff office, said there has been more progress toward the goals in the past year than in the past decade. Five people work in the Sheff office, in addition to the staff at the Regional School Choice Office.

"It's been a year of change, but it's also been a year of significant progress," Demsey said. "And heading into the next year we have all the structure in place for a smoother process for all the parents involved."

For the first time, significant numbers of suburban students are applying to Hartford public schools through the Open Choice program. Of the 1,061 suburban applicants, about 12 percent are white, according to Christopher Leone, Hartford administrator for the Regional School Choice Office.

But there has been little change in the number of Hartford minority students attending suburban schools through the Open Choice program. Those numbers hover around the same rate as the early 1980s.

"The Choice program has not expanded and I think that's where they have been unsuccessful," said Stone. "That's where they haven't done enough."

Others wonder whether the Sheff goals focus too much on race and not enough on poverty levels.

Timothy Sullivan, principal at Greater Hartford Classical Magnet School, sees an important benefit to mixing students with different economic realities, one that prompted his school to start a theater program: Higher-income parents, Sullivan said, demand certain programs. And his school must compete with other, private schools for students.

"I think Sheff has required us to evaluate what we're doing in our schools and what our standards should be," Sullivan said. "It's a real testament to the concept that if we put these kids in the room side by side, there will be a magical power that will raise everybody up."

The state says it expects to meet the integration goals, which increase each year until 41 percent of Hartford minority students are attending integrated schools by 2012-13. The state met this year's goal of 19 percent.

But even when the goals are met, there are students left behind, many say.

The goal "on its face realizes there will be kids left behind in racial isolation," Long said. "The attention on Open Choice and magnet school programs gives people the sense that progress is being made, that we don't have to worry about this problem anymore."

Changing Landscape

As the state works to meet Sheff goals, the nation struggles through an economic crisis which leaves questions about how much more can realistically be done. The state has already spent about $1 billion on Sheff-related programs and construction.

Along with new financial realities comes another shift — in demographics. When the Sheff case was filed in 1989, Hartford's minority population was the highest in the area. But the suburbs are quickly catching up.

"Places like East Hartford have 'tipped' to majority non-white. Windsor, Manchester, are increasingly more diverse," said Brittain.

Bloomfield currently has a higher number of minority residents — 95 percent — than Hartford. Jack Dougherty, a Trinity College professor who has written extensively about the Sheff case, said the educational boundaries haven't changed to accommodate the demographic shift.

"One could easily ask: 'Should the plaintiffs in the Sheff case be expanded to include the students of Bloomfield and East Hartford?'" Dougherty said.

Brittain said the shift "shows a need for a more regional approach."

Eugene Leach, a Sheff plaintiff whose two children attended West Hartford schools, worries that changing demographics might make the issue seem less urgent.

"What alarms me the most ... is to discover how much the country has withdrawn from the goal of integration and has turned to relying on natural integration," said Leach. "The positive vision of an integrated America, which really lies behind the lawsuit, I really think has lost a lot of ground."

'I'll Hang In There'

But in the homes and hearts of Hartford parents, there's a need to keep fighting.  Take Milagros Vega, who struggles daily to get what she feels is the best education for her grandson, a 10-year-old with several special needs.

"I said maybe at a magnet school he'll learn to read," Vega said. "But I'm not lucky to get in. ... I'll apply again, see if I'm lucky. I'll hang in there."

Some parents apply to magnet schools before their children are old enough to attend. Others score a coveted spot, only to take their children out because the program isn't a good match, or a child is too far behind academically.  Even those who stay in inter-district programs or in suburban schools aren't always happy.

Cheryl Perry — one of the first students to participate in Project Concern, which later became Open Choice — says her granddaughter attends Simsbury schools but wants to return to Hartford. A part of Perry wants her to come back, too.

"My dream, and my goal, is to be able to pull my children and bring them back to Hartford," said Perry.

Other students flourish in their new school settings. Kennisha Dixon says going to school in Simsbury has presented her with opportunities that go far beyond academics.

"I have a lot of friends in Simsbury," Dixon said. They go horseback riding together, she said. Her friends taught her how to swim.

