Project Choice - Another Unfunded State Mandate

Published March 18, 2009 at 1:28 a.m.
This report from the State Department of Education

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Open Choice Participation by District
School Year 2008-09
	2008-09	Open Choice
Sheff Region Towns	Enrollment	Seats - 2008-09
Avon	3,559	49
Bloomfield	2,155	0
Canton	1,750	37
East Granby	898	26
East Hartford	7,222	0
East Windsor	1,427	38
Ellington	2,634	18
Farmington	4,189	93
Glastonbury	6,847	46
Granby	2,263	76
Hartford	21,649	1
Manchester	6,870	0
Newington	4,509	52
Rocky Hill	2,613	25
Simsbury	4,933	94
South Windsor	4,791	72
Suffield	2,535	25
Vernon	3,549	32
West Hartford	10,080	89
Wethersfield	3,811	31
Windsor	3,970	10
Windsor Locks	1,846	35
	Total	849
Non-Sheff Region Towns
Berlin	3,217	28
Bolton	861	22
Bristol	8,783	20
Cromwell	2,020	45
Enfield	6,288	75
Plainville	2,515	50
Reg. School District 10	2,836	6
Somers	1,717	24
Southington	6,826	10
	Total	280
	Total	1,129
All...of the districts, except Hartford, Bloomfield, East Hartford, and Manchester received letters from the Commissioner asking...for increased
participation levels for the 2009-10 school year.

West Hartford receives $2,500 reimbursement for each Project Choice student. CREC kicks in some extra money too. We are now being told by the State to take in almost double the amount of students - many in middle school and high school.

West Hartford and the surrounding towns are being used to solve Hartford's education problems and who pays for this? Not the State and not Hartford.

In a Hartford Courant article it was reported that:

the state wants more control over the open choice program [which would be controlled by the State Department of Education under Gov. Rell's new plans] to try to increase the number of students enrolled. Under the Sheff v. O'Neill desegregation agreement, the state has to meet benchmarks for how many Hartford minority students attend racially integrated schools. Officials want to increase the number of students enrolled in open choice from about 1,100 to 3,000 to help meet those benchmarks.

At tonight's meeting, Board of Education members Jack Darcy and Clare Kindall were not very happy about being told what to do by State Department of Education Commissioner McQuillan. They both expressed very strong feelings against the "request" from the SDOE.

We are already struggling with our budget and Hartford just wants to dump more kids into our system.

Harry Captain said he'd like to see kids come to us in the lower grades because the kids in the higher grades are too far behind our students by the time they are in Middle and High School (perhaps Harry, that is where they could use the most help though to prepare them for a meaningful graduation...but it's sort of like wanting to get the puppy instead of the older dog at the pound eh, Harry?) Bruce Putterman is just as happy to comply in order to "help solve" Hartford's problems, because he's just that kind of "regional sort of guy".

The fact of the matter is you can talk all day about how Project Choice, Open Choice, or whatever they call it these days, "adds to our school's diversity" blah, blah, blah, and how much our school system benefits from the injection of color into our schools, and Financial guru Chip Ward can spin all he wants about how we are not really losing money on this proposition, but the fact is we are bearing the brunt of Hartford's problems. Project Choice kids cost our system money and resources, especially if the kids require special education.

One very real fact is that we are "gently" being "dictated to" and it won't be long before we will be "mandated to".

The Board of Education indicated that "our Legislative delegation" should be directed to prevent further mandates regarding Sheff and Open Choice. Good luck with that. Education co-chair Fleischmann no doubt will be the first one to mandate more kids be shipped out of Hartford schools into our own. He is after all a Progressive first and foremost, and an advocate of regionalistic solutions to Hartford's problems. He will be the first one to claim that we are bound by the Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit and so "his hands will be tied" by the court's rulings.

Of course TOWH's sympathy lays mostly with those unfortunate kids that have to travel by bus from Hartford to Canton or Ellington and back every school day. Perhaps we ought to make the "regionalists" do this every day and see how they like it. That's a lot to ask for kids whose own school district just doesn't give a damn enough to fix their own schools and provide a decent education, because quite frankly, the color of whom one sits next to in school is really not the issue here, nor should it be. Hartford's school suck, and with all the money thrown at them they still suck. Is anyone asking why?

Critics of Project Choice continue to be vilified as a bunch of racists. It's a convenient enough argument against them, but really has no truth to it at all. Frankly, it is more about money and resources. West Hartford Board of Education members were right to recognize and to say that we really ought to take care of our own kids first...That's not selfishness, that is why we fund our school system.

However, given the plan being cooked up by the State we probably have little choice coming our way, and heaven forbid that Hartford should be made to reform their own school system to be one that kids will thrive and excel in. We all know how much money is being thrown Hartford's way and they still are too incompetent to get their stuff together to fix it. Maybe the solution is to close their schools all together and just ship their kids off to the burbs while gobs of tax dollars remain behind to pay Hartford administrators and "specialists"...Perhaps that's the regionalism solution they are seeking after all.

Open your wallets West Hartford and prepare for yet another mandate.


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