A state audit of Hartford Public Schools in Connecticut found that the district had been engaging in the illegal recruiting of white students to fulfill state-imposed diversity quotas.
The district, which is 81 percent black and Hispanic, has been accused of allowing white students to skip ahead of black students in the highly competitive Hartford magnet school lottery. According to legal briefs, the district rigged the lottery due to pressure from lawmakers for Hartford Public Schools to “integrate” its mostly minority school population.
In 1989, a landmark Connecticut state court ruling called Sheff v. O’Neill mandated that public school officials correct educational “inequities” determined by race. In response to this order, the state passed a law requiring that every public magnet school (which are schools designed to facilitate experimental learning curricula not available to public school students) maintain a racially diverse population, including a minimum 25 percent “reduced-isolation” population (American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, or Caucasian) per magnet school, to integrate the racial composition of its schools.
Now the myriad magnet school programs in Hartford, designed specifically to allow a few randomly selected underprivileged students in poor neighborhoods to get a good education, have been going out of their way to attract white students.
In an almost grotesque inversion of today’s educational politics, some of these magnet school administrators have resorted to illegal measures to bring white students into their schools, so they could meet the 25 percent white quota imposed by the state. The independent audit of Hartford Public Schools has concluded that 15 white students were enrolled in a magnet school from outside the Hartford region, usually in a predominately white suburb. These students were enrolled illegally because of pressure on school administrators to attract white students to meet the diversity quota set by the state.
The problem gets worse. Even with these illegal recruiting practices (after all, admission to Hartford magnet schools is ostensibly determined by lottery), these magnet schools were still not attracting enough white children to fulfill the state-mandated quota. After all, why would a white parent send his or her kid far away from home, into an economically depressed city, when a perfectly good neighborhood or private school is right down the block?
These magnet schools are finding themselves having to deliberately hold spots for white students that never come. In a district where more than 87 percent of Hartford’s mostly minority population applies to a magnet school, the local black and Hispanic communities are literally staring at empty chairs where their sons or daughters could be sitting had a racial quota not been implemented to reserve those spots for white children.
Many members of the Hartford black community are taking action against the state, claiming unfair treatment and discrimination. Gwen Samuel, an African-American parent and founder of the Connecticut Parents Union, spoke with me on the issues this racial quota is raising in her community.
Samuel portrayed the withheld spots at the magnet schools, which remain empty due to forced compliance with the 75/25 ratio, as an insult to her local community.
“You can’t punish children because other parents don’t want to send theirs [to the magnet school],” she said. She mentioned that the state’s “compelling interest” to create a diverse student body “doesn’t trump the Constitution,” which mandates equal treatment by the law.
Instead, according to Samuel, black students from her Hartford community are being punished on the basis of their race alone, “perpetuating fear and hate” between the white and black/Hispanic communities in Hartford. When white students are allowed to illegally circumvent the magnet school lottery while black kids are denied entry due to an arbitrary diversity ratio, the conclusion many in Samuel’s community make is that their children’s educations are worth less than the children of other races.
Samuel’s organization, the Connecticut Parents Union, is fighting to change this racial quota. They have filed a lawsuit against the state, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, alleging that the race-based quotas in Connecticut are unconstitutional and hurt black and Hispanic students.
The case is Robinson v. Wentzell and will move to trial within the next year.
Kenny Xu (@kennymxu) is a Young Voices contributor and a student at Davidson College.
