White Towns, White Schools
By Katharine Dougherty
“Our democracy loses when we don’t educate citizens to their highest potential.” Bettina L. Love, Ph.D.
Sheff v. O’Neill, the Connecticut landmark case concerning whether the State is obligated to correct educational inequality, was filed in 1989, but not decided until 1996 by the Connecticut Supreme Court in favor of Milo Sheff and 18 other Hartford school children. And, even then, although the Court found that Connecticut had an affirmative obligation to provide equal educational opportunities to all of its children, it did not issue a clear forward process to a remedy. The Court instead sent the matter to the Connecticut Legislature to fashion a remedy.
The Court found that Connecticut created school districts bounded by town and city borders. These districts in Hartford’s suburbs were largely white, but in Hartford itself the school population, like the city population was a high concentration of racial and ethnic minorities. Hartford schools were inferior to their white, suburban counterparts; Hartford students attended racially isolated schools.
Forty-two years earlier, the United States Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) held that state-sponsored segregation in public schools, the “separate but equal” doctrine, was un-constitutional and that desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” Milo Sheff and Linda Carol Brown did not see much speed, deliberate or otherwise. Neither did the rest of the nation. The latest Sheff stipulated agreement was January 10, 2020.
Requirement of Public Education
But before these court cases, before the inequalities they address, before there was a United States, or even thirteen colonies, there were Connecticut settlers examining the prospect of educating their children. The Connecticut Code of 1650, also called “Mr. Ludlow’s Code” after Roger Ludlow of Fairfield, established how people in Connecticut would conduct themselves and the remedies for failure to comply. The ‘Schools’ section falls between the ‘Records’ and ‘Secretaries’ sections, and it also was known by a more interesting name: “The Old Deluder Satan Law.”
The two guiding principles of the 1650 law were that the State compelled parents to educate their children and that public money raised by taxes could be used for education. Satan was an impetus for the law because “it being one chiefe project of that old deluder Sathan to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures and sow misunderstanding.” In the requirement to teach all children to read and write, schools would foil the deluder with learning. The formula for schools: 50 households in a town, the town had to provide a school to teach reading and writing; 100 households in a town, the town had to supply a Grammar School “to instruct youths so farr as they may bee fitted for the University.” While African slaves were present in Connecticut in the mid-1600s (see “Slavery in Newtown,” an article on this site), they would not have been part of the ‘all’ in all children will learn to read and write. When the Founding Fathers, slave holders themselves, declared that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, their cry for independence from Britain, they did not include slaves in all.
Newtown’s District Schools
Newtown was ‘purchased’ from the Pootatuck Tribe in 1705, gained its charter in 1711, and was on its way to building its first school in 1717 (located at the now corner of Church Hill Road and Main Street). This was the beginning of the district school system, a system that laid the foundation for segregation and became a central finding in Sheff v. O’Neill.
Newtown’s geographical size meant that those households further removed from the center of town needed schools closer to their homesteads. So, they built them as they built the meeting houses for their areas. Parishes, or smaller areas of land in a town, constituted the districts and had power to build and maintain the one rooms schools still today dotting the landscape in parts of Newtown although they were all out of service by 1949. Parishes hired teachers and levied taxes in the districts to pay for schools. This system inevitably led to the autonomy of the districts regarding schools, and by 1794 district schools had become corporate entities, no longer under the control of a parish. Households within a district were responsible for their school. These schools were the district schools like Middle Gate, Palestine, Gray’s Plain, Flat Swamp, Slut’s Hill, Sandy Hook, Land’s End, and other schools, 23 in all.
Consolidation Leads to Sheff v. O’Neill
In 1865 (the end of the Civil War), the Connecticut General Assembly legislated that towns in Connecticut had to create a consolidated school system within their borders. This town-over-regional system enabled wealthier towns to create better appointed schools, the firm beginning of disparate educational systems in Connecticut. The legislature met this situation head on 131 years later (1996) as it tried to fashion a remedy for Hartford in Sheff v. O’Neill. CT PA 97-290 stated that the State had an educational interest. “In order to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation, each school district shall provide educational opportunities for its students to interact with students and teachers from other racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.”
