Board of Education Approves Racial Balance Plan

After several aborted attempts, pressure from the state Board of Education, and a lengthy debate Monday evening, the Manchester school board approved a plan intended to satisfy statutory requirements to racially balance the town’s public schools.

Whether the plan will work as intended, and how much it will ultimately cost the school system, remain to be seen.

After debating the plan for several hours as part of its meeting Monday, the Board of Education voted 5-3 in favor of a plan that would essentially establish a magnet program for the town’s pre-schools through existing elementary schools. 

The plan is intended to attract a more diverse range of students to the Manchester school system at a young age, and it is hoped that the students would remain with the Manchester Public Schools system through the duration of their education, thus leading to a more racially diversified district. Currently, under the system the state uses to calculate racial balance, Verplanck Middle School has too great a number of minority students.

The plan approved by the school board Monday is similar to a plan the board unanimously rejected last Tuesday in a special meeting. Following that rejection, the state Board of Education voted to no longer extend the town’s deadline for devising a satisfactory racial balance plan, and instead to begin an investigation that could result in a court battle and sanctions placed on the town’s school board.

Linda Yoder, an attorney with the firm of Shipman & Goodwin, who was advising the school board on the possible ramifications of failing to comply with the state’s racial balancing requirements, said that if the school board presented a plan to achieve racial balance to the state Board of Education by its next meeting in early October it would end the investigation.

“If they have not been given a plan, at that point the statute provides for them to proceed to litigation in state court,” said Yoder, adding that a court battle could prove to be “quite expensive” and lead to a court-ordered racial balancing of Manchester public schools and possible sanctions against the school board, including its dissolution.

Many board members expressed frustration with the limited amount of time they had to come up with a new plan, the uncertainty over the final costs of any plan, its effectiveness, or how it would ultimately be financed. 

“We have a tight, tight deadline to approve something, and we’re guessing at numbers,” said Neal Leon, a Democratic member of the school board. “I guess I’m disappointed that we don’t have more accurate numbers.”

Administrators said the plan as outlined could take anywhere from $200,000 to $800,000 to start up next school year, and $300,000 annually to maintain.

At one point during the debate, several Democrat members of the school board proposed implementing a hiring freeze on the district until the actual cost of the program and how it would be paid for were finalized. But that motion failed to gain traction when Superintendent Kathleen Ouellette noted that not only would that prevent the school system from filling several current teaching vacancies, but would also bind it from hiring a new full-time principal at Manchester High School.

Board members Chris Pattacini, the Democratic chairman, Bethany Silver, a Democrat, and Republicans Michael Crockett, Michael Rizzo and Deborah Hagenow voted in favor of the plan; Democrats Neal Leon, Maria Cruz and Kelly Luxenberg voted against the the plan; Republican Mary-Jane Pazda was absent. 

Voder said that the state Board of Education has a history of working with school systems to revise their racial balance plans if they prove not to be effective, so there would be no penalties against the school board if the plan failed to achieve the intended results or had to be revised.

“They understand it’s a plan, it’s not a contract,” she told the board.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the pre-school programs would be established at Nike Tykes, KinderCare, and the Montessori Magnet School.