When Achieve Hartford! hired new Program Manager Chris Marcelli, we knew we were getting an evaluator and data specialist with experience in making sound recommendations.  What we also found is that he is a stickler for accurate information – with a bias against bias – and both a team player and builder.

In fact, as Chris was wrapping up his Master’s in Public Administration from UConn last year, he was part of a team working with the State Department of Children and Families to recommend alternative resource allocation strategies to increase foster family recruitment and retention.  Later, as a research analyst at Goodwin College, his activities included assessments of co-curricular units as well as financial analyses and projections for new academic programs.

At Achieve Hartford!, his work includes facilitating a number of coalitions, including the “All In!” coalition, which is a growing collaboration to gather and interpret data and then tweak practices at both K-12 and higher education levels to improve Hartford students’ degree completion rates and placement into high-demand occupations in Hartford.

In addition to managing a number of large projects, Program Manager Marcelli is the central contributor to the SMARTERHartford data portal, which provides windows into a number of aspects of school and student performance.

“What I bring to the table is that ability to step back and take a broader view,” Program Manager Marcelli said.  “I feel very strongly about transparency and the appropriate use of evidence without bias.  Numbers aren’t biased – people are biased,” he remarked.

“At Achieve Hartford!, the program manager post demands great versatility,” Executive Director Paul Holzer said.  “Chris will help develop, coordinate, and evaluate our programs and partnerships by managing coalitions, staffing workgroups, writing reports, tracking indicators, creating tools, and working with consultants.  We have a small staff, and Chris is just the kind of high-powered professional we need to complement our team.”

The June court order in the landmark Hartford school integration case of Sheff v. O’Neill circled the flight of Hartford school equity efforts into a second, one-year holding pattern.  Children are in that hovering plane awaiting clearance to land.  How many years will it take to give this city’s children a fair shot at the education that the State constitution – and its highest court – have guaranteed?

It’s not clear.  Superior Court Judge Marshall Berger June 10^th signed a second extension to the Sheff Phase III stipulation, giving the State until June 30, 2017 to execute reasonable measures for reducing the racial, ethnic, and economic isolation in the Hartford Public Schools.

The good news is that Hartford is trying.  Very few metro-area desegregation efforts were sustained after the U.S. Supreme Court punted the problem to the states in 1974, as HPS-invited legal analysts observed back in March at a forum on race.  Connecticut has been a national leader in seeking voluntary measures to remedy segregation in its capital city, an obligation to which very few jurisdictions otherwise attend.

The path has been politically shaky and legally circuitous, riddled with misconceptions, such as the one that magnet schools rob neighborhood school funding … when they actually brought new money into Hartford and largely left per-pupil spending unaffected.

Here are some noteworthy details from the latest order:

• Even though the 20^th anniversary of the State Supreme Court order for desegregation of low-performing, racially-isolated Hartford schools will be marked this Saturday, the remedies have only been fully in motion for about half that time.
• Judge Berger’s latest order recounts the Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III stipulations in the case (in 2003, 2008, and 2013, respectively).  Since 2013, the stipulations as to remedial actions have been band-aided with one-year extensions; for example, last month’s order is the second extension to come during the three-year-old Phase III.
• The latest one-year extension has been agreed to by all parties: the plaintiffs, represented by Attorney Martha Stone at the Center for Children’s Advocacy at UConn law school and Hartford Attorney Wesley Horton as well as the ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund; the defendant, the State; and the City of Hartford, which has intervened in the case.
• The integration goal for this past year had been to place 47.5 percent of Hartford minority students in reduced racial-isolation settings (those with fewer than 75 percent minority enrollments).  The outcome was, however, 2 percentage points below this 47.5 percent goal.  Now, the new stipulation simply re-asserts the unachieved goal.

What Could Be Done to Improve the Sheff Remedies’ Effectiveness?

The voluntary, two-way, regional effort to raise quality and reduce segregation in Hartford Public Schools has a long history in Greater Hartford, as the archives of the Sheff Movement coalition attest, online here.  And yet, according to former Sheff lawyer and current Sheff Movement coalition Staff Director Philip Tegeler, he and his colleagues have become frustrated at the inability of the State to negotiate a long-term, sustainable plan to meet the constitutional obligations of Sheff.

“State legislators complain about why there is no five- or 10-year plan,” he said in an interview this week.  “Everyone is frustrated with these one-year agreements.”

Certainly the State budget crisis this year is crucial to the context, Attorney Tegeler added, but Greater Hartford needs a system – sustainable over time – that provides both incentives for integration and sanctions against school districts that fiddle around on the sidelines.

“All towns should be treating Hartford kids as valued members of their school communities,” he elaborated.  “This is the 50^th anniversary of the one-way Project Concern inter-district transfer effort.  We know the essential elements for success: positive school climate, transportation, and even though I don’t like the term – ‘cultural competency’.  The system should not reward districts for staying segregated; some communities just have not been inclined to fully participate.”