Connecticut’s direction was to develop magnet and charter schools and school choice. Hartford’s and Newtown’s school populations reflected their city’s/town’s populations. Segregated. But a system of desegregation for Hartford would not work for a town like Newtown. Had Connecticut, back in the day of district schools that gave way to town schools, required regionality rather than local school control, integration may have occurred when Connecticut’s population changed through immigration and migration. But that would also mean that housing and employment opportunities within any given region would have had to become diverse.
Regionality versus Local Control
Connecticut, in the 1930s had paid attention to its public secondary schools. In 1937, Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, CT was created by CT Special Act 428 of 1937 and opened in 1939. Region 4: Chester, Deep River, and Essex was established in 1953. Project Concern in 1966 addressed racial segregation by bussing city students to the suburbs. The legislative report “Equality and Quality in Public Schools: Report on a Conference” found that “segregation in schools leads to unequal education for minorities and ultimately, a society tolerant of segregation.” The 1974 Connecticut Supreme Court case Horton v. Meskill confirmed that “the State’s reliance on local property taxes to fund public education resulted in such unequal distribution of wealth across many Connecticut municipalities as to violate the state constitutional requirement of equal educational opportunities.” Connecticut has worked since Horton through legislation concerning educational financing, CT PA 88-358, to equalize cost sharing whereby State aid allocation is based on towns’ wealth and other factors in a complicated formula.
Outcomes from Sheff
The Sheff remedy rejected forced integration or bussing for integration purposes, instead adopting a voluntary program with surrounding towns whereby magnet schools were constructed in an attempt to create integration. Hartford students were guaranteed some of the seats at these magnet schools. The latest Sheff settlement agreement, January 10, 2020, following Phases I, II, and III over a 25-year period, added 1,052 new magnet school seats for Harford students, and “seeks to place 47.5% of Hartford students in integrated schools,” among other settlement requirements, by 2022. Inter and intra magnet schools and charter schools in other Connecticut cities like New Haven, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and Stamford are part of Connecticut’s work toward educational equality. The 2011 Academic Achievement Gap law (CT PA 11-85) included creation of a master plan to close the education gap and culturally relevant curriculum development for students who do not speak English as their first language.
The “extensive interdistrict magnet school system” in Hartford and its surrounding white suburban towns and “additional voluntary school desegregation measures have resulted in a major reduction in the racial isolation of Hartford students,” according to a press release from Gov. Ned Lamont’s office in conjunction with the January 10, 2020 Sheff settlement.
Magnets? Housing? Curriculum?
What are small and medium sized towns in Connecticut able to do to increase diversity in their school systems? What can Newtown do? Newtown is already a participant in Danbury’s Western Connecticut Academy for International Studies, an elementary magnet school, but with six town’s participating, Newtown’s seat allocation is small, and WCAIS is just one school. Newtown has little affordable housing and few employment growth opportunities; both housing and jobs facilitate demographic diversity.
A recent proposed legislative bill is directed at affordable housing in Connecticut through accessary apartments, mixed use development, and multifamily housing (CT SB 1024) (2021). Another (CT SB 253) (2021) reduces the percentage a town may receive for a school building grant if a town has fewer than 25,000 residents (Newtown’s 2010 population was 27,560), is not a member of a regional school district, and contains a high school that is under the jurisdiction of the local board of education for the town. This proposed bill seeks to encourage regionalization.
On the curricular side of education legislation, CT PA 19-12, An Act Concerning the Inclusion of Black and Latino Studies in the Public School Curriculum, mandates that beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, school districts must offer a one year course divided into two semesters. The first semester of the course is African American/Black Studies and the second’s is Puerto Rican/Latino Studies. The course is an elective course in the Social Studies curriculum. The State through SERC (State Educational Resource Center) has developed a reference list for course materials both for students and teachers. Connecticut acknowledged this need to provide historical, cultural, and social material to all its students.
