The state Board of Education’s latest
Racial Imbalance Report
identified one new school — Smith School in West Hartford — as having an imbalance, four with a continuing imbalance and 16 that are in danger of an imbalance.
As of July 1, the board must resume notifying local districts when one of their schools has been identified as having a racial imbalance, and those districts must come up with plans to address the issue.
A bill that would have postponed such district notifications until 2029 did not make it out of this past legislative session that wrapped up June 4.
Among the four that have a continued imbalance are: New Lebanon School and Hamilton Avenue School in Greenwich, McKinley School in Fairfield, and Charter Oak Academy in West Hartford.
Laura Anastasio, staff attorney with the Office of Legal and Governmental Affairs at the state Department of Education, said the districts currently have racial imbalance plans in place for their schools and had been in the process of amending their plans last year, when the legislature halted notifications to local school boards until July 1, 2025
“So, again, we were going to have to go back to those districts and ask them to revisit their plan amendments and have them submit amendments,” Anastasio said.
As for the 16 schools that could face future imbalances, Anastasio said the state would be reaching out to those local officials.
“We will also be notifying those districts so that they are aware that their schools are approaching racial imbalance and they might be able to take some steps to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Anastasio told the board.
According to an
analysis
of the bill that would have postponed these notifications until 2029, “racially imbalanced” is defined as “any school in which the percentage of minority students enrolled falls outside the range of 25 percentage points more or less than the district-wide percentage. For example, in a school district that has an overall minority enrollment of 50%, any individual school that has less than 25% or more than 75% minority enrollment in comparable grades across the district would be considered racially imbalanced.”
Erin Benham, the board’s vice chairperson, said the issue has been a contentious one.
“The workload is back on there for something that is really not going to go anywhere as far as the authority of this board to make it go anywhere,” Benham said.
She said that board members will look to the advice of Anastasio and Michael P. McKeon, director of the Division of Legal and Governmental Affairs at the state Department of Education, for guidance in the future.
McKeon said the issue may come up before the legislature again next session.
Fairfield
has its plan on its website, as does
Greenwich
.
“For a decade, the school district has consistently worked to comply with our submitted and approved plans,” Fairfield’s site states. “While the plans have not resulted in significant shifts in the percentage, the plan has made a difference and our percentage would be higher without our on-going efforts.”
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