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Report: Racial balance in jeopardy at Conn. schools
HARTFORD, Conn. — Six Connecticut schools are being warned that their enrollments do not reflect the demographics of their communities and might violate the state’s racial balance law.
The state Department of Education’s yearly progress report, presented last Thursday to the state Board of Education, said minority enrollments in those schools far exceed the average minority enrollments in their districts.
The schools are New Lebanon School and Hamilton Avenue School in Greenwich; McKinley School in Fairfield; Eastern Point School in Groton; and the Charter Oak Academy of Global Studies and the Smith School of Science, Math and Technology, both in West Hartford.
The 27-year-old state law says the proportion of minority students in any school must not be more than 25 percentage points above or below a district’s overall average.
Twelve other districts are slated to receive warning letters that schools they run are in impending danger of tipping the racial balance in violation of the law.
The West Hartford schools cited are both magnet schools, and were granted exemptions from the law seven years ago. However, interim state Education Commissioner George A. Coleman says their growing racial imbalance remains a concern.
One of the schools is a magnet school that also draws from its own neighborhood, so the town faces challenges convincing minority parents to send their children elsewhere to meet the broader goals of diversity, Coleman said.
“We know that at the family level, education is a very individual thing,” he said. “But the district convinced me there is a menu of things that are in that magnet school that they want to add to the other schools.”
Under the racial balance law, the state can require school districts to submit plans to reduce racial imbalance.
In most cases, schools have voluntarily made adjustments to correct imbalance.
Redistricting, often unpopular with parents and controversial in communities, has not been ruled out if other solutions cannot be reached, Coleman said.
“It’s something that’s not off the table,” he said. “That’s something we’ve not forced in communities yet, but I think it’s possible if there’s a benefit to our young people that they should not experience undue racial isolation.”
The law primarily affects towns that have racially mixed populations.
Because it affects only individual districts and does not require regional desegregation efforts, it does not affect districts that have nearly all-white or all-minority enrollments.
In Greenwich, Superintendent of Schools Betty J. Sternberg — a former state education commissioner — has convened a task force to review the issue.
Gary Orfield, an education professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, criticized Connecticut’s law as weak. He told the New York Times that he considers its watch list “more like a warning system than a true enforcement process.”
Florida board votes to restore felon rights
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Most felons released from prison will have their voting and other civil rights nearly automatically restored under a rule approved last Thursday by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and the state clemency board.
All but the most violent felons would avoid the need to get on a long list for a hearing before the board, which sometimes takes years.
The board voted 3-1 with Attorney General Bill McCollum, another Republican, strongly objecting.
Crist has made it clear since before he was governor that he was in favor of making it easier for felons who have done their time to vote. He pushed the measure forcefully, and rejected McCollum’s assertion that it was welcoming the worst of the worst back into society too easily.
After felons have served their time, Crist said they should get their rights back as a matter of justice.
Still, Crist’s plan was a compromise, carving out murderers and other violent felons who would still have to either go before the board for a hearing or at least be subject to review.
Voting with Crist for the plan were Republican Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Bronson and state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat.
World needs 4 million healthcare workers
SINGAPORE — The world needs at least 4 million health care professionals, the director-general of the World Health Organization said last week, urging member nations to train more workers.
Margaret Chan said the manpower crisis was most severe in sub-Saharan Africa, which accounts for 24 percent of the global burden of diseases but has only 3 percent of the health work force.
Another problem is the vast number of skilled health workers leaving the countries that invested in their training, she said.
“Some powerful countries have gone to Third World countries to recruit their doctors and nurses,” Chan told fellow medical colleagues at a lecture at the National University of Singapore.
Several countries, including the United States and Singapore, have begun employing foreign doctors from the Philippines, India and Pakistan in recent years.
Chan acknowledged that few medical professionals are prepared to work in developing countries.
“We need to rethink how can we train enough people who would stay in villages to help villages in Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar,” she said.
Chan was in Singapore for a three-day visit ahead of World Health Day, which is April 7.
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