Conclusion
In states where the size of a school district is regional, greater than a small town, populations within the district’s boundaries are less static and can be more diverse. Connecticut’s original, continual, and widespread adherence to the town school structure has created segregation in its schools that could be alleviated by regionalization. Billions of taxpayer dollars over the years have done little to replace mostly white suburban schools with more diverse populations. Regionalization would be a slow process, met with much local resistance. And it could not succeed in providing diversity without changes in housing and employment opportunities.
Often, the singular view of desegregating schools considers only the benefit gained by students who integrate a white school. It is a mistake, however, to fail to understand the benefit that accrues to all learners when they experience diversity and inclusion, racial and ethnic perspectives, and socio-economic heterogeneity. Connecticut has both come a long way and has a long way to go to provide equal educational opportunities for all its children.
Sheff v. O’Neill, the Connecticut landmark case concerning whether the State is obligated to correct educational inequality, was filed in 1989, but not decided until 1996 by the Connecticut Supreme Court in favor of Milo Sheff and 18 other Hartford school children. And, even then, although the Court found that Connecticut had an affirmative obligation to provide equal educational opportunities to all of its children, it did not issue a clear forward process to a remedy. The Court instead sent the matter to the Connecticut Legislature to fashion a remedy.
The Court found that Connecticut created school districts bounded by town and city borders. These districts in Hartford’s suburbs were largely white, but in Hartford itself the school population, like the city population was a high concentration of racial and ethnic minorities. Hartford schools were inferior to their white, suburban counterparts; Hartford students attended racially isolated schools.
Forty-two years earlier, the United States Supreme Court in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) held that state-sponsored segregation in public schools, the “separate but equal” doctrine, was un-constitutional and that desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” Milo Sheff and Linda Carol Brown did not see much speed, deliberate or otherwise. Neither did the rest of the nation. The latest Sheff stipulated agreement was January 10, 2020.
Requirement of Public Education
But before these court cases, before the inequalities they address, before there was a United States, or even thirteen colonies, there were Connecticut settlers examining the prospect of educating their children. The Connecticut Code of 1650, also called “Mr. Ludlow’s Code” after Roger Ludlow of Fairfield, established how people in Connecticut would conduct themselves and the remedies for failure to comply. The ‘Schools’ section falls between the ‘Records’ and ‘Secretaries’ sections, and it also was known by a more interesting name: “The Old Deluder Satan Law.”
The two guiding principles of the 1650 law were that the State compelled parents to educate their children and that public money raised by taxes could be used for education. Satan was an impetus for the law because “it being one chiefe project of that old deluder Sathan to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures and sow misunderstanding.” In the requirement to teach all children to read and write, schools would foil the deluder with learning. The formula for schools: 50 households in a town, the town had to provide a school to teach reading and writing; 100 households in a town, the town had to supply a Grammar School “to instruct youths so farr as they may bee fitted for the University.” While African slaves were present in Connecticut in the mid-1600s (see “Slavery in Newtown,” an article on this site), they would not have been part of the ‘all’ in all children will learn to read and write. When the Founding Fathers, slave holders themselves, declared that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, their cry for independence from Britain, they did not include slaves in all.
Newtown’s District Schools
Newtown was ‘purchased’ from the Pootatuck Tribe in 1705, gained its charter in 1711, and was on its way to building its first school in 1717 (located at the now corner of Church Hill Road and Main Street). This was the beginning of the district school system, a system that laid the foundation for segregation and became a central finding in Sheff v. O’Neill.
Newtown’s geographical size meant that those households further removed from the center of town needed schools closer to their homesteads. So, they built them as they built the meeting houses for their areas. Parishes, or smaller areas of land in a town, constituted the districts and had power to build and maintain the one rooms schools still today dotting the landscape in parts of Newtown although they were all out of service by 1949. Parishes hired teachers and levied taxes in the districts to pay for schools. This system inevitably led to the autonomy of the districts regarding schools, and by 1794 district schools had become corporate entities, no longer under the control of a parish. Households within a district were responsible for their school. These schools were the district schools like Middle Gate, Palestine, Gray’s Plain, Flat Swamp, Slut’s Hill, Sandy Hook, Land’s End, and other schools, 23 in all.