For Dixon's family, crossing borders for school has become a way of life. As Dixon comes home from Simsbury late in the day, her younger sister Kelsey Dixon returns from her school in West Hartford. Their friends are spread around the region. Their lives extend far beyond the North End of Hartford.

"We don't really know anyone in Hartford," their mother, Andrea Edmead, says, almost apologetically.

The trade-off is worth it.

"She wasn't learning that well," Edmead said of Dixon's schooling in Hartford. "Now I see a big difference."

---

Towns Balk At Greater Sheff Role
The Hartford Courant
By JODIE MOZDZER
March 23, 2009

The state Department of Education is asking suburban school districts to add 660 classroom seats for Hartford students next year in an effort to reach higher integration benchmarks under the Sheff v. O'Neill desegregation ruling.  But some districts are saying they just can't afford to do so, and that could jeopardize the state's ability to comply with the Sheff ruling.

"We have simply reached the breaking point," Bristol Superintendent Philip Streifer said last week. "We are not opposed to the Sheff issue; we simply can no longer afford to fund additional state mandates without adequate financial support."

Districts that accept Hartford students through Open Choice receive $2,500 per pupil. State Commissioner of Education Mark McQuillan has asked Gov. M. Jodi Rell to increase that funding. Rell's budget proposal kept the Open Choice per-pupil funding level with last year.

Under McQuillan's proposal, districts that participate in Open Choice would receive a base grant of $35,000 to $75,000. And they could get more per-pupil funding -- up to $6,000 -- depending on the percentage of Hartford students in the school district. Under the Sheff agreement, 27 percent of Hartford's minority students must attend an integrated school by the start of the 2009-10 school year; by 2012-13, that goal rises to 41 percent.

Expanding Open Choice is one part of a larger plan to reach those goals. The state also wants to diversify all magnet schools, and increase their general enrollment. Also, attendance at technical high schools will now be counted toward meeting the Sheff goals.  In addition to keeping Open Choice funding level, Rell also kept funding for magnet school tuition the same. And, because of a change in state law, school districts are no longer allowed to limit the number of students for whom they pay magnet school tuition. Some districts are worried that they will no longer be able to afford to pay for all the students who want to attend magnet schools.

"It's not really just the Hartford choice component," said Ellington Superintendent Stephen Cullinan. "It's the corollary of that and the magnet school program. ... My concern is if I'm able to afford the outgoing tuition."

The state is banking on the expanded Open Choice program as a more cost-effective way to reach the Sheff benchmarks than building new schools. But the budget crunch has Sheff advocates concerned.

"For the first time ever, in the last eight months, we felt like there was tremendous progress," said Martha Stone, one of the Sheff plaintiffs' attorneys. "And we just don't want it to fall off because of the budget constraints, because that would really be ignoring a court mandate."

The legislature still must approve Rell's budget, and several education groups have been lobbying for more Sheff funding to be included.

"We're gravely concerned that the governor's budget impedes the [Sheff] trajectory, because the state was in the position to reach the 27 percent benchmark," Stone said.

The state wants to increase the number of Open Choice students in suburban schools from 1,100 now to 2,500 by 2012-13. To reach that goal, the state Department of Education has asked school districts to provide seats for Hartford students equal to 3 percent of their total enrollment.  Department officials conducted enrollment surveys in Open Choice districts and then used their findings to fine-tune their student requests by number and grade level. But the response from districts has been mixed.

Bristol said that it would not increase its participation levels next year. Other districts have said they could take additional students, but not as many as the state Department of Education is suggesting. Some districts have agreed to meet the state's goals, but said they might need flexibility.  Cullinan said that Ellington is willing to take 20 more students next year, but not in the grades the state requested. "When I look at my population, I want to put students where we have room, and where it makes educational sense to do so," Cullinan said.

The state has asked some districts to enroll more than twice the number of Hartford students they currently have. Bristol was asked to add 85 students, bringing the total to 105. And Glastonbury was asked to add 56; it now has 46 Open Choice students.

"This is a difficult year for all schools," said Glastonbury Superintendent Alan Bookman. "You see many schools are having major cutbacks in funding, and in the amount of staff they'll have. My expectation is that we would certainly not be able to add 56 students."

