BOE Looks To Reclaim Magnet Spots

New Haven families are tired of watching busloads of suburban students pull up to the gleaming magnet schools in their neighborhoods, while hearing that there’s not enough room to provide their own kids any spots.

Members of the school board said they hear that complaint from scores of parents each time the district runs its annual placement lottery.

At last week’s regular meeting at Celentano School, board members said they’ve finally had enough.

In a move that could cost the district millions of dollars in state magnet-fund support, the Board of Education voted to begin the process of cutting down the number of desks reserved for out-of-towners in its 16 inter-district magnet schools, which enroll about 8,000 students.

Inter-district magnet schools, which were expanded after the State Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Sheff v. O’Neill, are meant to voluntarily desegregate across town lines.

Those schools receive extra state money for meeting two diversity requirements. In New Haven, at least a quarter of the students must be from a surrounding suburb, and at least a quarter of the students must be white, Asian-American, Native or a mix of those races.

Those two requirements are distinct, meaning, for example, that an African-American boy from Hamden counts toward the residency goal and a Korean-American girl from New Haven counts toward racial isolation goal.

Targeted at the right areas, that’s ideally supposed to add more diversity to Connecticut’s starkly segregated classrooms, especially in the almost entirely black and brown schools in its cities.

In practice, though, those mandatory set-asides have meant New Haven’s inter-district magnet schools usually admitted closer to one-third of its students from nearby suburbs, places like West Haven, Hamden and Branford. Those extra seats are meant to increase the racial diversity and to act as a buffer, just in case any suburbanites decide to transfer out after a couple years.

Even with the higher recruiting goals for suburban students, all but one of New Haven’s inter-district magnet schools have failed to reach their racial diversity benchmarks, putting their continued funding in doubt.

Tired of hearing about New Haven families being waitlisted for the inter-district magnet schools, board members said they want to petition the State Department of Education to lower the recruiting goals for suburban students.

They said they expect opposition to the plan from state officials, and they said they’re willing to argue their case before legislators — or even a judge — to loosen the requirements that they feel have short-changed their constituents.

Yet a State Department of Education spokesperson said that the agency doesn’t monitor whom New Haven recruits. He said that New Haven won’t be penalized unless it exceeds the 75 percent cap on desks for city residents that’s required by state law.

“Over the last three years, the Connecticut State Department of Education has not received any such proposals [to reduce the suburban population at magnet schools]. CSDE does not set recruiting goals for magnet schools,” Peter Yazbak, the agency’s communications director, said that he’d heard from the magnet office. ​“The Department only requires that they operate under the statutory enrollment standards of 75%-25%. Districts which operate magnet schools which fail to meet that standard experience a reduction in their magnet grant.”

Led by Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, a pediatrician whose two kids attend an inter-district magnet school, New Haven’s board members said they’re fed up with trying to follow rules on whether students in the city’s inter-district magnet schools come from the right town and have the right skin color.

They said they’ve spent hundreds of thousands every year to advertise their inter-district magnet schools in outlying areas and millions to bus those students in every day. Yet they’ve still been slapped with financial penalties for having the wrong racial demographics.

Among New Haven’s 16 inter-district magnet schools, only Engineering & Science University Magnet School has enough racial diversity to meet the state’s racial isolation goals. This year, six inter-district magnet schools actually became more racially segregated, leading the State Department of Education to withhold $134,998 from Hill Regional Career High School and $115,530 from Metropolitan Business Academy.

Mayor Toni Harp said the district shouldn’t keep chasing after demographic targets that it can’t meet.

“When I look at the numbers, we never met the 25 percent set-aside [for racial isolation], which is a real stretch for us,” Harp said. ​“We should use the 75 percent [residency requirement] for our kids so that you don’t have these people on waiting lists forever. To me, it’s fairer and more appropriate. I don’t think we need to have somebody from Princeton tell us what to do when all we need to look at is the trend data. You’ve got a system in place that penalizes our kids”

New Haven’s board members added that no one is going after towns who enroll white students almost exclusively, like North Branford, Oxford, Madison and Guilford, even though their students are just as racially isolated. In effect, they concluded, Connecticut’s cities are the only ones being punished for the state’s history of white flight.