Consolidation Leads to Sheff v. O’Neill
In 1865 (the end of the Civil War), the Connecticut General Assembly legislated that towns in Connecticut had to create a consolidated school system within their borders. This town-over-regional system enabled wealthier towns to create better appointed schools, the firm beginning of disparate educational systems in Connecticut. The legislature met this situation head on 131 years later (1996) as it tried to fashion a remedy for Hartford in Sheff v. O’Neill. CT PA 97-290 stated that the State had an educational interest. “In order to reduce racial, ethnic, and economic isolation, each school district shall provide educational opportunities for its students to interact with students and teachers from other racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds.”
Connecticut’s direction was to develop magnet and charter schools and school choice. Hartford’s and Newtown’s school populations reflected their city’s/town’s populations. Segregated. But a system of desegregation for Hartford would not work for a town like Newtown. Had Connecticut, back in the day of district schools that gave way to town schools, required regionality rather than local school control, integration may have occurred when Connecticut’s population changed through immigration and migration. But that would also mean that housing and employment opportunities within any given region would have had to become diverse.
Regionality versus Local Control
Connecticut, in the 1930s had paid attention to its public secondary schools. In 1937, Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, CT was created by CT Special Act 428 of 1937 and opened in 1939. Region 4: Chester, Deep River, and Essex was established in 1953. Project Concern in 1966 addressed racial segregation by bussing city students to the suburbs. The legislative report “Equality and Quality in Public Schools: Report on a Conference” found that “segregation in schools leads to unequal education for minorities and ultimately, a society tolerant of segregation.” The 1974 Connecticut Supreme Court case Horton v. Meskill confirmed that “the State’s reliance on local property taxes to fund public education resulted in such unequal distribution of wealth across many Connecticut municipalities as to violate the state constitutional requirement of equal educational opportunities.” Connecticut has worked since Horton through legislation concerning educational financing, CT PA 88-358, to equalize cost sharing whereby State aid allocation is based on towns’ wealth and other factors in a complicated formula.
Outcomes from Sheff
The Sheff remedy rejected forced integration or bussing for integration purposes, instead adopting a voluntary program with surrounding towns whereby magnet schools were constructed in an attempt to create integration. Hartford students were guaranteed some of the seats at these magnet schools. The latest Sheff settlement agreement, January 10, 2020, following Phases I, II, and III over a 25-year period, added 1,052 new magnet school seats for Harford students, and “seeks to place 47.5% of Hartford students in integrated schools,” among other settlement requirements, by 2022. Inter and intra magnet schools and charter schools in other Connecticut cities like New Haven, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and Stamford are part of Connecticut’s work toward educational equality. The 2011 Academic Achievement Gap law (CT PA 11-85) included creation of a master plan to close the education gap and culturally relevant curriculum development for students who do not speak English as their first language.
The “extensive interdistrict magnet school system” in Hartford and its surrounding white suburban towns and “additional voluntary school desegregation measures have resulted in a major reduction in the racial isolation of Hartford students,” according to a press release from Gov. Ned Lamont’s office in conjunction with the January 10, 2020 Sheff settlement.
Magnets? Housing? Curriculum?
What are small and medium sized towns in Connecticut able to do to increase diversity in their school systems? What can Newtown do? Newtown is already a participant in Danbury’s Western Connecticut Academy for International Studies, an elementary magnet school, but with six town’s participating, Newtown’s seat allocation is small, and WCAIS is just one school. Newtown has little affordable housing and few employment growth opportunities; both housing and jobs facilitate demographic diversity.
A recent proposed legislative bill is directed at affordable housing in Connecticut through accessary apartments, mixed use development, and multifamily housing (CT SB 1024) (2021). Another (CT SB 253) (2021) reduces the percentage a town may receive for a school building grant if a town has fewer than 25,000 residents (Newtown’s 2010 population was 27,560), is not a member of a regional school district, and contains a high school that is under the jurisdiction of the local board of education for the town. This proposed bill seeks to encourage regionalization.