Other districts are starting to take Open Choice students for the first time. Portland, for example, approved a plan to enroll Open Choice students last week.

---

Sheff Ship Needs A Captain
Hartford Courant
Stan Simpson
April 9, 2008

The latest settlement in a 12-year effort to address racial isolation in Hartford schools has apparently come to this novel conclusion: We've got to get white folks involved.

Suburban districts will have a more pronounced role in this new and improved Sheff v. O'Neill agreement. What's missing now is what's been missing since the landmark 1996 desegregation verdict — someone with the authority to penalize districts that decide to take a pass.

The new agreement encourages the suburbs to build theme magnet schools, to help educate Hartford children along with their own. The carrot is a 95 percent state reimbursement.

Also, capacity counts would be conducted regularly on the Open Choice program, which is supposed to make 1,600 suburban school seats available to Hartford kids. In recent years, Open Choice has been often closed amid excuses from some local school chiefs about population increases and state reimbursements, and whether remedial efforts needed for most Hartford kids will be a drag on the suburban districts' test scores.

The new Sheff goal is to accommodate 80 percent of the demand from student applicants seeking new schools by 2013.

"All sides can agree that opening magnets exclusively in Hartford is not going to [promote] integration," said Steve Perry, principal at Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford. "This is a great opportunity for children to attend school in the suburbs, and suburban students to have students from the urban centers in their schools. I also think it's a great opportunity for some of these small suburban communities to build new schools."

Previously the only options were magnets run by Hartford, the Capitol Region Education Council and through Open Choice. Now suburban magnet schools, charter schools and vocational schools would be added to those alternatives.

"The burden is not on Hartford anymore," said Tom Murphy, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. "Other school districts haven't stepped up. This agreement gives them a better opportunity to participate."

And if they don't participate, there should be consequences. Hire someone — or jeez, even empower Education Commissioner Mark McQuillan — to make sure this plan is implemented. C'mon, no more delays. Watching the plaintiffs running back to the judge every few years is getting to be a bore.

Martha Stone, a plaintiff's attorney, said the Sheff side unsuccessfully negotiated for a "special master" with the authority to make it happen.

"We instead got greater accountability by the state, and we inserted the plaintiff numerous times in the implementation process so we could have a more hands-on look and the ability to enforce the provisions of the agreement at a quicker point in time."

There's a lot to like with this latest Sheff phase, including an edict that a comprehensive management plan be crafted to chart progress, develop student support, address funding needs and add clarity to the application process and transportation issues. What's missing is the legislative will to grant broader authority to McQuillan.

"If all else fails, the commissioner is interested in having the authority to step in and say [to the suburbs], 'This is your responsibility, too,'" Murphy said.

If this latest five-year plan doesn't work by 2013, it will be 17 unfulfilled years since the promise of 1996.

Let's saddle up the commish — ASAP. And let him ride this thing to the finish line.

---

Income Gap in Connecticut Is Growing Fastest, Study Finds
NYTIMES
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
April 9, 2008

STAMFORD, Conn. — Marie Wendorff knows better than most about Connecticut’s economic contradictions.

By age 38, Ms. Wendorff had accumulated the trophies of suburban life: a picturesque 3,800-square-foot Colonial house in Wilton, membership in the local country club, a ski house in Windham, N.Y., and a 24-foot boat docked in Long Island Sound. But a messy divorce in 2004 pushed her into bankruptcy.

On the same day in the summer of 2005 that she applied for food stamps, she was invited to attend a friend’s birthday party on a yacht.

“It’s like two different worlds,” said Ms. Wendorff, a mother of three who has struggled to keep her family afloat amid a sea of wealth.

Like Ms. Wendorff, Connecticut is straddling those worlds. According to a new study by two groups based in Washington, the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the income gap between the have-lots and the have-nots is widening faster in Connecticut than in any other state.

Adjusting census data for inflation, the study compared average family incomes from 2004 to 2006 with those from 1987 to 1989. In Connecticut, income increased by $52,439, or 45 percent, for the top fifth of Connecticut households, while the bottom fifth’s income dropped $4,437, or 17 percent.

