Magnet schools in Hartford, Connecticut are turning away black and brown students in the name of integration, reports Erika Sanzi on Good School Hunting. There are plenty of empty seats, but a minority student can’t make it off the wait list until a white student enrolls
LaShawn Robinson and her son, Jarod
“If I want Jarod to have a seat, he can’t get in unless kids from the suburbs come in too,” says LaShawn Robinson, a black mother who tried for years to get her son into a magnet school with empty seats. “It’s like Connecticut says, ‘You have to have a white kid in a classroom for a black kid to be educated.’”
Ms. Robinson and six other plaintiffs are taking their case to federal court.
Connecticut created magnet schools to reduce segregation. The law requires that at least 25 percent of students be white or Asian-American.”As it turns out, white and Asian families are not choosing to send their children to Hartford’s magnet schools, largely because they already have high quality schools in their neighborhoods,” writes Sanzi.
So seats remain vacant while the wait lists grow longer.
Magnet schools design their academic offerings to appeal to suburban whites, reports the Hartford Courant. They market to suburban whites and tweak lottery rules to favor suburban whites. Resources flow to magnet schools, while all most black and Latino students are stuck in segregated neighborhood schools.