Over her staff’s requests to hold off on a vote, the Board of Education ordered Superintendent Carol Birks to work with city attorneys on drafting a letter to the state’s education commissioner.

That letter would begin the process of cutting the district’s recruiting goal for suburban students from 35 percent to 25 percent. Birks’s staff said the change would eventually have to be approved by the State Board of Education.

Five school board members — BOE President Darnell Goldson, Mayor Toni Harp, Ed Joyner and Yesenia Rivera, along with Jackson-McArthur — voted in favor of the motion. Board member Matt Wilcox abstained, saying he didn’t have enough information to vote on the change. Board member Joseph Rodriguez was absent at a work-related event.

Yazbak said that the State Department of Education must approve any changes to a magnet school’s operational plans, but he added that specific recruitment goals usually aren’t included in those plans. District officials did not provide an example of the operational plans they have on file, after the Independent asked to review one on Friday morning. ​“If NHPS wants to change something in any of their magnet operation plans, CSDE will hear the request and provide any relevant feedback,” Yazbak said.

How Much Is A magnet Seat Worth?

Before the vote, Jackson-McArthur’s drive to change who’s admitted had set off a tense debate in a Governance Committee meeting, as school administrators pushed back, arguing that the district was risking millions of dollars in its inter-district magnet grant by not maximizing its suburban enrollment.

“We want to make sure that we meet that 25 percent reduced isolation, and we also want to make sure we get all the money that’s available to use through the magnet program,” said Ivelise Velazquez, the deputy superintendent. ​“It’s a recruitment goal. Year to year, we might go higher than that goal, but we absolutely cannot go below the 75-to-25 percent. It puts us on a trajectory not to maximize dollars.”

That’s because the state pays an extra $7,085 for each suburban student enrolled in an inter-district magnet school, nearly twice as much as the $3,000 for each local student.

Marquelle Middleton, the district’s choice director, estimated that the district could lose approximately $2.8 million if it lowered the recruiting goals for suburban students.

“But New Haven residents are suffering,” Jackson-McArthur said. ​“That is the wrong way to look at it. These children are not $3,000. My son and my daughter, who are New Haven residents, they’re not $3,000. They’re here for education. We are putting dollar signs on New Haven residents’ children, and they are getting the short end of the stick.”

Greg Baldwin, the principal at New Haven Academy, an inter-district magnet school that’s struggled to diversify racially, with 90.8 percent black and brown students this year, said that board members shouldn’t see urban and suburban students in conflict.

He said New Haven’s inter-district magnet program wouldn’t exist without the kids who bus in and the state dollars that pay for them to do so. That was the case at New Haven Academy, which he said the district couldn’t afford to start without state subsidies 15 years ago.

“Speaking for high schools, we serve 1,700 kids in magnet high schools that would not be served if our schools didn’t exist. New Haven Academy could not exist if it didn’t have the state program to fund it. Co-Op couldn’t serve the number of kids it did, until it became a magnet school,” Baldwin said. ​“If we had less money from the state program, we couldn’t do what we do. As a whole, the state program has allowed us to serve a lot of New Haven kids with public school choice who otherwise wouldn’t have that.”

Jackson-McArthur remained unconvinced. She said she was willing to leave money on the table, if it meant that more spots would go to city residents.

“I understand the magnet system thrives on this, but we are talking about mothers and fathers and kids that are sitting back saying, ​‘I live in New Haven and I can’t go to school,’” she said. ​“Honestly, I don’t care about this money. I know we need to, but I have too many families that are sitting on the outside looking in. I understand, ​‘We need this for this and that school.’ But if it’s not servicing as many of our children as possible, I feel that there’s a problem.”