The study, released on Tuesday, also found that Connecticut is the only state in the nation where the poorest 20 percent of people lost real ground over the last 20 years (the loss in Rhode Island, $992, or 5 percent, was deemed statistically insignificant).

Nationally, the study showed that the incomes of the richest 20 percent rose an average of 36 percent in the last two decades, while those of the poorest 20 percent rose 11 percent.

Higher income at the upper end and lower income at the bottom meant that Connecticut’s rich earned 8 times as much on average, as its poor, up from 4.6 times when measured two decades ago. Nationally, the gap was 7.3 times between 2004 and 2006, up from 6 times two decades earlier.

New York had the highest income gap among the 50 states in 2004 to 2006, according to the study, with the top fifth earning an average of $148,200 a year, or 8.7 times the $17,100 income at the bottom. Connecticut ranked seventh and New Jersey, where the rich earned 7.5 times what the poor did, was 14th. (The rankings did not include Washington, D.C., which had by far the biggest income gap, with the rich earning an average of $188,500, the highest income in the country, 13.5 times the poor’s $14,000 average.)

The study’s authors adjusted family income for federal taxes but not state and local taxes. So the study may not accurately capture the gap in high-tax states like New York that tax high earners for the benefit of those who are struggling.

And the study ended in 2006, well before problems in the subprime mortgage market roiled the stock market and swept away some of the fortunes and jobs of those reaping the benefits of a strong economy.

The authors said that they hoped to use the report to advance policies — like raising income taxes rather than sales taxes or sin taxes, which tend to be regressive — that might reduce income inequality. They also favor indexing the minimum wage to inflation, increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance and expanding the earned-income tax credit to give lower-income families a break on state taxes.

“Connecticut has attempted 28 times to enact an earned-income tax credit,” said Doug Hall, the associate research director of Connecticut Voices for Children, an advocacy group in New Haven that issued a companion study to the report. He said that Connecticut’s lower-income families struggle because they must compete with extremely wealthy families for basic commodities like gas and housing.

“In Connecticut, things like rent and groceries will be inflated because of that supercharged economy, because of those high incomes that are driving that economy,” he said. “We remain the only state in New England with an income tax that does not have an earned-income tax credit.”

Mary-Jane Foster, owner of the Bridgeport Bluefish, a minor league baseball team, whose family is in that top fifth of families in Connecticut earning more than $169,000 a year, said she supports the earned-income tax credit and a minimum-wage hike, though she worries that Connecticut “is already perceived as one of the most burdensome environments for starting a business,” which can make it difficult to create good jobs there.

“I think the gap between the rich and poor is an issue for everyone,” Ms. Foster said. “Ultimately, our suburbs thrive only if our cities thrive.”

State Senator William H. Nickerson, a Greenwich Republican, said that closing the income and education gaps in Connecticut is a critical issue, but he rejected the idea that raising taxes on the wealthy is a solution.

Mr. Nickerson said that the 70,000 Connecticut households with the highest incomes now pay as much in state income tax as the other 95 percent of the state’s households. “It’s an immensely top-heavy tax,” he said, adding that increasing taxes on the rich simply “won’t remedy the problem.”

Nancy Kail, who helped found the Greenwich Alliance for Education, a foundation that works to correct some inequities in public schools, said that the growing income gap “translates into other gaps like achievement gaps in school or success gaps.”

“It’s bad news for all of us, and in a town like Greenwich, which is resource-rich, it’s shameful that it exists,” Ms. Kail said. “It’s a community responsibility to do something about it.”

Kristen Pavlik, 26, was the first in her family to attend college and is now a counselor at a domestic-violence shelter in Norwalk. She moonlights doing clerical work and tutoring. Ms. Pavlik said that living among “the extreme wealth” in Connecticut constantly tests her resolve: She must wait until midmonth, for her second paycheck, to buy groceries, and struggles to have $100 left after rent, utilities, gas and car payments. It helps that her mother, who lives nearby in Waterbury, often provides packages of frozen homemade meals.

“The thing that is stressful is it’s not always easy for me to put things away in my savings,” she said. “God forbid I ever had an emergency.”

Greg Hladky contributed reporting from New Haven and Ken Belson from New York.

---