Here are several other points of information from Attorney Tegeler, who also serves as president and executive director of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council:

• The State, through its education commissioner, has the authority to mandate a fair number of additional seats in the suburbs for Hartford students, based on capacity;
• Such a mandate could be attached to State funding, as school districts exist at the pleasure of the State;
• While the current and now continuing goal for Hartford students attending school in reduced isolation settings is to lower the proportion to 47.5 percent, the Sheff Movement coalition believes 100 percent of Hartford children should have that option;
• Priority recognition for families who have repeatedly participated in but never gotten an offer after participating in regional choice lotteries – is a positive goal stated in the new order; and
• Other positive developments could come as responses to the June 11 order’s call for continued data collection and choice lottery changes for reducing disparities both between the number of English Language Learner students in Hartford neighborhood and Sheff magnet schools and those requiring special education services.

Given that the region now is stalled at the 47.5 percent mark for Hartford students attending schools deemed not racially isolated, it would be nice if the State could stop acting like a defendant and really take ownership, Attorney Tegeler told us.  “We have a highly segregated and unequal region,” he reflected.  “We can’t just stop at the half-way mark.”

The Bottom Line.  For so many Hartford and suburban families reaping the benefits of high-quality magnet schools for their children, or for those families happy to bus their students out to suburban schools or in to Hartford neighborhood schools, Sheff continues to be a huge success – a real coup for Hartford nationally.  And among all the different reform strategies that have been – and could be – implemented to ensure high quality schools exist for all Hartford students, Sheff-created options (whether managed by HPS or CREC) have proven to be most effective. Then, it begs the question: Why stop the expansion, as has been signaled by the State, and supported by some here in Hartford?

Because they’re expensive?  We get that, especially given CT’s current fiscal state. Because Hartford (as a city) has not been able to completely fix its neighborhood schools yet, and the “have vs. have-nots” dynamic leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth?  That’s certainly not a logical reason.  Or is it because pulling more Hartford students out of neighborhood school settings will make the school district no longer economically viable?  Maybe it’s a combination of all three reasons.

But when we remind Hartford residents who are angry at Sheff for having created a “have vs. have-nots” reality that if the court order is lifted, the State is under no obligation to invest any new dollars into Hartford’s neighborhood schools, a much deeper conversation ensues about how to make Sheff part of a larger plan to improve those neighborhood schools perceived as being left behind.  That conversation is nuanced, and one we want to have more broadly – starting with what the Superintendent has started in the Equity 2020 initiative.  Be on the lookout for more stories detailing the current state of Sheff and changes that we recommend be considered, with urgency.

Before his immigrant dad became a teacher in Hartford, City Councilman John Quentin Gale reflects, the advice given was, “’They don’t hire Italians to teach in Connecticut.’”  But his dad nonetheless became a high school history teacher.  Education roots run deep in this family – and so does the councilman’s alertness to tough issues.

Following his father’s devotion, with both his wife serving as a school nurse and his sister teaching in the city, Councilman Gale is a daily witness to seeing, in his own family, an inter-generational commitment to children.

In this third installment of our series on the education priorities and role for City Council (please see our past articles on the views of Council President T.J. Clarke and Councilwoman Glendowlyn Thames), we had the opportunity to learn about Hartford school history: Councilman Gale is president of the scholarship-giving Hartford Public High School Alumni Association.

Here are a few of his thoughts:

• Fiscal Role Is Not All.  When he ran for mayor (before endorsing rival candidate and now-Mayor Luke Bronin), Councilman Gale for seven months walked the streets and knocked on the doors across Hartford, hearing about the processes of school choice.  The Council role to set the budget for education is basic, as is the safety, health and welfare of residents, “but it shouldn’t stop there,” he says.
• Battle on Poverty.  “We have whole neighborhoods where there is no middle class,” he observes, and so, perhaps, the long-term solution for Hartford and cities like it is an economic integration model, where every community has economic diversity.
• Finally Confronting Reality.  The current budget crisis is in some respects a 50-year problem.
• Stability matters.  Recalling the quarter-century terms served by past Hartford High principals, Councilman Gale points out, leaders were representatives, providing solid community leadership to counter “household chaos”.  We need principals who stick around, he emphasizes.
• Broadening Student Experience.  Athletic and arts programs for children provide order and must be maintained, he also believes.

“You’re a bulldog, I’m an owl,” he used to say to the Bulkeley graduates he met when going door to door.  Then they would discuss getting together and dealing with the consequences – both intended and unintended – of housing and school segregation in Hartford.

On the bright side, Councilman Gale points out, his children – and youth today – are light years ahead in terms of their cultural understanding.  That’s progress, compared to the bigotry his dad had to surmount.