On the curricular side of education legislation, CT PA 19-12, An Act Concerning the Inclusion of Black and Latino Studies in the Public School Curriculum, mandates that beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, school districts must offer a one year course divided into two semesters. The first semester of the course is African American/Black Studies and the second’s is Puerto Rican/Latino Studies. The course is an elective course in the Social Studies curriculum. The State through SERC (State Educational Resource Center) has developed a reference list for course materials both for students and teachers. Connecticut acknowledged this need to provide historical, cultural, and social material to all its students.
Conclusion
In states where the size of a school district is regional, greater than a small town, populations within the district’s boundaries are less static and can be more diverse. Connecticut’s original, continual, and widespread adherence to the town school structure has created segregation in its schools that could be alleviated by regionalization. Billions of taxpayer dollars over the years have done little to replace mostly white suburban schools with more diverse populations. Regionalization would be a slow process, met with much local resistance. And it could not succeed in providing diversity without changes in housing and employment opportunities.
Often, the singular view of desegregating schools considers only the benefit gained by students who integrate a white school. It is a mistake, however, to fail to understand the benefit that accrues to all learners when they experience diversity and inclusion, racial and ethnic perspectives, and socio-economic heterogeneity. Connecticut has both come a long way and has a long way to go to provide equal educational opportunities for all its children.
Sources Used:
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Connecticut Code of 1650.
Connecticut Public Act 97-290.
Connecticut Public Act 11-85.
Connecticut Public Act 19-12.
Connecticut S.B 253.
Connecticut S.B.1024.
Connecticut School Finance Project. www.CTschoolfinance.org.
Cruson, Daniel (2000) Educating Newtown’s Children: A History of its Schools. Newtown
Historical Society.
Horton v. Meskill, 172 Conn 615 (1974).
Lohman, Judith S. (1998). Development of the Right to an Education in Connecticut. Office of Legislative Research Report 98-R-1361.
Love, Bettina L. (2021, April 14) Day of Dialogue. [Keynote Speech]. Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.
NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Sheff v. O’Neill. (www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/sheff-v-oneill.)
The Office of Governor Ned Lamont, January 10, 2020, Attorney General Tong, Governor Lamont Announce Breakthrough Sheff v. O’Neill Settlement, [Press release], https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2020Tong-Governor-Lamont-Announce-Breakthrough-Sheff-v-ONeill-Settlement.
Rose, Carrie. (2012). Milestones in Connecticut Education 1912 – 2012. Office of Legislative Research Report 2012-R-0094.
Schmidle, Mae S. (1997). Newtown, Ye History. Self-published.
Sheff v. O’Neill, 238 Conn. 1 (1996).
U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776).
Connecticut Code of 1650.
Connecticut Public Act 97-290.
Connecticut Public Act 11-85.
Connecticut Public Act 19-12.
Connecticut S.B 253.
Connecticut S.B.1024.
Connecticut School Finance Project. www.CTschoolfinance.org.
Cruson, Daniel (2000) Educating Newtown’s Children: A History of its Schools. Newtown
Historical Society.
Horton v. Meskill, 172 Conn 615 (1974).
Lohman, Judith S. (1998). Development of the Right to an Education in Connecticut. Office of Legislative Research Report 98-R-1361.
Love, Bettina L. (2021, April 14) Day of Dialogue. [Keynote Speech]. Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.
NAACP Legal Defense Fund: Sheff v. O’Neill. (www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/sheff-v-oneill.)
The Office of Governor Ned Lamont, January 10, 2020, Attorney General Tong, Governor Lamont Announce Breakthrough Sheff v. O’Neill Settlement, [Press release], https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2020Tong-Governor-Lamont-Announce-Breakthrough-Sheff-v-ONeill-Settlement.
Rose, Carrie. (2012). Milestones in Connecticut Education 1912 – 2012. Office of Legislative Research Report 2012-R-0094.
Schmidle, Mae S. (1997). Newtown, Ye History. Self-published.
Sheff v. O’Neill, 238 Conn. 1 (1996).
U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776).